The U.S. Navy plans to have Boeing redesign parts of the computer that controls weapons and external stores on its F/A-18 and EA-18G fleet, after concluding that the current unit can no longer be supported because key components are no longer available. Naval Air Systems Command’s PMA-265, the program office for the F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler, said in a notice posted Oct. 9 that it intends to award Boeing an order under an existing basic ordering agreement to design and qualify replacement parts for the AN/AYK-22 Stores Management Processor. The Navy did not disclose the order’s value, how many processors are involved or when the work would be finished.

The stores management processor sits between the jet’s mission computer and everything carried on its pylons, including missiles, bombs, fuel tanks and pods. It is the hardware that tells the aircraft what is loaded, manages weapon selection and passes the commands needed to release a store. The Navy said in the notice that the AN/AYK-22 is no longer supportable because some of its key parts have become obsolete, a problem the military calls diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages, which occurs when suppliers stop making components that older systems depend on. Although the Navy intends to go to Boeing without a competition, the notice is a sources-sought request, a step agencies use to check whether other companies could do the job. Interested firms have until Oct. 28 to send a one-page capability statement showing experience in finding and qualifying obsolete electronic parts for military aircraft, access to the required technical data and their quality certifications. The Navy also asked for published price lists, lead times and current stock levels for items that could meet the need.

The work is part of keeping the Super Hornet and Growler in service for decades after production ends. Boeing’s St. Louis line is due to deliver its last new Super Hornets in 2027 after the Navy’s final order for 17 jets in 2024, and Boeing no longer builds the Growler. Last month, the Navy paid Boeing $16.7 million to plan the shutdown of both production lines, including an inventory of government-owned tooling, on the same day it picked Boeing to develop the F/A-XX, the future carrier fighter meant to eventually replace both jets. Existing Super Hornets are going through Boeing’s Service Life Modification program, which upgrades older jets to the Block III standard and extends their airframe life to 10,000 flight hours, with that work expected to continue into the mid-2030s.

The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin are in discussions over a mega-deal for the company’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that could span up to a decade and include both production and maintenance for the stealth jet, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Officials have weighed an F-35 multi-year procurement contract for years, and the latest push comes as the Trump administration seeks to expand the use of long-term agreements to buy key weapons like munitions. A successful deal covering both production and sustainment of the tri-variant fighter could be worth tens of billions of dollars. “There’s been talk about a 10-year, multi-year buy that would include the production as well as sustainment,” Matt Milas, president of Honeywell Aerospace’s defense division, told Breaking Defense in a September interview. Honeywell is a key supplier for the F-35 program. A source familiar with the negotiations, who requested anonymity since they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, confirmed ongoing talks around a multi-year production and sustainment deal. But they expressed skepticism of its efficacy. A multi-year procurement “makes sense where the department has seen success with munitions contracts. It makes less sense for aircraft lot buys” — particularly because some aspects of F-35 modernization are still in development, the person said. They added that “the complexities of sustainment present multiple unique challenges.”

Milas said the potential agreement would potentially include “bulk buys” of spare parts, with the increased flow of components beginning around the jet’s 21st production lot, expected in roughly three years. Increasing the supply of spare parts is viewed as a key way to help raise the fighter’s dismal readiness rates. Proponents of multi-year agreements argue that they give industry more predictability, allowing companies to make long-term investments and leverage economies of scale to reduce costs. Milas said the “big benefit” of an F-35 multi-year agreement would largely be on the sustainment side, since the jet’s production rate is expected to remain at 156 annually. “It’s more about the sustainment and how do you get more spares and get that bulk buy up front so that you’re not going year-to-year or small lots,” he said. It’s unclear if the production and sustainment agreements would be linked or structured as separate arrangements, or whether they would stretch the same length of time. In a statement to Breaking Defense, a Lockheed spokesperson said the company “continues to advocate for a multi-year contracting approach which would provide additional stability for the F-35 industrial base. As demonstrated with other successful programs, this would enable predictable production rates, cost efficiency, and continuous modernization essential to maintaining air superiority and warfighter readiness.” The company referred all further inquiries to the US government. Spokespeople for the F-35 Joint Program Office and Pentagon declined to comment on negotiations.

A New Version Of A PBL?

