In a move that has been a long time coming, the US Air Force will finally cease using Russian made rockets for their satellite launch missions.  The US Air Force conducts most if not all of its space launches through a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture known as the United Launch Alliance (ULA), and all ULA rockets are currently powered by Russian-made RD-180 engines.  Although the engines themselves function just fine, the Department of Defense is skeptical about relying upon Russia for anything defense related let alone for all space launches. Read more >>

The United States Army has made significant strides in a project that will debut designs for a new generation of rotor-craft. Read more >>

DefenseNews, a Tenga company, has released an article on February 8th, 2016 talking about Finmeccanica and how it has proposed to a solution to UAV drones that are available to the average consumer as airports and military bases are seeing UAV drones more and more as a threat. According to Steve Williams, capability manager for Finmeccanica's airborne and space systems division, there have been a couple of incidents in which mini drones posed a risk to both the national and the commercial security in the past few years. These drones are also known as small unmanned aerial vehicles. Read more >>

After much deliberation and examination, Lockheed Martin has decided to nix their plans to offer a clean-sheet or from the ground up design for the T-X program headed by the US Air Force. The expected pivot is to go ahead with the original plan of moving forward with the T-50A as their answer to replace the aging T-38 trainer fleet from service. Lockheed Martin has been in deliberation for nearly months on end to offer a clean-sheet design for the upcoming T-X competition but decided that the risk does not warrant the reward. Read more >>

Defense companies Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have been awarded contracts from the United States Air Force to further develop a radar subsystem. The new Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (also known as JStars) will undergo technological development from the manufacturers over the next year and a half. The two companies were selected by the Air Force because both are based in the United States, and they felt those were the only ones capable of delivering what was needed. Read more >>