Brian Everstine is the Pentagon Editor for Aviation Week, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining Aviation Week in August 2021, Brian covered the Pentagon for Air Force Magazine. Brian began covering defense aviation in 2011 as a reporter for Military Times. Over a decade as a defense journalist, he has reported from dozens of bases at home and abroad, including austere airstrips in Afghanistan, the cockpit of a B-52 over the South Pacific and the boom operator station of a KC-46. Before the military beat, Brian covered the Washington state legislature for the Associated Press.
The technology driving the new, unmanned collaborative aircraft that will fly alongside the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance fighter is so ready that the service can skip any risk reduction activities and head straight into engineering and manufacturing development, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says.
Lockheed Martin is demonstrating how it can integrate U.S. Army land-based air defense radars into longer-range systems such as the U.S. Navy’s Aegis, with a specific eye on the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) high priority of defending Guam.
Aviation Week editors make sense of recommended reductions to the number of F-35 and F-15EX fighters the U.S. Air Force plan to buy in the coming years.