The coveted “Best of What’s New” for the year awards from Popular Science include, for 2006, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II and the recently de-cloaked Polecat unmanned aerial vehicle. Popular Science evaluates thousands of products each year to find those new products that “change the way we think about the future,” said Editor Mark Jannot, per a company news release. Lockheed Martin just unveiled the Polecat, a product of the secretive Skunk Works, this past summer.
The Air Force budget would grow to $234 billion while Space Force spending would shrink to $26 billion under the White House's yearly ask.