The Air Force plans to include billions of dollars in the upcoming five-year defense plan for a new long range strike platform, which DOD wants to see fielded by 2018, an unnamed defense official told Reuters news service. John Young, defense research and engineering director, voiced his concern earlier this month that the Air Force might miss the program objective memorandum deadline, thereby making it impossible to meet DOD’s aggressive timetable. The nameless official told Reuters that the Air Force would earmark “substantial resources” in the 2008 POM to make the 2018 deadline.
North Korea conducted it’s 17th round of ballistic missile tests of the year May 24, including a believed intercontinental ballistic missile, in the skies over the Pacific while President Joe Biden was returning to the United States from the region. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported that the tests did not pose…