US Navy – What Price Freedom?: LCS-1 Leaves Dry Dock Amid Questions About Worthiness

– Aviation Week – The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom is plagued by extensive corrosion and manufacturing issues more recent and serious than anything the Pentagon or prime contractor Lockheed Martin has publicly acknowledged thus far. This is based on a guided tour of the ship in dry dock, as well as sources intimately familiar with Freedom’s design, repairs and operations, U.S. Navy documents and defense analysts.

US Navy – Electronic Blast Slated for Unmanned Attack Aircraft

– Defense Technology International – Most aircraft slated to go onto aircraft carries have to go through an electronic magnetic interference test that bathes the design in about 200 volts per meter. But the test platform for the Navy’s unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike (Uclass) aircraft program, will have to endure 10 times the electronic stress. Undoubtedly that means the Navy wants a design for its unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike (UCLASS) aircraft program that would be able to fire a permanently installed, rechargeable, anti-electronics weapon.

Royal Navy – Reverse thrust

– The Economist – “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” asked John Maynard Keynes. David Cameron might feel like quoting the great economist when he tells Parliament, as now seems almost certain, that the government is reversing its decision to buy the aircraft-carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35C, rather than the F-35B variant originally ordered by Labour in the 1990s.