The General Electric Rolls-Royce partnership to produce F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engines received a $2.5 billion contract to “transition the development engine into a long-term production program,” say GE officials. The team’s F136 engine is slated to make its first flight test on the JSF in 2010 and begin production delivery in 2012. Until then, the game belongs to Pratt & Whitney. After that, JSF customers will be able to select the engine of their choice.
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…