In a pair of major contracts announced July 31, the Pentagon awarded a combined $7.8 billion for new missiles, including JASSM and AMRAAM.
Munitions
Thanks to reconciliation, the fiscal 2026 Air Force budget would get a surge of munitions procurement, but it's not yet clear if the production increase will be sustained. The Air Force revealed the secret AIM-260 air-to-air missile's funding for the first time.
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...
Lockheed Martin is offering a low-cost air vehicle it calls a flying "truck" that could be a cruise missile or sensor platform, intended to be the "low end" complement to the high-end JASSM/LRASM stealth cruise missiles, and help the Air Force achieve "affordable mass" in ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, on the verge of leaving the Pentagon, said he would accelerate production of the B-21 bomber if there was money to do so. But even so, it couldn’t happen right away, he said in an interview with Air & Space ...
The Air Force is buying more than 1,500 GBU-53/B StormBreaker Small Diameter Bomb IIs for itself, the Navy, and FMS customers.
The Air Force has picked Northrop Grumman over L3Harris and Lockheed Martin to develop and build the Stand-in Attack Weapon, meant to swiftly destroy enemy air defense sites and other high-value targets.
Despite sending more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine—both lethal and non-lethal—the U.S. is not “running out” of any particular munitions or equipment needed for its own forces, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante told attendees at a defense conference in Washington, ...
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thinks there will be continuing bipartisan support for increased munitions procurement and boosting the defense industrial base generally. But that partnership could be challenged by a push to "punish" non-defense spending, he warned.
In need of faster and greater surge weapons production capacity, the Air Force is looking to new technologies for new munitions, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. said. More weapons capacity may mean less efficiency, he acknowledged.
The inability to rapidly replace munitions being provided to Ukraine should be a “flashing red light” that the industrial base needs rethinking, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on an American Enterprise Institute webcast. The U.S. is "clearly not ready" for a war over Taiwan, he ...
