Next week’s fiscal 2017 Pentagon budget proposal will include more U.S. Navy aircraft, missiles and submarine investments, including funding for a new antiship version of the SM-6 missile.

Days before the Pentagon details its request for spending $582.7 billion, Bill Sweetman provides his thoughts on how an “arsenal plane” might work. And Michael Fabey explains why the Littoral Combat Ship might not experience the budget cuts others have predicted.

X-planes, UAVs and a Cold War footing, this year’s budget request has it all. And Aviation Week’s Graham Warwick and Aviation Week Intelligence Network’s Dan Katz analyze President Barack Obama’s last chance to make change.

The new U.S. defense budget to be published Feb. 9 will include initial development of an “arsenal plane” which would operate in conjunction with Lockheed Martin F-22s and F-35s and “act as a very large magazine,” according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Low-boom supersonics heads NASA’s flight-demonstrator options, but advanced subsonic transports are also in the mix

U.S. Air Force orders for the Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter could be cut back in the fiscal 2017 budget, to be published Feb. 9, according to Katherine Blakeley, budget research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Boeing has decided to drop the hybrid laminar flow control drag reduction system from the 777X and may even review its future use on the stretched 787 derivatives.

Two Korea Aerospace Industries KT-1 trainer aircraft of the Indonesian air force crashed after colliding during practice for the Malaysian air show on March 15.