As the Air Force tries to decide — after more than a decade of false starts  — just what weather satellites and sensors it needs to build, a Raytheon executive says his company is conducting an internal assessment of how it could meet any emerging needs. “The Air Force now is going through a process, as… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: After three years during which it’s been the Air Force’s greatest problem child, Raytheon’s next-generation ground control system for GPS satellites is back on track, the company’s top man on the program says. Ellen Lord, the head of Pentagon acquisition, and Will Roper, head of Air Force acquisition, met with Bill Sullivan and other… Keep reading →

You probably don’t know it, but in early February 87 countries agreed to voluntary guidelines to enhance the long-term sustainability of the space domain, a significant achievement in space diplomacy.

Given that it took eight years to reach this agreement on a set of non-legally binding measures that largely reaffirm existing practices, it is not surprising that it was not widely covered in the news. But it matters.

For a while, Turkey and Israel were the unexpected couple, the increasingly Muslim state buying the Jewish state’s weapons and Israel offering Turkey a potentially strategic gas and oil pipeline. Today, Israel is reaching out to NATO and Turkish-Israeli relations are increasingly tense.

Unlike the Taliban, Russia and China can shoot down our drones, jam our transmissions, and hack our computers. So to prepare to fight them, we need a very different communications network — one the US Army is now studying how to build.

With the Pentagon and White House increasingly worried about ballistic missile threats from “rogue” states and peer competitors, the Polish site is increasingly critical.

In a somewhat surreal scenario, President Trump yesterday riffed on the idea of a “Space Force,” something he’d clearly been briefed on at some point. And the Air Force expects new engines for the B-52 fleet to cost up to $8 billion.

“We’ve started getting together for breakfast every week or two,” said Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, “just the three of us. It’s absolutely terrifying the staffs.”

It’s not often the public gets to — or chooses to — weigh in directly about what the defense budget should be. The folks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies gave anyone interested enough a chance to do just that. Read on to see what Mark Cancian, a member of our Board of Contributors, says about the results! The Editor.

WASHINGTON: The Missile Defense Agency needs sensors in orbit to track hypersonic threats, the MDA director said this week. Such satellites would use mature technology and could perform other surveillance missions to help justify their cost, Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves told the McAleese/Credit Suisse conference Tuesday. Last week, as we reported, the chief of Strategic… Keep reading →