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...
Rapid Acquisition & Sustainment
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 ...
Lockheed Martin will deliver up to 190 F-35s in 2025, including both newly built aircraft and jets that have been in storage, company president and CEO Jim Taiclet said this week. Taiclet also said Lockheed is taking more than $1.9 billion in charges on two ...
Anduril Industries plans to establish its first “Arsenal” factory of the future at a site near Columbus, Ohio. The new factory should employ some 4,000 people and make various autonomous air vehicles and other defense product at an expected high volume.
The Defense Innovation Board adopted a series of new recommendations and praised the Air Force for its big bets on emerging technology in recent years that seem primed to help new entrants to the defense market bridge the so-called valley of death between initial investment ...