“We’ve spent a lot of time over the past years playing defense,” Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall, director of surface warfare, said at the West 2019 conference here. “The best defense is a good offense, and the idea that we will go after the threat — at range — is something that we have to be able to do.”

Boeing, Lockheed, Dassault Aviation of France, the European Eurofighter consortium, Sweden’s Saab, and United Aircraft Corporation of Russia are all jockeying for position for an Indian fighter contract worth $15 billion for 110 planes, and an $8 billion navy program of around 60 aircraft.

CAPITOL HILL: Threatened by hundreds of precision-guided munitions now in the hands of Russia and China, the Navy and Marine Corps continue to search for technologies and tactics that will allow them to operate close to the coastline without unsustainable losses. “We’re going to need long-range fires that can operate from a ship or from… Keep reading →

“Now that they’ve completed the initial ground run, the team can finish its work to clear the aircraft for first flight,” said Mike Hirschberg, executive director of the Vertical Flight Society. “Assuming the Defiant team doesn’t find anything noteworthy from its ground testing, it should be up in the air in the next few weeks.”

“Our new approach is really to prototype as much as we can to help us identify requirements, so our reach doesn’t exceed our grasp,” Secretary Esper said. “A good example is Future Vertical Lift: The prototyping has been exceptional.”

“The Army is looking at this too but probably on a different timeline — the Marine Corps wants to get after this pretty quickly.”

WASHINGTON: While the Air Force accepted delivery of the first KC-46 today, Boeing could face a total of $4.5 billion in cost overruns and withheld payments on the initial $4.9 billion contract for 52 KC-46 airborne tankers, depending on what happens as the company tries to fix the plane’s Remote Vision System. How does that… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: In his first day on the job, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan gathered civilian leaders of the military services to deliver a simple message: “China, China, China.”

After years of secrecy and CGI, we’re finally getting to see the Sikorsky-Boeing dream team’s SB>1 Defiant ultra-high-speed helicopter in real life. Now they just have to prove it works.

It’s a major shift after decades in which submarines focused on projecting power ashore, with their only anti-ship weapons being their rarely-used torpedoes. Driving the change: increasing anxiety about China.