Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz hopes the Long Range Strike aircraft will be defined and budgeted in the 2012 budget. Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Schwartz said the program still needs to receive “the approval and buy-in” of Pentagon leadership, but “hopefully in this budget cycle we can arrive at a conclusion.” Still to be decided is the “substance of the effort [and] what is its timing.” Schwartz had previously told the Daily Report that the debate is “raging” in the Pentagon about the airplane, and that a quick conclusion isn’t likely.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.