House appropriators are planning to offer the Pentagon $694.6 billion for operations, personnel, and procurement, plus another $10.5 billion for military construction, in fiscal 2021. The Defense Department funding proposal is $1.3 billion higher than DOD received in fiscal 2020, but nearly $4 billion lower ...
Northrop Grumman
Air Force officials are still looking to perfect directed-energy weapons to use against the low-tech threat of small drones before scaling up lasers and microwaves to take out cruise missiles. The Air Force’s high-power microwave weapon known as the Tactical High-Power Microwave Operational Responder, or ...
The Air Force awarded contracts to 18 additional companies this week to develop and connect a plethora of technologies as part of the Advanced Battle Management System, after the first round of 28 contracts went out May 29. The ABMS network looks to connect the ...
Nuclear modernization concerns are again on the table for fiscal 2021 defense policy negotiations, as House lawmakers raise issues about staffing, program delays, and how to use the weapons themselves. The Air Force’s three major nuclear weapon upgrade programs—the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, the Long-Range Standoff ...
New legislation further establishes the Space Force as the sixth branch of the military, but wants a closer look at who will do that work and where. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill, approved June 10, would temporarily ...
The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center is splitting its management of intercontinental ballistic missiles in two as the next-generation Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent progresses. AFNWC’s former Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems Directorate at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is now the Minuteman III Systems Directorate and the ...
Northrop Grumman on May 18 won a contract worth up to $2.4 billion to supply two polar orbit satellites that are part of the next generation of missile warning systems. Phase one development work will run through the end of 2025, and another contract that ...
The Air Force's Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program has passed its preliminary design review, clearing the way for an award of the engineering and manufacturing development contract by the end of September. If all goes as planned, the new intercontinental ballistic missiles will be deployed to ...
Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Australia-based CEA Technologies are in the running to build a new ground-based radar as the Air Force overhauls its Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar effort. The Air Force announced May 11 that each company received $500,000 to demonstrate their ready-made radars ...
Northrop Grumman will test a system that will allow fourth- and fifth-generation fighters to talk to each other, as well as “attritable” aircraft, during the next iteration of the Advanced Battle Management System experiment. The system could also be applied to the KC-46 tanker.
Cape Canaveral is running out of room.
The Air Force expects that the 17 B-1B bombers it's asked to retire will be the last until the type "shakes hands" with its replacement, the B-21, early in the 2030s, Lt. Gen. David Nahom, USAF's top planner, said April 16. The B-1 will get ...
