Small and medium businesses are still skeptical of defense work despite years of effort and a raft of legislation aimed at accelerating acquisition and breaking down barriers for new entrants—though that perception is slowly improving, according to a new industry survey.
Rapid Acquisition & Sustainment
Aerospace Industries Association president Eric Fanning says steady, predictable defense budgets, not outliers like the proposed $150 billion reconciliation package, are the way for the Pentagon to get the production capacity increases it wants.
After years of serving as the bill-payer for other Pentagon priorities, munitions stockpiles are poised to get a major boost from the $150 billion reconciliation package unveiled by lawmakers in Congress this week, along with the defense industrial base to...
Sustained Munitions Production and Lower-Cost Designs By John A. Tirpak Munitions have long been a bill-payer in the Air Force budget—staples of warfare that, in peacetime, can be neglected or shortchanged to pay for more pressing needs—but after more than...
For three years now, the Pentagon has dug into its arsenal and spent massive sums backing Ukraine against Russia’s invasion; now it may see a return on that investment by embracing the post-Soviet country’s battle-tested way of drone warfare.
The U.S. Air Force is working on a test program with Japan to establish a joint maintenance center that will perform repairs on aircraft operated by both nations—creating a “deterrent effect that will make adversaries think twice,” a top general said.
The Air Force has canceled its top annual technology and contracting conference, the 2025 edition of Life Cycle Industry Days, the Life Cycle Management Center said. The decision to cancel was driven by recent efficiency directives from the Trump administration. Whether the conference will resume ...
If the Pentagon wants the U.S. defense industrial base to be able to surge production of munitions and more, those details should be included in requirements and contracts and paid for, industry leaders told lawmakers this week.
A new paper from the Hudson Institute argues that the Pentagon should dump the entire Joint Capabilities and Integration Development system, saying it has irretrievably failed and does more harm than good. In its place, the authors suggest a more service-oriented, bottom-up system that sets ...