Latest news with #F-47
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Lockheed eyes better stealth, unmanned option for F-35
Advanced stealth capabilities, new weapons and possibly even an unmanned piloting option could be in the works for Lockheed Martin's F-35 as the company seeks to boost the jet with sixth-generation technology. In a webcast of a Wednesday discussion at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet expressed confidence the company could have a 'meaningful increase' of capabilities for the F-35 ready in two or three years. Lockheed originally developed these technologies as part of its pitch to the Air Force for a Next-Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, fighter. But the Air Force ended up going with Boeing's proposal, and President Donald Trump in March announced NGAD would be called the F-47. Lockheed hopes to salvage its NGAD loss by making the F-35 more capable and attractive. Taiclet has claimed porting its NGAD technology into a 'supercharged' F-35 will allow the company to deliver 80% of the capability of an NGAD fighter at half the cost. In an April earnings call with investors, Taiclet said Lockheed would 'take the [F-35's] chassis and turn it into a Ferrari.' That could include upgrading the F-35's stealth coatings to help it evade infrared and radar signals and tweaking the fighter's outer body shape, particularly its engine inlets and outlets, to make it stealthier, Taiclet said. A fifth-generation-plus F-35 could also have better electronic warfare capabilities, networking and autonomy, which could be used to make the jet 'pilot-optional,' Taiclet said. Some weapons designed for a sixth-generation aircraft could also be folded into the F-35's arsenal, he said. Some of these capabilities could be ready for a first flight and integration into the F-35 in two or three years, Taiclet said, but he cautioned the technology development has to be rolled out in stages. 'You cannot introduce too much new equipment or too much new software at once, necessarily, without interrupting the production flow,' Taiclet said. Lockheed Martin is also looking for ways the F-35 can better interface with other aircraft, including sixth-generation planes, drones such as collaborative combat aircraft and other technologies as part of the Air Force's 'family of systems' concept. 'This is the way to look at the air superiority program of the future,' Taiclet said. 'It's not just plane-to-plane, what's faster, what turns tighter, what's got the longest duration of flight, but how it interacts and can interact with a wider ecosystem to create air superiority.' Taiclet also provided an update on the F-35's Technology Refresh 3 upgrades and the effort to get the newest Joint Strike Fighters ready to fly in combat. The upgrades, also known as TR3, include an improved core processor for the F-35, better memory and a more sophisticated display for pilots. The development of that hardware is done, Taiclet said, and it's being produced at scale by L3Harris. He said the TR3 software integration to tie the new pieces of equipment into the jet is also done. F-35s are now moving through production lines, primarily at Lockheed's Fort Worth, Texas, facility, and are having TR3 hardware and software installed, he said. Those new F-35s are also receiving a new distributed aperture system, which is six antennas positioned around the jet to boost its sensing capability. The distributed aperture system is the first piece of hardware needed for a more significant upgrade known as Block 4. However, integrating that new sensor set and its own software with TR3 has presented a new challenge, and is now 'a little bit behind schedule,' Taiclet said. 'Once that catches up, we think by the end of this year, then all those aircraft that have been delivered will be combat capable, and allowable to be at the front-line base for the services and for our allies,' Taiclet said.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Corrupter-in-Chief
WHEN DONALD TRUMP TRIED to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election, he lacked one crucial asset: the military. The armed forces stayed out of the fight, putting loyalty to the Constitution above loyalty to the president. In his second term, Trump is working to rectify that mistake. He's not just purging generals and installing his own loyalists. He's also encouraging rank-and-file service members to side with him against anyone who stands in his way, including the courts. Two weeks ago, Trump spoke to American troops at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Not once did he thank them for serving the United States. Instead, he thanked them for supporting him politically. 'Nobody [has] been stronger than the military in terms of backing us' in 'three unbelievable campaigns,' he boasted. 'I just want to thank you all very much.' Trump did acknowledge one service member for an act of bravery. The hero, he explained, was an Air Force Reserve master sergeant who 'attended the rally where an assassin tried to take my life' and 'raced to direct law enforcement toward the sniper's perch.' This noble deed—attending a Trump rally and protecting Trump—was the only physical act for which Trump thanked anyone in uniform. The president joked that one of the military's new planes was a tribute to him. 'Our air force will soon have the world's first and only sixth-generation fighter jet, the F-47,' he noted. 'Why did they name it 47?' he asked, smirking. 'That was a nice thing.' Share Trump also joked about running for a third term. 'We'll have to think about that,' he told the troops. He explained to them, in the manner of a bro soliciting laughter from his buddies, why he loved to talk about running again: 'We're driving the left crazy.' This dig at the American left was an implicit move to enlist service members in domestic politics, even—in the case of a proposed third term—to the point of defying the Constitution. And in case the troops weren't clear about whom they should regard as the enemy, Trump added that Joe Biden and his administration were 'evil, bad people.' Trump even claimed that 'we won three elections,' including his defeat in 2020. This was a blunt, false allegation that Democrats had stolen that election—the only recent presidential contest they had officially won—and a signal that if Republicans were to lose the next election, the military should view the outcome as fraudulent. All this he said openly on a U.S. military base in front of uniformed service members who had sworn to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.' Keep up with all our articles, newsletters, podcasts, and livestreams—and decide which ones show up in your inbox: LAST FRIDAY, A WEEK AFTER his speech in Qatar, Trump announced plans for a military parade in Washington, D.C. On Truth Social, he declared, 'We will be hosting a magnificent Parade to honor the United States Army's 250th Birthday, on Saturday, June 14th.' But that wasn't the only reason he gave for picking June 14. 