PARIS AIR SHOW: “The word commitment should mean something. When I give you my commitment you should be able to trust that I’m going to do what I said I’m going to do.” That’s the message Orlando Carvalho, new head of Lockheed Martin’s iconic aeronautics business wants to send the US Navy, the service most… Keep reading →

An aircraft carrier is nothing without aircraft, and a Navy aircraft is worth little without a carrier. It’s ships and planes in synergy that revolutionized war at sea in the 1930s and with new systems now entering service – the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and the Ford-class carrier – they can do it again. On… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next. “I think it would almost follow like the night to the day,” Rep. Randy Forbes told… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin‘s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.” “There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: While the Air Force and the Marines stake their future on a great leap forward to the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Navy is taking what one officer called “baby steps” into the future: a careful, incremental upgrade of electronic warfare systems to jam enemy radar instead of just hiding from it. The… Keep reading →

Under LRIP-5 for F-35 Lockheed Martin will build 22 Air Force F-35As, 3 Marine Corps F-35Bs, 7 Navy F-35Cs. Production started last December under undefinitized contract. ColinClarkAol

[Corrected 9:35 pm with a note about the EC-130 Compass Call] Is stealth still America’s silver bullet? Or are potential adversaries’ radars getting too smart for US aircraft to keep hiding from them? That’s literally the trillion-dollar question, because the US military is investing massively in new stealth aircraft. At stake in this debate are… Keep reading →

There were only four men in U.S. History awarded the five star rank of Fleet Admiral: Chester Nimitz, “Bull” Halsey, William Leahy and Ernie King. From their days at Annapolis to commanding the greatest naval fleet in history, each man spent significant time at sea interspersed with time ashore furthering their education. Not only did… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The Navy’s F/A-XX initiative has been depicted as an ultra-advanced “sixth generation” aircraft that the Navy would prefer to buy instead of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But Breaking Defense interviews with Navy and industry sources strongly suggest that the service has little appetite for another expensive development program and that the most… Keep reading →

[This piece was originally published under the title “CNO Ready To Cut Back On F-35 Joint Strike Fighter,” which was factually incorrect; see our note below.] Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert’s recent article in Proceedings announces in public what many have already known in private: The U.S. Navy is not wholly committed to the… Keep reading →