Tag: Military

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Boeing works with Trump on jet cost concerns

Dennis Muilenburg
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg speaks with reporters after meeting with Donald Trump. (Worldwide Trends via YouTube)

After meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg says he’s making a “personal commitment” to keep the cost of the next two Air Force One jets below $4 billion.

“We’re going to get it done for less than that, and we’re committed to working together to make sure that happens,” Muilenburg told reporters on Dec. 21.

Trump threatened in a Dec. 6 tweet to have the Air Force One deal canceled because “costs are out of control, more than $4 billion.” But since then, Muilenburg and other executives have smoothed over the dispute. Wednesday’s meeting in Palm Beach appeared to cement the rapprochement with Trump.

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Lockheed Martin takes a hit after Trump tweet

F-35 jet
An F-35 Lightning II fighter jet prepares to land. (U.S. Air Force Photo / Alex R. Lloyd)

Today it was Lockheed Martin’s turn to feel the Twitter burn from President-elect Donald Trump over the cost of the F-35 fighter jet program: Its stock dropped by as much as 5 percent after Trump’s complaint.

Share prices for other aerospace companies such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman went through twists and turns as well.

Trump set the stage for criticizing the $400 billion program on Dec. 9 when he complained about the cost of “some of the fighter jets that are being built.” Then, in today’s tweet, he specifically called out the F-35.

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WGS-8 military satellite goes into orbit

WGS-8 launch
A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket is wrapped in flame as it lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, sending the Wideband Global Satcom 8 satellite into space. (ULA via YouTube)

An advanced satellite for battlefield communications, known as Wideband Global Satcom-8, rose into orbit tonight from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

WGS-8 is the eighth satellite in what’s expected to be a 10-satellite constellation designed to provide secure channels for command and control as well as battle management and combat support.

The satellite was built by the Boeing Co. and launched atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Medium rocket at 6:53 p.m. ET (3:53 p.m. PT). A little more than 40 minutes after launch, WGS-8 successfully separated from the Delta’s upper stage, clearing the way for its transfer to geostationary orbit.

The first satellite in the Wideband Global Satcom system was launched in 2007, and the constellation is expected to be complete in 2019. Each WGS satellite has 10 times the capacity of the Defense Satellite Communication System satellites that preceded them.

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Jet gets dropped off at museum … literally!

Blue Angels jet unloaded
A Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet jet is raised up from a flatbed truck using a crane at the Museum of Flight. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

The latest addition to the Museum of Flight’s airplane collection, a Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet jet, landed in Seattle today with the aid of a three-story-high crane.

The No. 2 jet, which is on permanent loan from the National Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, Fla., didn’t make the trip the way it did last year, by air. Instead, it was driven to Jet City on the back of a flatbed truck, over the course of six days.

The truck driver, Buddy Chapman of Blossom, Texas, said the sight caused a traffic jam wherever he stopped.

“You’d stop in the littlest town in Wyoming, and you wouldn’t be there but five minutes and you’d have 30 people around it,” he told GeekWire.

While aviation buffs and their kids watched, the truck pulled into a museum parking lot behind the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, accompanied by a police escort. Sections of the detached wings were offloaded using a forklift, and then the giant crane pulled in to lift the jet off the back of a truck and set it back down.

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Blue Angels jet nears the end of the road

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The Blue Angels Hornet jet destined for display at the Museum of Flight makes a stopover in Rock Springs, Wyo., over the weekend. (Credit: Museum of Flight)

A Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet jet is closing in on its new home at Seattle’s Museum of Flight – without flying a single mile.

Instead, the partially disassembled jet has been riding on top of a flatbed truck during a weeklong road trip that started in Pensacola, Fla., where the Blue Angels aerobatics team has its home base.

“The going has been a little slow through the South due to the tragic flooding in Louisiana, not to mention rains along the way,” museum spokesman Ted Huetter told GeekWire in an email.

The truck passed through Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Oregon over the weekend, and it’s expected to spend tonight in Ellensburg, Wash.

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Blue Angels jet will be trucked to Seattle

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The U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform at Seafair 2015 in Seattle. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

A 30-year-old Navy F/A-18 Hornet jet that’s been through combat duty as well as a dozen years with the Blue Angels is being packed up in Florida for ground delivery to Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Museum spokesman Ted Huetter told GeekWire that the partially disassembled airplane will travel from the Blue Angels’ home base at Pensacola Naval Air Station by truck. “It is going to be making its way across the country this week,” he said today.

Arrival is expected sometime in the Aug. 21-23 time frame. Huetter said the museum is planning to provide updates on the shipment’s progress via social media.

The Navy is phasing out the Hornets, and the Blue Angels’ fleet is expected to get anupgrade to the heavier F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornets by as early as next year.

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Museum of Flight plans to land a Blue Angels jet

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The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels streak past Seattle’s Space Needle. (Photo by Susy Davidson)

One of the F/A-18 Hornet jets used by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels is due to be landing in Seattle’s Museum of Flight … to stay.

Word of the deal was circulating even as the Hornets and their pilots wowed crowds during last weekend’s aerobatic demonstration at Seattle’s Seafair festival. Today, museum officials confirmed that a loan was in the works.

“I am 90 percent sure it’s going to happen,” Erika Callahan, the museum’s vice president for marketing and communications, told GeekWire. “I’m just keeping it real.”

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5 geeky guidelines for Seafair weekend

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An F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet is ready for its close-up during Seafair. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

If you like powerful machines and loud noises, this is the weekend for you: Seattle’s annual Seafair festival comes to a climax with the splash of unlimited hydroplane races and the roar of jet-powered aerobatics by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels.

What’s the best way to see the show? And what’s the inside story on those non-fighting fighter jets? We’ve put together a few guidelines for geeks, plus a video tour of a F/A-18 Hornet jet hosted by Lt. Ryan Chamberlain, one of the Blue Angels’ pilots.

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Jeff Bezos joins Pentagon advisory board

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Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin as well as Amazon. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is joining the Defense Innovation Advisory Board, a 15-member panel that’s meant to help the Pentagon adopt some of the private-sector ideas that have fueled America’s tech industry.

The panel is chaired by a tech titan who’s arguably one of Bezos’ biggest competitors: Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Other members include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Instagram COO (and Facebook veteran) Marne Levine, Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced Bezos’ appointment this week, and numbered him among “the most innovative minds in America.”

In addition to founding Amazon, Bezos owns The Washington Post and the Blue Origin space venture. During an April fireside chat at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Bezos told me that he was “very excited” about Blue Origin’s potential involvement in space missions for the Defense Department.

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SpaceX gets its first national security launch

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launches the Deep Space Climate Observatory for NOAA, NASA and the Air Force in February 2015. SpaceX has launched payloads for the Air Force previously, but now it’s been chosen for the launch of a national security payload. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX today won an $82.7 million contract to launch a GPS-3 navigational satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force, marking the first national security mission for the California-based company.

The award was virtually in the bag for SpaceX because United Launch Alliance, the only other company certified to launch national security payloads, dropped out of the competition last November.

At the time, ULA said it couldn’t submit a compliant bid because of federal restrictions on the use of Russian-made RD-180 engines. But last month, a ULA vice president said his company was actually seeking to avoid a “cost shootout” with SpaceX.

The vice president of engineering, Brett Tobey, resigned after his remarks went public.

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