This year’s Singapore Airshow, overshadowed by coronavirus, had fewer attendees and exhibitors. But the show wasn’t devoid of news—including a possible major development from Boeing. Listen in as our team discusses.
Its flying days at an end, the no-longer-grim General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, serial number 00-003, has been retired to act as a static exhibit for 432nd Wing of the U.S. Air Force at Creech AFB, Nevada – and it is performing that very role this week in the Changi aircraft park, carrying the badges of the 17th, 18th, 20th and 22nd Attack Squadrons.
As the U.S. Defense Department accelerates hypersonic weapons fielding, the air force’s top commander in the Pacific region emphasizes that the missile isn’t the only technology required to realize an operational capability to strike targets at speeds faster than Mach 5.
The U.S. Air Force is proposing the retirement of 13 KC-135s and 16 KC-10s in fiscal 2021, while the successor Boeing KC-46A Pegasus is not considered operationally viable.
European missile manufacturer MBDA has taken a stake in French software analysis company Numalis in a bid to strengthen the artificial-intelligence capabilities of future weapons.
The U.S. Army is seeking $513.5 million in fiscal 2021 for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, up from $398.3 in fiscal 2020, the first year of the program
The service’s fiscal 2021 budget request once again attempts to defer Block II upgrades for conventional forces Chinooks, but includes money to upgrade special operations forces MH-47Gs.
An Australian team led by Boeing has completed the first major assembly for the Airpower Teaming System (ATS) drone the company is developing with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
Details of the U.S. Navy’s new generation, electrically powered aircraft launch and recovery system, currently under test for the first time on the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) carrier, are visible in a large-scale model at the General Atomics booth at Singapore Airshow.
It is tempting sometimes to view the expansion of a range of products as somehow inevitable. If one system or capability works well and proves popular with customers, it often appears to naturally follow that a bigger and better version will be coming off the production line in short order. But innovation does not occur in a vacuum.
Interest in the system is growing around the world. BriteCloud allows pilots to eject a round from their standard chaff or flare dispensers that will emit a signal similar to, and stronger than, the radar return of the platform, causing inbound missiles to divert away from the aircraft and toward the decoy.
A Lockheed Martin program has become the first casualty in the U.S. Defense Department’s race to deploy a diverse portfolio of hypersonic missiles as soon as possible.
