Northrop Grumman announced Tuesday that its LITENING precision targeting and sensor systems, currently deployed onboard Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft, have achieved 500,000 operational hours (with more than 250,000 of those hours having come about on combat missions. To date, more than 400 pods have been ordered and more than 360 fielded on the A-10, B-52, F-15E, F-16, and Marine Corps AV-8Bs and F/A-18Cs.
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…