Lockheed has previously pushed for a larger sustainment deal in the form of a performance-based logistics (PBL) contract spanning five years. Such agreements essentially pay contractors based on outcomes like equipment availability or readiness rates, and at one point company officials were confident a PBL deal would be reached for the F-35 by the end of 2023. But lawmakers have required the Pentagon to certify that any PBL agreement would either reduce maintenance costs or increase readiness, a hurdle officials were unable to clear.

lol, "performance-based" logistics that don't increase performance

The world’s largest defense contractor is once again backing a long-term sustainment contract, according to a company official — but it may not formally be a PBL. “A multi-year performance-based contract is still in discussion. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a PBL,” Dina Halvorsen, vice president of F-35 global sustainment at Lockheed, said in a Sept. 14 briefing with reporters. “We are looking at advocating for a multi-year agreement for sustainment on the F-35 program.” But the source familiar with the negotiations characterized the proposal as “PBL by another name.” The person expressed doubt that Lockheed “can successfully propose something that demonstrates long-term cost savings” and noted that congressional approval for a multi-year deal has still not been granted. The fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill helmed by the Senate Armed Services Committee includes language that would permit the Pentagon to enter into multi-year procurement contracts for the F-35. The House version of the bill includes a similar provision, with some additional guardrails. For one, it would not authorize multi-year F-35 procurement until the defense secretary certifies that the contract also includes “the full complement of initial spare parts and alternate mission equipment for each aircraft to be procured under the contract.” The Pentagon must also demonstrate that the multi-year contract achieves cost savings of at least 5 percent.

Neither version of the bill explicitly mentions or authorizes a multi-year sustainment agreement, potentially leaving a key piece of the broader proposal unresolved. Both the House and Senate will need to hammer out agreed upon language before Congress passes the finalized bill. The F-35 program is projected to last until the 2080s, and sustainment accounts for a vast portion of its nearly $2 trillion lifecycle cost estimate. Improving the jet’s mission capable rates is a leading focus for the program, as previous government watchdog reports have found that readiness hampered by a lack of depot capacity, shortages of spare parts and insufficient access for military maintainers to the jet’s technical data. More than 1,000 F-35s have been delivered to date. But over the last two years, many newly delivered jets have been held for training as officials struggle to clear a new upgrade for combat.

The rushed withdrawal of US bombers from a British airfield will likely impact the tempo of strikes America can generate against Iran for the time being, and underscores a dearth of defenses at critical installations, experts told Breaking Defense. On Sunday [note, this is two sundays ago now, I just didn't get around to the article until now], the US abruptly pulled out a dozen B-1 Lancer long-range bombers from RAF Fairford in southern England due to fears of a threat from Iran, according to President Donald Trump. The New York Times reported Monday that the swift exit was prompted by the possibility of a localized drone attack, potentially mirroring a Ukrainian operation last year dubbed “Spider Web” that used cheap drones to destroy Russian strategic aircraft on the ground. Fairford, located in southwest England, has been a key launch pad for US bombers like the B-1 and B-52 Stratofortress after the outbreak of Operation Epic Fury in February. The base offers a shorter flight path to the Middle East — about 3,000 miles to Iran — relative to installations in the US, reducing strain on aircrews and airframes and offering a relatively quicker turnaround for sustained operations. The immediate operational impact of the bomber evacuation from Fairford is likely to be limited since the US is not currently flying many missions against Iran, according to Stacie Pettyjohn, senior fellow and director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security.

Still, other experts said future operational planning — especially for any significant resurgence in offensive strikes, as Trump is reportedly considering — will have to be reevaluated. “Withdrawing these bombers to home airfields in the contiguous United States will provide an opportunity for more significant maintenance on the aircraft, but it does reduce the potential sustained strike capacity US forces could bring to bear against Iran,” Timothy Walton, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Breaking Defense. Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, similarly said that having to move aircraft farther from the Middle East “means greater transit times and greater use of tanker aircraft,” increasing strain. Pointing to potential impacts like lower sortie generation, the loss of convenience offered by access to Fairford could influence “the efficiency and flexibility” that bombers could be employed, said Joshua VerGow, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Walton said he believed the bombers would return to Fairford in the future, but in the meantime US war planners are likely looking at other options.

Where To Go From Here

Beyond Fairford, VerGow said the US still maintains an “ecosystem of bases, allies, logistics, and intelligence sharing agreements” that can “ensure movements like these can be made while keeping them [the bombers] operationally relevant.” But options for potential locations to move the B-1s are more limited than they may have looked just a year ago. Analysts pointed to the resistance of local governments to aid the US strikes against Iran — a stance that has drawn Trump’s ire. Walton observed that Fairford is specially equipped with infrastructure to host US bombers, and that continental host governments have not granted permission for the aircraft to launch from other suitable locations closer to the region like Incirlik Air Base in Turkey or Morón Air Base in Spain. (Bomber operations from Fairford itself were already a source of political controversy in the United Kingdom, where the government has restricted their missions to “defensive” operations.) In the Middle East, B-1s operated from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar prior to the current conflict, “but that is not an option now given the extreme vulnerability of Gulf bases to Iranian drones and missiles,” Pettyjohn said.

