Japan is considering development of an unmanned crisis-monitoring long-endurance aircraft.

Momentum is solidly behind fielding manned-unmanned teaming technologies for Army aviation assets. Combining video feeds and weapons of manned and unmanned platforms provides significantly better situational awareness to troops on the ground and dramatically improved efficiency in focusing weapons to support ground elements.

Insitu taps Australia’s Orbital to develop a new, more reliable engine for Scan Eagle UAV

Royal Air Force (RAF) commanders may be revisiting their strategy on the rapid removal from service of the Panavia Tornado GR4. Less than six months before the disbandment of a third squadron of the aircraft in the past year, officials have decided to postpone their plans so that Tornados and crews are available to fly missions to counter Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria.

The RQ-7Bv2 incorporates several improvements, including extended endurance, encrypted data link and reliability upgrades. The U.S. Army plans to upgrade all of its 102 Shadow systems, each with four aircraft, to the new configuration. The biggest capability change is introduction of the Ku-band tactical common data link, already carried by the Army’s larger General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS.

While the Air Force and Navy programs will share elements and technologies, the two services have distinct requirements that likely cannot be reconciled into a single program. Still, the two services continue to pursue a joint analysis of alternatives to fully vet the need for separate programs.

The current security policy all but guarantees that the Air Force won’t get its new, Long Range Strike Bomber.

The problem is that Boeing corporate management is taking a one-size-fits-all approach to labor relations.