Defense

Aviation Week Staff
Russia has completed an upgrade of the world’s most powerful liquid rocket engine, the RD-171.
Space

By Garrett Reim
T-Mobile has announced an agreement to use SpaceX’s Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit communications satellites for text message coverage across the continental U.S., Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and U.S. territorial waters—remote regions outside the signal of T-Mobile’s terrestrial network.
Commercial Space

By Mark Carreau
NASA and its large and diverse contractor team are eager for the success of the Artemis I test flight, seeing the uncrewed mission as an opportunity to learn from a lengthy and challenging development effort in order to continue advancing the technology and cutting costs.
Space

By Brian Everstine
The U.S. Air Force now possesses four MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopters as it starts developmental testing following a series of setbacks for the program.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Brian Everstine
HawkEye 360 and the U.S. Army have signed a new, two-year agreement to develop and demonstrate new overhead radio frequency sensing capabilities that could be used to cue military surveillance assets.
Space

By Graham Warwick
DARPA is launching a program to demonstrate a long-endurance uncrewed aircraft able to operate from warship flight decks and small austere locations in adverse weather.
Advanced Air Mobility

Aviation Week & Space Technology's initial coverage of the December 1972 mission.
Space

By Mark Carreau
The change is to better accommodate the timing of upcoming operations aboard the ISS.
Space

By Chen Chuanren
Canberra wants the 40 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawks to replace its fleet of problematic NHIndustries NH90 helicopters, known locally as MRH90 Taipans.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Guy Norris, Garrett Reim
Commercial, allied and partner-nation satellites seen as potential sensor nodes in space domain awareness network.
Space

By Graham Warwick
Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.
Aerospace

By Carole Rickard Hedden, Michael Bruno, Jen DiMascio
Program managers are in the middle of the maelstrom, wrestling with issues many have never dealt with in their careers. Aviation Week editors discuss what they heard at the 2022 Program Excellence Evaluation Team meeting in August.
Aerospace

By Tony Osborne
Austria’s Airpower Airshow claims to have secured the European debut of China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force with the participation of an X’ian Y-20 airlifter.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Brian Everstine
The Pentagon is implementing a new plan to avoid civilian casualties in air strikes and other combat operations, with steps such as creating a new data system for sharing information on potential civilian harm and incorporating new guidance into military training, exercises and doctrine.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Irene Klotz
NASA on Aug. 25 was on track to begin the two-day launch countdown for its first Space Launch System rocket, leading to a launch attempt at 8:33 a.m. EDT on Aug. 29 from Kennedy Space Center.
Space

By Irene Klotz
Boeing is aiming to launch its third CST-100 Starliner spacecraft—this time with a pair of NASA astronauts aboard—in about six months, managers told reporters on Aug. 25.
Space

By Garrett Reim
The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Readiness Center East at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, recently tested using autonomous vehicles to speed up material handling at a parts warehouse, an experiment to find ways to free up personnel for aircraft maintenance work.
MRO

By Graham Warwick
U.S. startup Jetoptera plans to test a blended wing body model with integrated fluidic propulsion and upper-surface blowing as it bids to win a U.S. Air Force contract to build a prototype high-speed vertical/short takeoff and landing aircraft.
Advanced Air Mobility

By Brian Everstine
A Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber recently launched a Lockheed Martin AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range for the first time as part of a series of upgrades to the bomber.
Missile Defense & Weapons

By Irene Klotz
Fifty years after Apollo, NASA is preparing for a permanent presence around the Moon.
Space

By Jen DiMascio
Collins’ reconnaissance pod takes flight; UH-60V poised for production; UK P-8’s first SAR mission; and U.S. Army to expand counter-UAS.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Brian Everstine
U.S. aircraft struck infrastructure sites reportedly belonging to Iranian-backed militias on Aug. 23 more than a week after American troops were targeted in an attack that a U.S. official said was directly linked to Tehran by, among other things, wreckage of Iranian-made drones.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Brian Everstine
The White House announced its largest-yet tranche of aid for Ukraine on Aug. 24.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Guy Norris
Amid growing orbital threats from China and Russia, U.S. Space Command is calling on industry for innovative solutions to form a global space domain awareness sensor network that will be interoperable with systems used by international allies.
Space

By Chen Chuanren
Lockheed Martin Australia has announced that its R&D team’s Science, Technology, Engineering Leadership, Research Laboratory has successfully implemented artificial intelligence-powered decision support capabilities for the Australia Defense Force’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense system.
Sensors & Electronic Warfare