Still A Chance F-35 Could Fly to Farnborough

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The engine failure that has grounded the entire fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets was caused by “excessive” rubbing of fan blades in the plane’s Pratt & Whitney engine, but does not appear to be a fundamental design flaw, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer said on Sunday, according to a Reuters report. Defense Undersecretary Frank Kendall said there was still a chance that the grounding order could be lifted in time for the F-35 to make its international debut at the Farnborough air show. Organizers of the show confirmed that the F-35 would not appear on Monday, but said it could still arrive and fly later in the week.

Should the F-35 not fly at Farnborough, it would be the second aircraft missing the show due to a Pratt engine problem, AviationWeek reports. The May 29 failure of a commercial PW1500G Geared Turbofan is preventing Bombardier’s CSeries jet from making its air show debut at Farnborough. The aircraft remains grounded pending tests of an unspecified fix for the issue that is related to the low-pressure turbine—coincidentally, the same section at the center of the F-35 problem.

The F-35 Joint Program Office is trying anew to drive cost out of the plane, with industry partners agreeing to spend $170 million on internal research and development, Defense News reports.

At the NATO Summit this fall, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen looks to member state leaders to commit to increasing defense spending and then to be particular about what they spend those funds on, Defense Daily reports. If member states do increase their defense spending, it would rise in real terms for the first time since the end of the Cold War, Mr. Rasmussen said.

This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community, DefenseOne reports. If the technology plays out as officials hope, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Even with increased coordination, cyber-worries persist, such as “zero-days,” brand-new vulnerabilities that software makers do not know about and for which no patch yet exists, The Economist reports. Hackers who can get their hands on the source code of a program can use various tools to try to find holes in it. Another technique is “fuzzing,” which involves pushing random data into the inputs of a program. If it crashes or signals an anomaly, that indicates a bug is present which may offer a way in.

With more nations taking the plunge on indigenous drone capabilities, industry and experts alike are looking to the US government to change a longstanding policy that restricts overseas sales, Defense News reports.

The Pentagon has delayed the carrier-launched drone program amid ongoing reviews of the program’s requirements and has considered drafting a new, joint capabilities document for the Navy aircraft, defense officials told Military​.com. There are concerns that the requirements do not fully allow for the development of stealth characteristics and other key attributes such as weaponry and payload.

Amazon.com formally requested permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to start testing drones, saying drones would eventually be able to deliver small packages to customers in less than 30 minutes, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its petition to the FAA, Amazon said some drone prototypes can travel more than 50 miles an hour and carry 5-pound packages, which would cover 86 percent of the products it sells. Amazon has asked the FAA for an exemption from its ban on the commercial use of unmanned aircraft so Amazon can test its drones near its Seattle headquarters.

People with bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math are more likely than other college graduates to have a job, but most of them don’t work in STEM occupations, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released last week, as reported by the Washington Post. Nearly 75 percent of STEM bachelor’s degree holders don’t have jobs in STEM occupations. The survey also found that men still have most of the jobs in STEM fields, especially in engineering and computers. Researchers cite access and opportunity as reasons women and minorities are underrepresented.