Daily Report

Lockheed Martin officials say news (reported first by the Star-Telegram) that the F-35 strike fighter program is behind schedule and over budget is correct; however the situation is improving not getting worse. In a follow-up report, Dan Crowley, Lockheed Aeronautics...

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) says it is “disconcerting” that one arm of the US government—the Pentagon—would disagree with another arm—the US Trade Representative. He was speaking at Wednesday’s bipartisan press conference called to urge the Pentagon to reconsider shunning the...

Reports of development problems with the General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 engine has prompted a new cry for Congress to comply with Administration wishes and dump the F-35 strike fighter alternate engine. Defense analyst Loren Thompson writes in a Lexington Institute...

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 17 overturned an earlier ruling by a lower court and restored a $1 billion KC-135 maintenance contract to Boeing that had been disputed by Alabama Aircraft Industries. The appeals...

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Nov. 17 that the Fiscal 2010 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs spending bill included the $11 million for a new Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) complex at Fairchild AFB, Wash., that she included in the...

The full Senate on Tuesday passed by unanimous vote the Fiscal 2010 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs appropriations bill, providing a total of about $134 billion, an increase of $439 million over the Administration request. The bill includes $76.7 billion—$23.2 for Milcon—in...

Boeing announced Nov. 18 that it had conducted a successful test in May of the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX), which used a single, high-brightness laser beam to track and destroy five unmanned aerial vehicles at various...

Speaking during the Dubai Air Show, USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said the service would be making changes to its fledgling effort to produce more remotely piloted vehicle operators more quickly. USAF put its first batch of freshly...

Air Sorties in Southwest Asia, Nov. 15, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 28 28 56 14,982 CAS/Armed Recon 24 84 108 31,109 Airlift 143 143 42,949 Air refueling 48 48 15,304 Total 355 104,344 OIF=Operation Iraqi...