Defense

The Navy significantly reduces its planned F-35C orders and starts new investment in standoff weapons, some for Hornets and Growlers.

How lower-cost unmanned vehicles can help high-end manned platforms survive in hostile airspace is a focus of new programs in the Pentagon research agency’s budget request.

After nearly three decades, India is sending its indigenous lightweight fighter aircraft to its air force, although full operational capability and a naval version are still in the works.

While India’s government complains that Dassault will not provide quality guarantees for Rafale fighters built in India, France says that the original request for proposals did not call for one.

The order for the fighters, plus a DCNS Fremm multipurpose frigate and MBDA missiles, will be signed on Monday, Feb. 16 in Cairo by Defense Minister Jean-Yves le Drian.

“A follow on may be something we need to think about,” said Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle.

The Air Force is intending to follow a methodical path of risk reduction, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle says.

Responding to changing needs, U.S. Navy outlines “distrbuted lethality’ strategy, and plans to add firepower to Littoral Combat Ships.

China and Russia are looking at more displacement and power in their next-generation surface combatants.

Report notes that expanding computer power could allow navies to exploit detection techniques that were lab curiosities.

Wheeler is a critic of Pentagon acquisition failures, and the Pentagon never fails to supply him with material.

New Indian government and better relations with Israel presage greater military sales of Israeli defense technology to the Indian military.

Advances have been made in designing vehicles to withstand blasts from IEDs and mines, mostly through use of heavy armor and blast-deflecting underbodies.

The push is on by many Middle Eastern states to create more indigenous defense manufacturing opportunities.

Maintenance and repair and logistics soon could be among tasks completed by cognitive robots.

In just six months Germany’s defense industry has gone from top of the heap to deep in the dumps.

A plant-based DNA molecule used to mark microcircuit is reportedly robust. Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) says this anti-counterfeiting process cannot be replicated, reengineered or digitally copied.

U.S. sailors train for anti-missile defense via a video game. Team play is said to improve collaboration skills, and the exposure to different threat environments gives novices a rapid introduction to threat assessment, tactics and decision-making.

Oil prices are not yet having an impact on Middle Eastern states, although that could change if the decline lasts for years.

An official Chinese report outlines the efforts that Avic’s factories and research institutes are putting into advanced manufacturing technology, from friction-stir welding to resin-transfer infusion.

A former precision manufacturer for the automobile industry is building tail fins for the F-35.

Don’t look at what new Pentagon projects look like this year. Worry about how to pay for them in the 2020s.

Merger & Acquisitions will pick up at most levels of industry; the lower level will be the more active.

“It has been communicated at the highest levels that India and Russia need to have something to show for the program this year,” says an Indian defense ministry official. But crucial issues remain to be resolved.

The system is competing to meet the requirements of Crowsnest, a British Royal Navy program to provide an organic AEW capability on the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.