'It's Flag Day,' he explained in a May 2 interview on Meet the Press. And also: 'My birthday happens to be on Flag Day.' Then, on Saturday, Trump gave a commencement address at West Point. He told the graduating cadets that 'the military's job' was not 'to spread democracy to everybody around the world.' What was the military's job? On Meet the Press, he discussed two possible targets: Canada and Greenland. Kristen Welker: Would you rule out military force to take Canada? Trump: Well, I think we're not going to ever get to that point. It could happen. Something could happen with Greenland. . . . Welker: You are not ruling out military force to take Greenland one day? Trump: I don't rule it out. I don't say I'm going to do it, but I don't rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. But Trump's principal focus was at home. He invited the West Point graduates, like the troops in Qatar, to view his domestic opponents as an adversary. 'They don't like using the word 'liberal' anymore,' he told the cadets. 'That's why I call them liberal.' Henceforth, said the president, a 'central purpose of our military' would be to 'protect our own borders' by fighting illegal immigration. 'On Day One, I deployed our military to the southern border,' he observed. That deployment has run into trouble in the courts. The Posse Comitatus Act, for example, forbids any use of the armed forces to conduct arrests on American soil unless it's 'expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.' But Trump had an answer to any judge who stood in his way. 'Hopefully, the courts will allow us to continue,' he told the cadets. The courts should yield to him, he explained, because 'we won the popular vote by millions of votes. . . . We had a great mandate, and it gives us the right to do what we want to do to make our country great again.' The right to do what we want to do. That sounded like an invitation to stand with Trump in any confrontation with the judiciary. And if the military were to stand with Trump, the courts would be powerless. JD Vance made that point to Trump in a podcast four years ago: 'When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'' Share ON MONDAY, AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, Trump addressed a military audience one more time. In the annual presidential speech honoring Memorial Day, he thanked God not for protecting America but for engineering Trump's political comeback. 'Look what I have. I have everything,' Trump told the crowd. It's 'amazing the way things work out. God did that.' As Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others in the audience applauded, the president repeated: 'God did it.' Maybe, in the end, Trump won't run for a third term. Or if he runs and loses, maybe he'll acknowledge defeat. Or if he wins, but the Supreme Court says a third term is unconstitutional, maybe he'll accept that ruling. But if he doesn't acknowledge defeat—or if he doesn't accept the Court's decision—who's going to stop him? Join now
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The Pentagon Is Getting $150 Billion From the 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Despite describing himself as a "fiscal hawk," President Donald Trump asked for an additional $113 billion for the Department of Defense in his discretionary budget request. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, appropriates $37 billion more for defense spending than Trump requested. While some of this money may go to projects integral to national security, much of it is expensive pork for defense contractors. The bill, if passed by the Senate, would add an estimated $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. It would appropriate an additional $150 billion to the Defense Department's already-bloated $848 billion budget, bringing the agency's account to nearly $1 trillion in FY 2026. The additional appropriations in the bill from the Committee on Armed Services, which oversees Pentagon spending, span 37 pages, 16 sections, and 232 items. In the air, over $500 million will go to Air Force exercises in the Pacific, a rather expensive way to saber-rattle with China. Nearly $1 billion will be allocated to "accelerate" production of the FA/XX aircraft and the F-47, which Trump touted as the "Next Generation Air Dominance" platform that will be "the most advanced, capable, and lethal aircraft ever built." But investing this much in another manned aircraft seems anachronistic while appropriating more than $10 billion for unmanned aerial weapons systems such as General Atomics' YFQ-42A and Anduril's YFQ-44A, autonomous one-way attack systems, unmanned surface and underwater weapons systems, and other artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities. At sea, the federal government will allocate more than $5 billion to the American shipbuilding industrial base, which the Jones Act has hollowed out. This century-old law requires all ships transporting goods between U.S. ports to be American-built, American-owned, and crewed by U.S. citizens. The bill also appropriates a combined $16 billion for a Virginia-class submarine, two guided missile destroyers, a San Antonio–class Amphibious Transport Dock, and another amphibious assault ship. (The Navy already has 23, 75, 13, and 12 of these, respectively.) About $3 billion will be given to the Defense Department to purchase T-AO oilers to help fuel the Navy's fleet of roughly 280 ships. The Pentagon has failed each of the seven audits it has submitted to the department's inspector general since it began doing so in 2017—more than 25 years after Congress passed a law requiring agencies to investigate their own finances, Reason's Joe Lancaster explains. While the bill has not yet been signed into law, the Senate is unlikely to alter military appropriations significantly. Giving the Pentagon even more money while it can't account for its expenditures does not make the country safer; it rewards incompetence and waste. The post The Pentagon Is Getting $150 Billion From the 'Big Beautiful Bill' appeared first on
