The move activates the final assembly line nearly 29 months after the U.S. Air Force awarded Boeing a $9.2 billion contract to supply 351 jets and 46 simulators to replace the Northrop T-38C Talon.
A decade of durability and fatigue testing revealed that 30 parts on the F-35B could fail between 2,000 and 4,000 flight hours, or far short of the 8,000 flight hour service life required in the original development contract awarded to Lockheed in 2001.
The Israeli government has confirmed it will acquire a third squadron of Lockheed Martin F-35s as well as heavy-lift helicopters and advanced munitions as part of its new arms procurement program to update the Israeli Defense Forces.
Despite the fact that the U.S. Air Force is advocating for a Pentagon-wide tactical aircraft study that may push the service to purchase cheaper airframes, Lockheed Martin maintains the F-35 will achieve a $25,000 flight hour goal by 2025 as long as the military signs a performance-based logistics contract.
U.S. Air Force leadership from Air Combat Command and Air Force Materiel Command have requested a meeting with F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) leadership and subject matter experts to discuss options and impacts of F135 depot capacity and sustainment concerns.
Boeing’s T-7A already “flies like a fighter” and would require several minor modifications to be adapted from an advanced jet trainer into a combat role, the company’s program manager said.
The U.S. Army has retired the Bell TH-67 Creek training helicopter as part of its transition to the Airbus UH-72 Lakota. The last of the TH-67s, a derivative of the Bell Model 206B3 JetRanger, made their final flights at Cairns Army Airfield, Alabama, part of the Army’s Fort Rucker Aviation Center of Excellence training center, on Feb 17.
The U.S. Air Force is whittling down upgrade options for the brand-new HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter fleet because new threats from China and Russia outpaced the design before delivery of the first aircraft.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury has said negotiations with partner nations and industry on the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) have entered a “challenging” phase.
The U.S. Air Force has begun retiring the aging B-1B to make room for the new B-21 bomber, but notably not all 17 Lancers slated for retirement will go to the boneyard.
Intellectual property appears to be at the heart of new disagreements between France and Germany over the Future Combat Air System, defense analysts have suggested.
The U.S. aerospace industry provided a foreign trade surplus of around $43 billion in 2020, the U.S. Commerce Department reported this month, a notable achievement amid the onset of COVID-19 but almost half the sector’s 2019 level.
Turkey’s defense industry organization, SSB, has signed agreements with local industry to produce power systems for the country’s future indigenous combat aircraft, TF-X.
Most details remain secret about the U.S. Air Force’s requirements for replacing the Boeing E-4B fleet, but two small details announced since December point to an acquisition of used 747s.
