The U.S. Air Force is looking for companies that can repair and sustain the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System-2, or ASARS-2, the imaging radar carried by the U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane, even as the service asks Congress to retire its last U-2s by the end of fiscal 2027. The Air Force Life Cycle Management […]

Lockheed Martin will upgrade the operating systems running the F-35 Lightning II reprogramming laboratories, which build the threat data the fighter needs for combat missions, under a $43.7 million contract modification the U.S. Navy announced on Oct. 28. Eighty percent of the work will take place in Eglin, Florida, and the remaining 20% in Fort […]

Norway’s Kongsberg ended the third quarter of 2026 with a record order backlog of NOK 174.2 billion (about $18.8 billion), after taking in NOK 23.3 billion (about $2.5 billion) in new orders, more than double the NOK 9.5 billion it booked in the same quarter last year. The defense group reported on Oct. 29 that […]

Lockheed Martin has broken ground on a factory expansion in Troy, Alabama, that will triple the space it uses to build the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, the U.S. Air Force’s first hypersonic missile to enter production. The company held the groundbreaking for the expansion of its Building P-20 on Oct. 27, the day after […]

The U.S. Navy has added $13.3 million and 50,000 labor hours to a Lockheed Martin order covering integration of the F-35’s upgraded F135 engine core and the move of a new power and cooling system for the fighter into preliminary design. Naval Air Systems Command announced the cost-plus-fixed-fee, level-of-effort modification on Oct. 27, definitizing an […]

The U.S. Air Force has put its first hypersonic weapon into production, awarding Lockheed Martin a $694 million contract on Sept. 29 to build and field the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, a missile the service had planned to abandon just three years ago, the Department of the Air Force announced on Oct. […]

Hypersonic missile startup Castelion has received a contract modification from the Air Force Research Laboratory to begin integrating its Blackbeard hypersonic weapon onto the F-16 fighter jet, the company announced on Oct. 26, bringing the missile one step closer to the U.S. Air Force after earlier work for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army. Castelion […]

Two Democratic senators with military and national security backgrounds, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, have asked the Department of War and the National Guard Bureau to explain who commands the National Guard’s new “quick reaction forces,” under what legal authority they would deploy inside the United States, and whether they have […]

The U.S. Air Force has put the Paladin, a heavy counter-drone multirotor built by California-based Zone 5 Technologies, through training with Joint Interagency Task Force 401 at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida on Oct. 8, with the drone carrying a Gen12 counter-drone launcher that fires net rounds to entangle and bring down hostile drones, […]

Kadena Air Base in Okinawa will bar all vehicles made by Chinese electric carmaker BYD from entering the installation starting Oct. 26 over concerns that the cars could expose sensitive military information, Kangnam Times reported. The ban covers privately owned cars as well as contractor vehicles, taxis, delivery vans and other commercial vehicles. The 18th […]

The U.S. Air Force has published new details of its $20.7 billion contract with Raytheon for AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, confirming that the sole-source deal covers seven production lots and will keep the Tucson, Arizona, production line busy until mid-2033. An award notice posted on the federal contracting site on Oct. 23, 2026, shows the […]

Lockheed Martin has received a $114.6 million order to redesign two key navigation systems on the F-35 Lightning II, the GPS electronic unit and the NAV100 inertial navigation system, replacing electronic parts that are going out of production so the stealth fighter can keep rolling off the line. The cost-plus-fixed-fee order, announced on Oct. 23, […]

The U.S. Air Force has raised the ceiling on Raytheon’s life cycle support contract for the GBU-53/B StormBreaker, also known as the Small Diameter Bomb II, by $350 million, bringing the total potential value of the deal to $950 million. The modification lifts the contract from $600 million and extends work at Raytheon’s plant in […]

The U.S. Department of War and Lockheed Martin have agreed on a framework for a 10-year F-35 production and sustainment deal that covers 850 aircraft for the United States, along with spare parts, modification kits and international orders across production Lots 21 through 30. The framework keeps F-35 production at 156 aircraft a year and […]

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighters from Alaska are operating from Tsuiki Air Base on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu as part of Keen Sword 27, the largest iteration so far of the biennial U.S.-Japan military exercise. A photo released by the U.S. military shows an F-22 from the 525th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron parked […]

The U.S. Air Force has sent military-style cargo into space and back aboard a SpaceX Starfall capsule as it tests whether rockets could one day deliver supplies to troops anywhere on Earth within hours. The Air Force Research Laboratory flew its own cargo pods inside the capsule on a commercial rideshare launch from Cape Canaveral […]

The U.S. Air Force plans to grow its fighter force to 1,509 combat-coded jets by 2035, with the F-35 becoming its most numerous fighter and the new F-47 taking over from the F-22, under a revised force structure plan the service sent to Congress on Oct. 16. Lt. Gen. David Tabor, deputy chief of staff […]

The U.S. military has used HAARP, the giant research antenna field in Alaska long at the center of conspiracy theories, as the transmitter for an experimental radar that detected aircraft beyond the horizon by bouncing signals off the upper atmosphere. Military personnel, scientists and international partners carried out the live-fly test from Sept. 7 to […]

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $332.8 million contract to help its cyber defenders collect, store and analyze network data where it is gathered, so the information can be shared across the military’s common cyber warfare system instead of sitting in separate tools. Enlighten IT Consulting, a Columbia, Maryland-based subsidiary of shipbuilder and defense […]

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory wants industry to build and fly a combined-cycle rotating detonation rocket engine, a type of propulsion that runs on a continuous chain of explosions, as a step toward cheap, high-speed weapons that could be built in large numbers. The lab’s Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards Air Force Base, California, […]