Through a new effort called the Replicator Initiative, the Department of Defense is seeking to rapidly expand its capacity through relatively inexpensive autonomous systems. And the DOD wants those systems fast—in the “volume and velocity required to deter aggression or win if we’re forced to ...
Rapid Acquisition & Sustainment
The Navy, which awards all F-35 contracts, has awarded deals to Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney for just over $1 billion, covering long-lead parts, F-35 helmets, and F135 engines.
The Air Force announced it conducted another test of the AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) hypersonic missile on Aug. 19. But while the service said the event provided useful data, it declined to say whether the vehicle hit its planned target and did not ...
The Space Development Agency awarded contracts Aug. 21 to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin for 36 satellites each as part of Tranche 2 of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a large constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit. The two deals, worth a collective $1.55 billion, are ...
While the Pentagon continues to experiment with technologies that could disable or destroy swarms of small drones, the Air Force’s acquisition lead on the effort is concerned about a lack of funding needed to meet the threat—and his office’s ability to convert promising efforts into ...
The Air Force will officially take ownership of its first production-representative T-7A trainer jet “in the coming weeks” and quickly move into flight testing from contractor Boeing’s St. Louis facility, a service official said last week. After that, the first two Red Hawks will transfer out ...
Despite intense interest—and extra funding—from lawmakers, the U.S. Air Force will almost certainly not be able to get its first E-7 Wedgetail before 2027, acquisition officials said July 31. But the service can still take actions now to fill out the planned fleet of 26 airframes ...
The Air Force’s approach to developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft—the uncrewed, autonomous drones to fly alongside manned aircraft—will “break the mold” of traditional acquisition and sustainment, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said July 31. For years, Brown told attendees at the Air Force Life ...
We’re coming off a couple of decades of conflict in which all of our comms were essentially secured, we were not competing with a peer, and I think most of us in the room believe the next conflict will be quite different from that.
