Vanessa Montalbano

1 week ago | insidedefense.com | Vanessa Montalbano

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello has been tapped to lead the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Joint Program Office, the Pentagon announced today. If confirmed by the Senate, Masiello would be in charge of life-cycle management for all three variants of the F-35 used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. He would also oversee development, delivery and sustainment of the fifth-generation fighter for foreign military sales customers and other international partners flying the platform.

1 week ago | insidedefense.com | Vanessa Montalbano

The Pentagon on Wednesday nominated Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain to lead Air Combat Command following Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach's retirement. If confirmed, Spain would be boss of the Air Force’s largest command and be promoted to the rank of general. He currently serves as Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations. The ACC commander is responsible for measuring the Air Force’s combat readiness and determining where the service can accept risk.

1 week ago | insidedefense.com | Vanessa Montalbano

Autonomously piloted drones will need to be able to survive without several capabilities often taken for granted in war, such as GPS and communications, according to Ryan Tseng, co-founder and president of ShieldAI. “GPS existed for a long time. It's this magical, brilliant sensor that tells you where you are in the world and tells you what time it is, precisely. No questions asked for a long time and so much was built on that infrastructure,” he said. But today,... Not a subscriber?

1 week ago | insidedefense.com | Vanessa Montalbano

Lockheed Martin believes it has finished all of the work necessary to make the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's Technology Refresh-3 software upgrade combat capable, company executives said today at the Paris Air Show, but formal approval will have to come from the U.S. government. “What we have been working on throughout this process of getting TR-3 is to get the process stabilized to the point where it was consistently able to operate for the pilots. We believe we have reached...

2 weeks ago | insidedefense.com | Vanessa Montalbano

Difficulty in validating hardware for the Air Force's Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile is putting the program behind schedule and could narrow the number of flight tests the service can perform before deeming the weapon operational, according to the Government Accountability Office's annual weapon systems report .