Military Airplanes

The Pentagon said Thursday that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant dirigible that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, providing unblinking and intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below. "It is absolutely revolutionary," Werner J.A. Dahm, chief scientist for the Air Force, said of the proposed unmanned airship -- describing it as a cross between a satellite and a spy plane. The 450-foot-long craft would give the U.S.

In a political victory for the Obama administration -- and a surprising defeat for some lawmakers in both parties -- the Senate voted Tuesday to halt further production of the Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter jets. The 58-40 vote on an amendment to the $680-billion defense authorization bill called for stripping out the $1.75 billion set aside for construction of seven more of the jets. The F-22, which has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan, has come under particular scrutiny for its price tag.

The Air Force will probably order dozens of its F-15 fighter jets permanently grounded because of crucial structural flaws, significantly reducing the number of planes available to protect the United States, officials said Tuesday. After one of the jets broke apart during a simulated dogfight in November, Air Force officials grounded the entire F-15 fleet, nearly 700 planes in all, fearing such a defect.

The Air Force is reviewing decades-old contracts to determine whether manufacturers of U.S. fighter jets bear responsibility for a defect that caused one of the planes to break apart in flight late last year, officials said Thursday. An investigation of the November crash of an F-15 showed that one of several support beams in the plane was thinner than design specifications required. That faulty part caused a failure that split the plane in two.

The competition for the Pentagon's biggest contract in years intensified Monday as European aircraft maker Airbus said it would assemble commercial jets in the U.S. if it won the $40 -billion award to build aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force. The announcement marks the latest effort by Airbus and its partner Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. to upset rival Boeing Co. to build the planes that would be used to refuel fighters and bombers in midair.

On a cloudless Saturday evening 50 years ago this week, a Navy bomber carrying eight reservists thundered on a routine training flight out of Los Alamitos Naval Air Station. A minute later, less than 10 miles away, a four-engine Air Force transport plane took off from Long Beach Municipal Airport on its way to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. It carried 35 passengers from various military branches and a crew of six.

In years past, building a central park was about creating an escape from urban life with little nod to what it was replacing. But the designers of the Orange County Great Park, which is being built on 1,347 acres of the former El Toro Marine Corps base, are taking a new approach, embracing the site's military past rather than bulldozing it.

In a stunning upset that could reshape the nation's aerospace industry, Northrop Grumman Corp. and European partner Airbus were tapped Friday for a $40-billion Pentagon contract to build 179 aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force. Century City-based Northrop upset rival Boeing Co. in a surprising win that analysts said could alter the companies' fortunes and erode the Pentagon's long-standing policy of buying weapons systems made by U.S. companies.

In a high-stakes rivalry pitting two of the world's largest defense contractors, Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. gambled and won. The word came down Feb. 29 from the Air Force that a $40-billion contract for aerial refueling tankers would go to Northrop and its partner, Airbus, a unit of Netherlands-based European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. Shut out was rival Boeing Co., which thought it had a winner.

Escalating the fight over the biggest defense contract in years, Boeing Co. said Monday that it intended to challenge the Pentagon's decision to place an aircraft order potentially worth $40 billion with the consortium of Northrop Grumman Corp. and European aircraft maker Airbus. Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, plans to file a formal protest today challenging what is likely to be the nation's last big new defense contract for at least a decade.