Northrop officials rolled out the numbers Monday, saying that initially about 52 percent of its tanker competitor—the KC-30—would be built in the US. The percentage could go up to perhaps 60 percent as production unfolds. Most of the rest of the work would be done at plants in Britain, Germany, and Spain. Northrop would act as integrator, while EADS would produce the aircraft, mainly at the new facility it plans to build in Mobile, Ala.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.