Critics have to stop thinking of the F-35 as merely the new fighter that replaces the worn-out 1980?s-vintage F-16, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Wednesday. Speaking at an AFA Mitchell Institute event, Work said the F-35 is “not a fighter. It is a ‘BN-35,’ a Battle Network-35. It is a sensor computer node in the distributed campaign battle network that causes the decisions of the pilots to be so much better than [that of] the adversary and also provides enormous benefit to the battle network” by distributing vast amounts of information to the joint force.
House lawmakers unveiled a new reconciliation package July 15 with $60 billion for defense, $290 billion less than the Pentagon has been seeking, a day after a Senate vote to advance the annual defense policy bill failed—developments that show the perilous state of the Pentagon’s ambitious plans for fiscal 2027.