With ground tests this year and a full-up flight test in 2023, OpFires hopes to become the Army’s long-term solution for its Mid-Range Capability missile.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.New Army mounted system won’t play favorites when it comes to C5ISR, EW and A-PNT
The CMOSS Mounted Form Factor will facilitate tech insertion for new capabilities while co-existing with the Mounted Family of Computer Systems.
“It does raise a lot of questions: namely, what R&D/scientific research did they want to work on that really necessitated this?,” says Secure World Foundation’s Victoria Samson.
By Theresa Hitchens
SOCOM has budgeted $106 million in 2021 to buy the first five of up to 75 Armed Overwatch aircraft to perform close air support for its troops on the ground, light attack and ISR missions. The planes would replace Air Force Special Operations Command current fleet of U-28 Draco aircraft.
By Theresa Hitchens
Gen. Arnold Bunch says that Air Tractor’s initial AT-802 offering “did not have ejection seats.”
By Theresa Hitchens
Phil Clay, a former Navy test pilot for the Imminent Fury/Combat Dragon close air support experiments, says the Air Force should purchase “at least a wing” (20 planes) of the Light-Attack Aircraft for SOCOM and the so-called foreign internal defense (FID) mission to combat insurgencies.
By Theresa Hitchens
The Air Force placed a $2.4 billion placeholder in the 2019 budget to buy Light Attack Aircraft over the next five years, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters this morning.
By Colin Clark
It may be an exaggeration to say the companies are dropping out of the T-X competition like flies, but the Northrop Grumman-BAE Systems team‘s decision to drop out today means that at least four of the biggest defense companies in the world decided they couldn’t come up with competitive offerings for the Air Force’s next generation…
By Colin Clark
B-21, hypersonics and more: How digital development is driving industry innovation
Technological advancements are key to keeping pace with customer demands and evolving threat landscapes.
WASHINGTON: Wichita Congressman Mike Pompeo and Kansas senators Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran have written the Pentagon to protest Wichita-based Beechcraft’s loss of the bitterly contested Light Air Support contract, Rep. Pompeo told Breaking Defense this afternoon. Beechcraft, which had offered its AT-6 Texan II aircraft, announced plans earlier today to file a formal protest…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.[Updated 1:15 pm, Feb. 20] Wichita-based Beechcraft — formerly Hawker Beechcraft — has officially emerged from bankruptcy with a new name, 2,000 fewer employees, $2 billion less debt, and one last shot at a bitterly contested Air Force contract to provide ground attack planes to Afghanistan. The Air Force’s decision on the Light Air Support…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.[UPDATED with comment from outgoing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz] Sierra Nevada Corp. unveiled its Super Tucano to the American public even as its lawsuit proceeds against the American government. The Air Force initially decided to buy 20 of the light attack planes for Afghanistan, then unexpectedly cancelled the Light Air Support…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“The acquisitions system is so fundamentally broken,” Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) executive Taco Gibert told Breaking Defense this morning. “Everybody loses.” Yesterday, SNC filed suit in federal court, seeking to undo the Air Force’s cancellation of the Light Air Support contract, originally awarded to SNC’s A-29 Super Tucano. That’s just the latest descent into dysfunction…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.The Air Force will choose a winner in its troubled Light Air Support competition without actually flying the two contending planes, the Embraer Super Tucano and the Hawker-Beechcraft AT-6, and it will even disregard what it has data from the limited “flight demonstration” it conducted last year. That’s a disturbing departure from best practice in…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON [updated Friday 3:30 pm to add details from the Air Force statement and comment from Hawker Beechcraft CEO]: The Texan II is back in the saddle again. Next week, on Tuesday the 17th, the US Air Force will meet with both Hawker Beechcraft, which makes the AT-6 Texan II attack plane, and rival Sierra…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.The Army will test a new system designed to lessen the worst danger military helicopter crews and their passengers have faced during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — blinding sand, dust or snow that can cause pilots to get disoriented and crash. Sierra Nevada Corp. thinks its Helicopter Autonomous Landing System (HALS), which the…
By Richard Whittle