DE-BA-SI-FI-CA-TION

Walton noted that American commanders have also run bomber operations from the British territory of Diego Garcia, which lies about 3,000 miles southeast of Iran in the Indian Ocean. The pacific atoll hosts a joint US-UK military base that can support B-1s. Should the Pentagon have to stick to launching from the US, Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said it would “more of a challenge,” but the US has other options to strike Iran if need be. For instance, the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and other American forces are on their way to the region and expected to arrive by next month. “That will give the president more options when it comes to escalation,” he told Breaking Defense.

Highlighting The Drone Threat To Bases

Experts largely agreed that the bomber withdrawal underscored a need for a greater mix of defenses for US installations. Similar to events in the American homeland, British installations like RAF Lakenheath have reportedly been the subject of mysterious drone incursions that officials have been largely powerless to stop, raising fears of vulnerability to an attack. The Air Force and broader US military community “really need to internalize that nowhere offers sanctuary,” Pettyjohn said. “Typically, the US has moved its most valuable and scarce assets farther away to ensure that they are invulnerable. That is no longer an option, which means that the USAF needs more active and passive defenses.” Walton emphasized that the US needs to “accelerate” base defense initiatives, and warned that some ongoing efforts suggest poor planning. He pointed to the construction of environmental protection shelters at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota — a home base for the B-1 and first beddown destination for the service’s forthcoming B-21 Raider stealth bomber. “Although these shelters protect aircraft from weather and environmental exposure, they provide little protection against attack, leaving parked B-21s vulnerable to future Operation Spiderweb-style drone attacks and other threats,” Walton said. “This is a penny-wise, pound-foolish choice.”

The Pentagon and the military services appear very aware of the threat, as they are seeking to boost bureaucratic authorities when it comes to employing defenses, coordinate better with federal partners and introduce new counter-drone tech to military facilities. VerGow, for his part, noted that the possibility of adversaries being able to project forces from inside of a supposed sanctuary is itself “nothing new,” adding that it would be “easy to simply conclude that better base-protection measures are needed.” Instead, he said that the B-1 withdrawal highlights the efficacy of “operational resilience” in the military system. “This type of rapid relocation doesn’t happen without tripwires and deliberate risk-analysis done at multiple levels of command. For me, moving the aircraft is evidence that the system worked,” VerGow said. “Intelligence identified a threat and commanders preserved combat power.”

Measures to prevent environmental damage were proposed in only 22 of 74 civil works projects the Corps submitted to Congress for approval from 2020 to 2025, according to a report published Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office. The Corps deemed that no such measures were needed for the remaining 52 projects and failed to provide detailed evidence as to why, the watchdog alleges. The agency regularly works to improve water navigation channels to prevent flooding and restore aquatic habitats around the country through its civil works program. It is required by statute to make detailed reports to Congress outlining whether its projects will require measures to prevent possible harm to fish, wildlife and the environment. The engineers are expected “to plan for environmental mitigation — that is, to take actions to avoid, minimize, or compensate for expected losses to fish and wildlife and damage to ecological resources,” which could include reinforcing riverbanks or restoring wetland areas to create new habitats for fish and wildlife, according to the report. The Corps of Engineers may decide not to undertake conservation measures if it deems certain projects will not cause harm. However, the Army is expected to provide Congress with clear explanations for those decisions.

A chart published by GAO shows a sharp decline in the Corps’ decisions to make mitigation plans for wildlife and habitat protection from 2022 to 2025. In 2024, for example, the agency decided that only one of 13 projects would require measures to safeguard the environment. The GAO’s chart shows zero mitigation plans made in 2025. In its findings, the GAO alleges that the Corps failed to provide necessary details to Congress demonstrating the reasons behind its decision-making in cases when it deemed no environmental protection measures were needed. The watchdog said the vast majority of documents sent to Congress during those five years contained broad and general language that failed to clarify how the Corps reached its decisions. The GAO recommended that the Army establish clear guidance for the Corps to document how it reaches decisions to keep Congress and the public better informed. The Army disputed the GAO’s recommendations in a Sept. 16 letter signed by D. Lee Forsgren, the senior official performing the duties of the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works. “We do not concur with the recommendation in the draft that we need to create more guidance about mitigation decision making on Civil Works projects,” Forsgren wrote. “The water resources project reports (including associated Chief’s Reports) produced by USACE have sufficient technical information for decision makers and the public and resource agencies to understand when habitat mitigation is or is not included in a final recommendation.”