Northrop Grumman 
and Raytheon say they expect in April to begin full-up flight tests of the B-2 stealth bomber with its new active electronically scanned array radar. Company reps at the AFA Air & Space Conference and Technology Expo provided a briefing on the program, saying it would exponentially improve the targeting ability of the aircraft. The work, they said, is proceeding in well-orchestrated steps, with baseline flight testing in progress at Edwards AFB, Calif. The radar program already cleared USAF’s final design review, in which it passed a battery of tests that prove the hardware and software work on one subsystem. The radar work is part of a $382 million system development and demonstration contract awarded by the Air Force in 2004.
With a new policy in hand, the Air Force’s Foreign Military Sales enterprise is looking to go beyond selling USAF systems to allies and partner nations—and instead help them develop their own capabilities. Such an approach, deemed “non-program of record acquisitions,” is part of a larger shift in FMS toward…