Setting aside hypersonic flight, Boeing’s Darryl Davis says a supersonic platform is well within the realm of the possible by 2018. However, a supersonic, intercontinental platform would probably weigh two to 2.5 times as much as a subsonic platform, Davis noted. In aircraft, weight usually equates to cost. Davis said Boeing is looking at hybrid concepts of motherships and drones, or standoff sensors coupled with passive penetrators.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has two new squadrons of F-35s at its disposal in Alaska just as “quite a bit of action” has taken place in the combatant command’s area of responsibility and the “advanced threats” there are becoming “more lethal,” said the squadrons’ wing commander, Col. David J. Berkland. Berkland’s…