President-Elect Trump’s recent announcement that he is considering acquiring the F/A-18 Super Hornet in place of the F-35 Lightning II does not add up for a leader who seeks “to make America great again.” Too much is at stake for the United States to rely on a fighter aircraft design whose roots extend back to… Keep reading →

NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER: So easy, a journalist can do it. That could be the slogan for the Navy’s new Magic Carpet software, which simplifies the most stressful task in aviation: landing on deck of an aircraft carrier. I’d never pretend I could fly a real plane. But in a simulator, with Navy engineer Buddy… Keep reading →

The Air Force has too few pilots. The Navy has too few planes. Textron has a solution: outsource to us. No, the defense contractor isn’t proposing privatized air wars. It’s suggesting that military training make greater use of privately owned aircraft as the “enemy” in mock dogfights. The leader in this field, at least in… Keep reading →

[UPDATING with Aboulafia analysis of questionable pricing] The F-35 just won a competition — and it wasn’t even close. In every category, from combat performance to cost, the Danish government rated Lockheed’s F-35A Joint Strike Fighter as superior to Airbus’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing’s F/A-18F Super Hornet. What’s striking here is not that the F-35 won: Denmark… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Chronic maintenance problems with the aging F-18 Hornet are hobbling the Marines, leaving them with less than 60 percent of the strike fighters they need to conduct training and operations, the deputy commandant for aviation told the Senate this afternoon. “I pulled up our readiness data just yesterday,” Lt. Gen. Jon Davis told the seapower subcommittee… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy really needs more fighters. Buying 14 more Super Hornets isn’t just the No. 1 item on the Navy’s unfunded requirements list of items that didn’t fit the 2017 budget: The $1.5 billion purchase of F/A-18E/Fs makes up almost a third — 29 percent — of the total $5.4 billion wishlist. Add to… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: It turns out Navy pilots like to breathe. That’s a potential problem in the Navy’s mainstay fighter, the F-18 Hornet, which is suffering failures of its On-Board Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS). While rare, a single case of in-flight oxygen deprivation could potentially kill the pilot, destroy a $30 million to $60 million aircraft, or… Keep reading →

CORRECTED: Navy says new drone will have “limited strike” capability PENTAGON: After more than a year of intense debate over whether the Navy’s future UCLASS drone should be a long-range stealth bomber or a lightly armed scout, the Defense Department has chosen — neither. Instead, the 2017 budget proposes a program that is less ambitious… Keep reading →

SURFACE NAVY ASSOCIATION: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants the arms export bureaucracy to get a move on and approve Boeing‘s “crucial” sale of Super Hornet fighters to Kuwait. The Kuwait deal is for 28 fighters, with an option for 12 more. That’s not a huge sale, but in and of itself, it’s enough to keep the… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: While Congress and the media focus on immediate issues with the F-35’s ejection seat, the program has begun working on a long-range modernization plan to upgrade the Joint Strike Fighter’s combat power. This modernization package, with the so-called Block 4 software upgrade at its core, is essential to the aircraft reaching its “full warfighting capability,” Maj. Gen.… Keep reading →