If Congress has its way, the Pentagon will have to restore the alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program—but the new program director says that will cost airplanes. Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Davis told Bloomberg News that cutting aircraft—perhaps 100—is the only way to pay for a second engine. Although House and Senate authorizers shuffled money around in the 2007 defense bill to save the General Electric engine, there are some lawmakers—chiefly Sen. John McCain—who just might view cutting aircraft as the right answer. McCain does not think the JSF program is on solid footing. Davis disagrees, saying he had never seen an aircraft in such advanced development at this stage of its program.
The Air Force will look to the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in a closed solicitation that will create the Air Force's first university-affiliated research center (UARC), Air Force leaders said. The center will study tactical autonomy. The DAF will select the center's location from one of 11…