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.
Munitions
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 ...
The Air Force’s munitions roadmap is meant to take a comprehensive view of service weapons needs, focused on the next five years but taking a longer view, as well. Modularity may be a hallmark of the future weapons inventory, the service’s munitions PEO said.
Fresh off a meeting of the national armaments directors of NATO and the European Union, Pentagon acquisition and logistics chief William A. LaPlante said the allies and partners are moving toward not simply interoperable munitions, but “interchangeable” as well. The 45 directors met to discuss ...
A B-2 bomber successfully released a long-range cruise missile during a weapons test in December 2021, contractor Northrop Grumman revealed, potentially giving the stealth bomber the ability to strike even deeper into contested areas. The baseline version of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile has a ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall distilled the top fighting priorities of the Air Force and Space Force into seven “operational imperatives” chiefly as a mechanism to identify the spending transitions needed in the fiscal 2023 budget. But they are likely to persist, and more—on electronic ...
The Pentagon and the defense industrial base need to up production lines for munitions, drones, and other key weapons systems—and quickly—the nominee to lead the Defense Department’s acquisition enterprise told a Senate panel.
Like their colleagues throughout the Air Force, the service’s top munitions experts hail the potential of cutting-edge aircraft like the F-35 Lightning II and B-21 Raider. But without enough of the right kind of munitions, they believe, these and other platforms could fall short of ...
Retired Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzreim, director of research at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, hosts John D. Corley, ordnance sciences core technical competencies lead, Air Force Research Laboratory and the Mitchell Institute's dean, retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, and director of future concepts ...