The Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a $60 million contract to begin production of the next five RQ-4B Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles. Northrop officials say the company expects to begin production of hardware late this year and assembly next year. The new RQ-4B is designed to carry 3,000 pounds of payload—a 50 percent increase over the RQ-4A model—to deliver and increase the amount and type of information available to warfighters.
The Department of the Air Force's new space acquisition chief said he will seek to expand the types of orbits used by the Space Force's future satellite constellations in the interest of improving their resilience. At the same time, he would aim to acquire smaller satellites that can be produced…