As predicted, Lockheed Martin filed a protest on Aug. 14 with the Government Accountability Office against US Army Materiel Command for knocking the company out of the Joint Cargo Aircraft competition. The Army bumped Lockheed’s short-fuselage C-130J from the competition because it claims the aircraft doesn’t have FAA approval. Lockheed says, not so. GAO expects to render its decision by Nov. 22.
The Space Force wants to launch hundreds of satellites in the coming years—and use contractor spacecraft to sweep them out of orbit later. The service’s Space Development Agency and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit announced a trio of preliminary contracts for their Deorbit-as-a-Service project on Aug. 14, to Firefly Aerospace,…