UPDATED: Boeing statement added NATIONAL HARBOR: Boeing has been plowing through its KC-46 management reserve for much of the last six months, according to a senior Air Force official. “The burn rate of their management reserve rate has gone up significantly over the last six months or so,” the official told reporters today. While this… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: China‘s air force is laboring mightily to improve both its planes and its personnel — causing much American concern— but it has a long way yet to go. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is becoming “much smaller but much more technologically sophisticated,” said Phillip Saunders, director of the Center for the… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: As the US shifts its focus from low-tech Taliban “cavemen” to an aggressively modernizing China, the Air Force has launched an urgent effort to find near-term countermeasures against a foe that can jam sensors, hack networks, disrupt communications, and shut down GPS. “Mostly we’re looking at the next three to five years,” said… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Lockheed offers official reply to Gen. Bogdan. (8 a.m. Tuesday) NATIONAL HARBOR: The likely new leader of the Joint Strike Fighter program opened what looks to be a new era — at least rhetorically — today offering large dollops of what he called “straight talk” about both Lockheed Martin’s performance and the government’s. Maj.… Keep reading →

[UPDATED with Lt. Gen. James comment] WASHINGTON: Northrop Grumman is in talks with the the Air Force to keep the service’s 18 “Block 30” Global Hawks flying through at least September 2013, Breaking Defense has learned. That’s a win for Northrop and its backers in Congress over Air Force budgeteers who wanted to ground the… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: It has now been over a year since the Air Force and Navy signed a memorandum of understanding for implementing the AirSea Battle (ASB) limited operational concept. Six months ago I wrote that this effort – one that I strongly support – will be critical to maintaining our security commitments in the Asia-Pacific… Keep reading →

In the last few weeks the Air Force and the Marines have officially blamed pilot errors for two Osprey crashes. Given the plane’s dark past and the continuing controversies about whether it’s a safe aircraft I commissioned our regular contributor Richard Whittle, author of “The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey,”… Keep reading →

A year has passed since Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act-the legislation mandating sequestration. Funding cuts that once seemed politically remote now loom large for leaders increasingly anxious about the impact $1.2 trillion in automatic budget reductions will have upon their respective districts and states. An estimated two million… Keep reading →

LAS VEGAS: The US military depends on drones. But amidst the justifiable excitement over the rise of the robots, it’s easy to overlook that today’s unmanned systems are not truly autonomous but rather require a lot of human guidance by remote control — and bad design often makes the human’s job needlessly awkward, to the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The defense spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee today keeps Block 30 Global Hawk drones flying, instead of letting them be warehoused as the Air Force had planned, a congressional source confirmed to Breaking Defense. That is arguably the final flourish on Congress’s utter rejection of the Air Force’s proposed cuts in… Keep reading →