ROSSLYN, VA: Surprise! The pilots who run the Air Force don’t share Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s view of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Mabus two weeks ago said “should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.” “I would disagree… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: America’s next war plane may look much more like a stealthy long-range bomber than a sleek, fast and maneuverable fighter. That’s the conclusion of a wide-ranging study by the respected Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments. Breaking Defense obtained a copy of the report from a source not affiliated with CSBA. Here’s the study’s main finding:… Keep reading →

http://youtu.be/H-vkdUBNOOc It will be one of the great weapons competitions of the 21st century. Northrop Grumman is competing against a team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build the Long Range Strike Bomber. The company has also created design teams to work on so-called sixth generation fighters for the Air Force and the Navy. With… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The United States will begin serious development of prototypes for so-called sixth generation fighters — successors to the F-35 and F-22 — for the Navy and the Air Force in the 2016 budget, says the head of Pentagon acquisition, Frank Kendall. The Aviation Innovation Initiative is a new effort, not an agglomeration of existing DARPA… Keep reading →

AFA WINTER, ORLANDO, FLA.:  The Air Force has launched a major effort to craft a new strategy and new efforts to better plan how it will spend its money, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said today. “The question for us now is, what is next? Is it strategic agility, cyber-centric operations, blended… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: We aren’t quite finished developing and producing our fifth generation aircraft, the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, but their time is already running out, the head of Air Combat Command said today. And work has not really begun on a sixth generation aircraft. Gen. Mike Hostage, the ACC commander, told an audience of more… 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 →