The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded Boeing a contract for the upgrade of Japan Air Self Defense Force Boeing/Mitsubishi F-15G Eagles to the Japan Super Interceptor standard, ending more than two years of changing definitions and price negotiations.
A new initiative by the Biden administration has thrust the U.S. defense industry to the forefront of a national campaign to emit no more greenhouse gases than are removed from the atmosphere by 2050.
The U.S. and Israeli Ministry of Defense on Dec. 30 formalized a deal for 12 Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopters and two additional Boeing KC-46 Pegasus refueling tankers.
Addman Engineering, the additive manufacturing rollup under private equity investor American Industrial Partners, has acquired Castheon, a refractory metals maker that has partnered with spacecraft-providing companies, the companies announced Jan. 3.
Large U.S. defense prime contractor L3Harris Technologies has reorganized to include just three main business divisions, with Aviation Systems and its top unit executive no longer part of the company’s structure.
After successfully unfurling the James Webb Space Telescope’s tennis court-sized sunshield, flight controllers on Jan. 3 completed tensioning three of the shield’s five diamond-shaped membranes.
The Royal Thai Air Force is considering purchasing as many as eight Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IIs as part of its modernization to replace its aging fleet of Northrop F-5E/Fs and F-16A/Bs.
The reconfiguration of the James Webb Space Telescope continued on Dec. 30 with the removal of covers that protected the observatory’s delicate sunshield for launch, setting the stage for the deployment of a five-layer, tennis court-sized structure needed to passively cool the telescope for its science program.
NASA and Roscosmos continue to pursue an astronaut/cosmonaut crew exchange agreement for Soyuz and NASA Commercial Crew launches to the International Space Station.
After awarding about $8 billion in contracts to adversary air and other private air support providers from fiscal 2015 to 2020, the U.S. military services are reviewing the performance of these companies to understand how they can better and more cost-effectively train aircrews.
An Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket carrying the flagship James Webb Space Telescope was rolled out to launchpad ELA-3 at Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on Dec. 23 in preparation for liftoff at 7:20 a.m. EST on Dec. 25.
