Missile Defense Review expected in May

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  22 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  It’s official: US Air Force to buy Turkish F-35s

  By: Valerie Insinna Updated 7/21/20 at 1:25 p.m. EST to add more information about the status of the eight Turkish F-35s. WASHINGTON — After a year of speculation about what would happen to Turkey's F-35s after the country was ousted from the joint strike fighter program last year, the Defense Department gave its definitive answer Monday evening in a characteristically anticlimactic manner — through its daily contract announcements. The U.S. Air Force will officially buy eight F-35A conventional takeoff and landing jets originally built by Lockheed Martin for Turkey as part of a $862 million contract modification. The deal also contains an additional six F-35As built for the Air Force and modifications that will bring the Turkish jets in line with the U.S. configuration. A defense official told Defense News on Tuesday that the contract modification fulfills stipulations in Congress' fiscal year 2020 defense policy and spending bills. It “addresses the eight production Lot 14 F-35A aircraft originally planned to be delivered to Turkey in 2022-23,” and redirects those jets to the U.S. Air Force when they roll off the production line. The six other F-35As reflect aircraft added to the FY20 defense budget. The contract modification uses funding from the FY20 budget to pay for the Lot 14 jets. The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin finalized a deal for lots 12, 13 and 14 in October 2019, which set the price of an Lot 14 A model at $77.9 million per copy. Turkey had planned to buy 100 F-35As over the course of the program, but was ejected from the program last July after accepting the S-400 air defense system from Russia after repeated warnings from U.S. officials. At that point, Turkey's first F-35s had already rolled off the production line and its pilots and maintainers were training to fly and fix them stateside alongside U.S. personnel at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., and Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. However, the aircraft were never officially delivered to Turkey. Since then, the fate of Turkey's jets had been an open question. In January, Defense One reported that 24 Turkish F-35s were in some stage of production, but top Pentagon weapons buyer Ellen Lord told reporters then that Washington and Ankara had not come to an agreement on what would happen to them. In the FY20 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress gave the Pentagon permission to spend up to $30 million to fly the first six Turkish F-35s to a location where they could be stored and preserved until the department came up with a plan for their use. Those jets, which were produced in Lots 10 and 11, are currently being held “in long-term storage in the United States pending final decision on their disposition,” the defense official said. The Senate's version of the FY21 NDAA, which is still working its way through Congress, contains additional language that would allow the Air Force to accept, operate or even modify the first six Turkish F-35s. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/07/20/its-official-us-air-force-to-buy-turkish-f-35s/

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  26 juillet 2021 | International, Terrestre

  US Army chooses competitors to design infantry fighting vehicle replacement

  The U.S. Army has chosen five teams to develop rough digital designs for its Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle.

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  9 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  F-15E becomes first aircraft compatible with new nuclear bomb design

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — America's newest nuclear bomb design has been successfully tested on the F-15E, making the Strike Eagle the first fighter jet to be officially compaiable with the B61-12 design. Two test flights were flown twice in March at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, according to a release by Sandia Labs. The mock weapon was released on one test at about 1,000 feet and at nearly the speed of sound, while a higher-altitude test occurred at around 25,000 feet; both tests hit the target as designed. “It's representative of the environment for the weapon,” Steven Samuels, a manager with Sandia's B61-12 system's team, said in a news release. “The flight test is really everything coming together to say we're good.” The B61-12 program will replace the B61-3, -4, -7 and -10 nuclear gravity bomb variants with a new warhead design. The warhead is being developed and produced by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-independent agency located within the Department of Energy, while the Pentagon is developing new tailkit assemblies for the design. An NNSA estimate puts the likely cost of the program between $8 billion to $9 billion. The upgraded variant will be certified on America's F-15, F-16 and B-2 aircraft, as well as on aircraft for NATO member nations. The F-35 is expected to go through certification on the weapon at some point in the next decade. The weapon passed its final design review in October 2018. Notably, the NNSA release states that the first production unit is scheduled for completion in fiscal 2022, when previous agency statements had set that target at March 2020. The source of the delay is likely an issue with an off-the-shelf part, which did not meet NNSA's standards for parts on the weapon, that was discovered last summer and will result in time delays and cot hundreds of millions of dollars to replace. “The success of these tests is a major milestone on the path to full rate production and the B61-12's initial operation capability on the F-15E in the coming years,” Brig. Gen. Ty Neuman, NNSA's principal assistant deputy administrator for military application, said in a statement. “Once delivered, this capability will underpin our nation's deterrent and strengthen our NATO partnerships.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/06/08/f-15e-becomes-first-aircraft-certified-for-new-nuclear-bomb-design/