The Air Force’s share of the $26 billion “Opportunity, Growth, and Security” initiative—an add-on to the defense budget being proposed with the Fiscal 2015 budget—would be $7 billion “if we get it,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Wednesday. Should the money come through, it would be directed to aircraft modifications, facilities repair, training range improvements, and “other modernization items,” James told attendees at a Bloomberg budget conference in Washington, D.C. It’s iffy, though: USAF only gets the money “if Congress passes offsets” from taxes and other programs to make the funds available, she said. Last week, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told reporters that it was still being decided whether to give Congress an unfunded priorities list. He said if one service did it, “we all will,” or no one will.
The Space Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $398 million contract to design and build a communications satellite prototype with advanced anti-jam and data processing capabilities. The service announced the contract for the Enhanced Protected Tactical SATCOM-Prototype program, or Enhanced PTS-P, May 15, and said the satellite will launch no sooner than…