Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
A new congressionally mandated study by RAND Corp. affirms the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) as the likely best solution for the nation's military space launch needs through 2020, and recommends greater service involvement to secure the program's future. With a string of successful launches, Lockheed Martin's Atlas V and Boeing's Delta IV EELVs "are a true success and are critical to national security," the study says. "The Air Force must rigorously protect this capability with resources adequate to sustain these programs."
The U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program has held its week-long initial preliminary design review (IPDR), clearing the way for the platform-level PDRs that will begin later this year. FCS is developing 18 new manned and unmanned systems that will support the Army's future brigade. With almost 1,000 industry and government personnel in attendance last week in St. Louis, the IPDR was the program's most important technical milestone to date and its biggest review of the year, according to FCS Lead Systems Integrators Boeing and SAIC.
Lockheed Martin says that following the completion of its contractual obligations on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) development program, the company is ready to dust off concepts for an unmanned JSF if service interest is there. Several years ago, the company put "significant effort" into developing two unmanned JSF concepts, according to Frank Mauro, vice president for advanced systems development at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.
