Asked during his briefing here whether 25 by 25 was achievable, Greg Ulmer, head of the F-35 program for Lockheed Martin, said the company would prove itself just as it had by lowering the cost of an F-35A to below $80 million one year early.

Amid chatter about what aircraft will make their way to Paris, the Air Force going all in.

BOSTON: “It’s like running through a briar patch naked,” Will Roper said of trying to bring start-up companies into the service’s contracting model to keep apace of commercial innovation. “You have to be willing to bleed a little bit,” Roper, the Air Force’s top acquisition official told me in an interview last Thursday, after watching 10 newborn… Keep reading →

Air Force Space Command’s ‘Unified Data Library’ combining DoD and commercial SSA data will be open to allied governments.

F-35 Program Executive Officer Vice Adm. Mat Winter today told the HASC tactical air and land subcommittee that Lockheed was guilty of just that, adding that this had helped lead to a shortage of an average of 600 parts each month, causing production line slowdowns and cost increases.

Air Force wants China and that other, much poorer competitor known as Russia, to worry the US is in the early stages of fielding weapons systems that will tip the strategic see-saw to the American side. As outgoing Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson made clear here today, it is, in part, a cost-imposition strategy.

As commercial activities such as mining expand from Earth to the Moon, there will be “a need for the equivalent to a Navy or Air Force” to protect that region of space, says SDA chief Fred Kennedy.

Venture capital funds are pouring money into space start-ups — including a number of firms being eyed by DoD –with investment in 2018 hitting a record high of $3.2 billion.

Let’s not get too carried away. “We’ve got to earn our way to cislunar,” Will Roper said with a chuckle. “We’ve got to prove we can do LEO and GEO well.” Still, “this isn’t too far fetched.”

WASHINGTON: No Russians. Few Chinese. The F-35. And the man who has led the charge in America’s trade wars, Peter Navarro, at the head the American delegation, with lots of other senior American officials along eager to boost bilateral sales of US weapons and civilian aircraft. Those are the early outlines of what we’ll see at this… Keep reading →