Defense

Nigerian Air Force celebrated the maiden flight of its first A-29 Super Tucano this week. The armed variant of the military trainer carried out the mission by the Embraer profuction facility at Jacksonville Florida.
Defense

By Michael Bruno
Boeing is reorganizing top managers and their duties, the company said late April 21, in what is the first headquarters overhaul under relatively new CEO and president David Calhoun.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Mark Carreau
NASA's New Frontiers mission edges closer to sampling the asteroid Bennu.
Space Symposium

North America Lockheed Martin said April 3 it will double the amount of accelerated payments it makes to smaller suppliers as the world wrestles with
Defense

By Tony Osborne
Germany will order a combined fleet of Eurofighters and U.S.-made F/A-18 Super Hornets to replace its aging Panavia Tornado.
Aircraft & Propulsion

JAPAN AIR SELF-DEFENSE FORCE took delivery of first two Cessna Citation Latitudes configured for flight inspection missions (to ensure the integrity
Defense

By Steve Trimble
The U.S. Marine Corps has delivered eight newly-manufactured Lockheed Martin F-35Bs to MCAS Iwakuni, Japan, replacing the original batch of short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing fighters that first arrived in 2017, the service announced on April 21.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Lee Hudson
The U.S. Air Force has discovered that vertically mounted wiper blades on the KC-135 Stratotanker reduce aircraft drag by about 1% during cruise conditions, potentially saving the service $7 million annually in fuel costs.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Michael Bruno
Lockheed Martin proved April 21 why its is probably the best-positioned company in aerospace and defense to ride out the novel coronavirus outbreak, with the company reporting consensus-beating first-quarter financial results and a positive forecast for 2020.
Budget, Policy & Operations

LOCKHEED MARTIN had $1.7b net profit on $15.7b sales in 1Q20 vs $1.7b on $14.3b in 1Q19; it delivered 22 F-35s, three C-130Js and 15 helicopters vs 26
Aerospace

By Lee Hudson
The Pentagon is investing $133 million to increase U.S. N95 mask production by 39 million over the next 90 days to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Bradley Perrett
A Japanese choice of U.S. partners for development of the Next Generation Fighter has been reported by a second major Japanese newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, following an article along similar lines last month.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Kim Minseok, Bradley Perrett
The South Korean finance ministry has reiterated that spending shifts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic will not delay deliveries of Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightnings to the country.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Lee Hudson
The Weather System Follow-on satellite completed its critical design review with the U.S. Space Force green lighting Ball Aerospace to enter full production.
Space

By Steve Trimble
Lockheed Martin completed the preliminary design of its candidate for the Long Range Standoff cruise missile six months before the U.S. Air Force’s decision to award the $4.5 billion program to rival Raytheon Technologies, the service said on April 20.
Missile Defense & Weapons

By Michael Bruno
The coming weeks and months will be full of big announcements about business changes. Here are three factors affecting A&D supply chains.
Manufacturing & Supply Chain

By Lee Hudson
The Pentagon predicts there will be a three-month slowdown for major defense acquisition programs because of impacts related to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Budget, Policy & Operations

BOEING resumed military rotorcraft production in Philadelphia after 2-week suspension due to COVID-19 (SPNWS; April 10).
Defense

GE AVIATION announced >$476m in military contracts to supply T700s for 40 UH-60Ms ($62m), 48 F414 engines/modules ($215m), TF-34 engine supplies for
Defense

EMBRAER and SIERRA NEVADA completed first flight of first of 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft for NIGERIAN AIR FORCE; aircraft was produced
Defense

By Tony Osborne
Norway plans to purchase long-range air defense systems and a new fleet of tactical helicopters as part of an uptick in defense spending.
Defense

By Irene Klotz
NASA has appointed the agency’s chief economist, Alexander MacDonald, to serve as program executive for CASIS, the NASA-backed Florida nonprofit that oversees the U.S. National Laboratory portion of the International Space Station.
Defense

By Tony Osborne
Norway and the U.S. will cooperate on advanced ramjet technologies for future missile developments.
Missile Defense & Weapons

By Mark Carreau
2I/Borisov, the second comet of extrasolar origin to approach the Sun in recent years, brought with it an unprecedented glimpse into the chemistry of the planet-forming protoplanetary disc surrounding another star.
Space Symposium

By Steve Trimble
The U.S. Air Force has selected Raytheon Technologies to develop the Long Range Stand-off cruise missile and surprisingly ended a competition with Lockheed Martin for the $4.54 billion program nearly two years early.
Missile Defense & Weapons