Asahi Shimbun
3 days ago
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Trump calls Ishiba, boasts about Mideast trip, pitches F-47
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba with President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 7 (Asahi Shimbun file photo) Japanese government officials are trying to determine the purpose behind U.S. President Donald Trump's sudden phone call to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Was Trump setting the stage for demands that Japan buy U.S. fighter jets? Was he trying to get closer to someone he believes is a like-minded leader? Or was the U.S. president just seeking someone to stroke his ego? According to Ishiba administration officials, the U.S. side, via the National Security Secretariat, approached Ishiba on the morning of May 23 and said, 'U.S. President Trump has asked, 'Can we talk in a few hours?'' That exchange occurred just before Japan's top trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, left for the United States for talks on Trump's tariffs. Several senior Japanese government officials said they feared Trump would strengthen his demands that Japan import more U.S. agricultural products or would flat out reject Japanese requests to lower the tariffs. However, when the phone call began at 11 a.m., Trump's tone was so relaxed that the Japanese side was taken aback. 'It was as if (Trump) was lying down and talking,' a senior official at the prime minister's office said. Trump gave a rundown of his recent trip to the Middle East and praised himself for his 'great accomplishments.' Ishiba chimed in, saying Trump is committed to peace. Trump then said he would like to further strengthen the military to achieve peace, to which Ishiba agreed was a very good idea. The topic in this friendly and casual conversation then shifted from the Middle East to U.S.-made fighter jets, officials said. Trump mentioned the F-47, the sixth-generation fighter jet manufactured by Boeing that was announced in March. He said the '47' in 'F-47' is a good number, and asked Ishiba to agree with him. The F-47, which will replace the F-22, and is believed to be named in honor of Trump, the 47th president of the United States. Trump also praised the F-22, which the United States has never tried to sell to Japan, and the F-55, which is considered an upgraded version of the F-35 fighter. He said the United States has such great fighter jets and asked Ishiba if he would like to take a look at them. Trump added that he will get 'the best' for Japan, the officials said. Sources said Trump is aware of Japan's joint development of a fighter jet with Britain and Italy. However, Trump only causally asked Ishiba if Japan was interested in buying U.S.-made fighter jets, officials said. He never urged Japan to purchase them in conjunction with the tariff negotiations. The topic of fighter jets may have come up because during the Japan-U.S. summit in February, Ishiba showed interest in the C-17, a large U.S.-made transport aircraft, officials said. 'Trump must have thought, 'Well, (Ishiba) would understand (aircraft),' so he went into the in-depth exchange,' one official surmised. However, Japan would have to overcome a number of obstacles to change its fighter aircraft models, such as pilot training and maintenance. For this reason, the Japanese government is taking a cautious approach to Trump's comments about fighter jets. At this point, there are no plans for Ishiba to inspect military aircraft in the United States, sources said. Although the main purpose of Trump's trip to the Middle East was to secure business deals, the key issue in the region is peace, something that Trump has failed to secure so far. 'When Trump returns from the Middle East, he will be criticized by his opponents. That's probably why he said, 'Let's call (Ishiba) who will listen to me,'' a Japanese government official said. Ishiba himself is becoming increasingly confident that he and Trump have chemistry, the official said. During the 45-minute phone call, Trump and Ishiba agreed to hold a summit in conjunction with the G-7 conference to be held in Canada in mid-June.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Boeing reaches deal to avoid criminal charges over deadly 737 Max crashes
The Justice Department is dropping its criminal case against Boeing. It's a major win for the embattled planemaker. The case stems from two Boeing 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. The Justice Department on Friday said it had reached a deal with Boeing that would allow the planemaker to avoid criminal charges stemming from two 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people and upended the planemaker's business for years. Boeing will instead invest more than $1 billion in strengthening its compliance, safety, and quality programs in exchange for the Justice Department dropping the case. The deal is not yet finalized and will be submitted to the court soon, the department said in a court filing. Crucially, the lack of being labeled as a felon could help it continue winning lucrative defense contracts without a waiver from the Pentagon. Boeing declined to comment. Boeing originally agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration and pay a $243.6 million fine, but that deal was thrown out by the judge in December. A jury trial was scheduled to begin in June. The families of some victims have long opposed any outcome that did not result in a trial. "This isn't justice. It's a backroom deal dressed up as a legal proceeding, and it sends a dangerous message: in America, the rich and powerful can buy their way out of accountability," the victims said via a lawyer when reports first surfaced earlier in May that a deal was in the works. It's yet another piece of good news for the beleaguered planemaker following the 737 Max crashes, a midair door-plug blowout, and other quality control headaches that have plagued its production line in recent years. In 2025, the company won a lucrative defense contract for the F-47 fighter plane and has seen an influx of orders for its 787 Dreamliner and yet-to-be-certified 777X. Shares are up more than 17% year-to-date, outpacing the broader market. Read the original article on Business Insider
