According to the Air Force’s top acquisition official, Sue Payton, the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System program suffered a Nunn-McCurdy breach—mentioned in the April Selected Acquisition Reports—because USAF and the Navy wanted to add “improved capability to avoid diminishing manufacturing sources and obsolescence.” Payton told reporters last week that such “spiral development holds a lot of promise to get the best capability,” however it undoubtedly will result in “more Nunn-McCurdys in the future” because of the new law governing original baseline dollars. There was just one more JPATS problem. Payton said, “We also early on assumed that we would have more sales so the price per aircraft would be lower.” The JPATS program will continue.
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.
