The most contentious U.S. defense issue lawmakers will debate before crafting the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill is nuclear modernization, a senior lawmaker says.

The UK will face a gap of at least nine months in its airborne early warning capability after deciding to retire its Boeing E-3 Sentry fleet by December 2022.

The U.S. Navy has disclosed the fiscal 2021 budget request for the Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout is not directly tied to solving problems discovered in operational testing, but fixes are slated before first deployment.

BAE Systems is working at building up a low-profile Australian business in high-frequency radio technology, a key aim being to export skywave over-the-horizon radars.

BAE Systems Chairman Sir Roger Carr has described the company’s planned acquisitions of Collins’ Aerospace Military Global Positioning System and Raytheon’s Airborne Tactical Radios business as being at the “sweet spot” of the company’s strategic ambition.

The service says there are sufficient quantities of the airborne system to support the National Defense Strategy.

A multi-target air-to-air weapon and gun-armed close-support missile are among new projects DARPA plans to launch in fiscal 2021. New approaches to communicating in contested environments, attacking signals and countering laser weapons are also on the list.

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2021 defense budget request is “flat” for the Pentagon but doubles down on space, hypersonic and cyber capabilities against China, Russia and others and would make recent changes to the national security structure “irreversible,” officials said Feb 10.