Steve McDonald working on an F/A-18 Super Hornet nose barrel at Boeing-St. Louis in 2003. (Post-Dispatch/Gabriel B. Tait)
Sen. John McCain said last week that expensive Pentagon weapons systems “are very much like vampires. You can kill one occasionally, but not…
One slight problem: the F-22 requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in flight.
Congress this week is engaged in one of those debates that makes you want to throw up your hands in despair over the political process. At…
The Pentagon this week dropped a bundle of bad news on Boeing Co. and its St. Louis-based Integrated Defense Systems unit: The $160 billion Future Combat Systems program has been canceled.
The program was managed here, but development and production work was farmed…
Super Hornet: More of these.
On Tuesday, 10 U.S. senators and House members got together in a room in the Capitol and saved the jobs of 900 St. Louisans, 5,000 Californians and thousands more around the country.
They did this by deciding to…
Can the F-22 outfly the sunset?
In his budget message last week, President Barack Obama proposed spending $533.7 billion on military defense. In an era of $700 billion financial bailouts, $787 billion stimulus packages and $1.75 trillion deficits, a half-trillion defense budget…
In a welcome, if belated, decision, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Wednesday halted the Pentagon’s star-crossed, corruption-tinged seven-year effort to replace its Elvis-era fleet of aerial refueling tankers.
The next president and his secretary of defense now will have the…
In an absurd twist to an already tortured tale, the Air Force last week gave the Boeing Co. just eight weeks to design a new, larger aerial refueling tanker. The deadline is ridiculous, and it raises questions about exactly what is…
Congress’ watchdog agency Wednesday took a bite out of the Air Force, ruling that the service botched its February decision to award a $40 billion aerial tanker deal to Northrop Grumman and EADS, the European parent of Airbus.
The decision was at least a…
The Government Accountability Office is expected to rule by next week on Boeing Co.’s appeal of its loss of a $40 billion aerial tanker contract. The GAO will rule largely on arguments over arcane bid specifications, scoring methods and other…
The Missouri Legislature seems poised to hand over $40 million a year in tax credits for eight years to Bombardier Inc., if the Montreal aircraft manufacturer agrees to build a new jetliner plant at Kansas City International Airport.
The best that can…
