We have a significant update on the fast-moving world of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) out of Mojave, California, today. Northrop Grumman’s Talon Blue, which now has the official designation YFQ-48A, has taken to the skies for the first time. The existence of Talon Blue was first officially disclosed in December of 2025 at a media event in Mojave that we attended.

The uncrewed aircraft took to the skies over Mojave Air and Space Port, home of famed ‘bleeding-edge’ airframer and Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites, which built the aircraft. A release from Northrop Grumman reads:

“MOJAVE, Calif. – Oct. 3, 2026 – Northrop Grumman’s (NYSE: NOC) YFQ-48A Talon Blue completed its first fully autonomous flight, including taxi, takeoff, in-flight maneuvers, and landing. Developed through company investment, Talon Blue combines modular design and advanced manufacturing to lower cost and support faster production without compromising mission capability. The flight builds on Northrop Grumman’s seven decades of autonomy experience and more than 500,000 autonomous flight hours, with lessons from Talon Blue informing future autonomous systems. 

Details on YFQ-48A Talon Blue:  

• Talon Blue is part of Northrop Grumman’s internally-funded Project Talon portfolio focused on accelerating the development of mission-ready autonomous airpower capabilities.  
• Manufacturing and design innovations cut part count and overall weight, lowering cost and enabling faster production to meet growing demand for autonomous systems.  
• Designed with flexible operational concepts in mind, Talon Blue’s high air intake, wide wheelbase and integrated weapons bay support a wide variety of mission needs for U.S. and allied partners.

Craig Woolston, vice president and general manager, research and advanced design, Northrop Grumman: “Our customers made it clear they need autonomous systems that can be fielded faster and more affordably without sacrificing mission effectiveness. We listened. Talon Blue’s first flight is one step toward a new generation of autonomous capabilities. Every flight and lesson strengthens our broader autonomy work and sharpens what comes next.” 

While the Talon Blue aircraft draws most of the attention, Northrop Grumman has put great emphasis on its back-end autonomy development ecosystem, which includes its purpose-built Model 437 demonstrator aircraft, now under the Talon IQ badge (formerly Beacon).

Talon Blue is entering a growing field of CCA offerings, with extremely intense competition, that are primarily aimed at equipping the USAF with its next CCA acquisition of hundreds of aircraft known as Increment 2, for which the requirements remain undefined. Currently, the USAF has moved its YFQ-44 from Anduril and its YFQ-42 from General Atomics, both of which are deep in flight testing, into production. Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat is another serious CCA contender and perhaps the most mature of all, while Lockheed Martin has its tailless Vectis, and on the lower end, Kratos’ FQ-58 Valkyrie continues to evolve and rack-up flight hours. Many more types are on the horizon, including those from new players and globally from foreign manufacturers.

With the loss of the F/A-XX next-generation naval fighter program to Boeing, Northrop Grumman winning a contract from the U.S. services for Talon Blue has become more important. Doing so would get the company back into the Pentagon’s tactical air combat portfolio. As we have discussed for years, advanced uncrewed tactical systems are set to be less risky and potentially more lucrative than traditional fighter programs as air combat rotates to predominantly uncrewed capabilities and mass production of them. Beyond U.S. needs, the demand for CCAs is likely to explode internationally in the coming years, so programs like Talon Blue could find success elsewhere if the Pentagon goes another direction, but getting the U.S. armed services’ stamp of approval and the scale of production that comes with it would surely help there too.

Author’s note: A big thanks to our friend @Task_Force23 for providing us with great photos for this story.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

The post Northrop Grumman’s Talon Blue Collaborative Combat Aircraft Has Flown appeared first on TWZ.

Welcome to Bunker Talk. This is a weekend open discussion post for the best commenting crew on the net, in which we can chat about all the stuff that went on this week that we didn’t cover. We can also talk about the stuff we did or whatever else grabs your interest. In other words, it’s an off-topic thread.

This week’s caption reads:

NANTWICH, ENGLAND – MAY 24: The BBC broadcasting studio inside the former RAF Hack Green secret nuclear bunker on May 24, 2023 in Nantwich, England. Hack Green played a central role in the defence of Britain for almost sixty years. It was chosen during WW2 to protect the land between Birmingham and Liverpool from hostile attack and as a location for the new RADAR equipment. The bunker went on to be used for shelter and protection during the Cold War. As relations between East and West thawed many of the UK’s nuclear bunkers were sold off. The Secret Bunker is now privately owned by the Siebert family and is run as a museum trust. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

PRIME DIRECTIVES:

• If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there’s always somebody that isn’t going to agree with you. 
• If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can’t handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else.
• No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don’t interact with folks you don’t like. 
• Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That’s as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don’t like what you see.  
• So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn’t going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it’s probably best to just move on. 
• Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn’t mean reporting people who don’t share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard.

The post Bunker Talk: Let’s Talk About All The Things We Did And Didn’t Cover This Week appeared first on TWZ.

The volume of munitions expended in the course of U.S. operations against Iran this year has been and continues to be a hot topic of discussion, and there has been relatively little official data provided on this front. However, now we know that the F/A-18F Super Hornets of the U.S. Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41), the “Black Aces,” launched 421 missiles and bombs during their time supporting Operation Epic Fury.

This new insight into VFA-41’s role in the conflict with Iran comes from a photo of a large board listing the squadron’s weapons expenditures during Epic Fury, via Jeff Rojas, who goes by the handle @jro_photography on Instagram. Rojas also shared pictures recently taken of VFA-41’s Super Hornets. The Black Aces were one of the squadrons assigned to the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been on a marathon deployment since last year. The carrier only left the Middle East region last month and is now set to formally return home to San Diego, California, within days. Per the Pentagon’s official timeline, Operation Epic Fury began on February 28 and concluded on May 5, though U.S. forces have continued to conduct strikes on Iran, on and off, since then.

The complete tally of munitions employed as shown on the board, broken down by type, from greatest to fewest, is as follows:

• 173 GBU-38/B 500-pound-class Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) GPS-assisted precision-guided bombs
• 52 GBU-31(V)4/B 2,000-pound-class JDAMs
• 48 GBU-54/B 500-pound-class dual-mode Laser JDAMs (LJDAM)
• 41 AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) precision-guided glide bombs
• 33 AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles
• 30 GBU-31(V)2/B 2,000-pound-class JDAMs
• 27 GBU-32/B 1,000-pound-class JDAMs
• 10 AGM-84K Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) land attack cruise missiles
• 6 AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM)
• 1 GBU-12/B 500-pound-class Paveway II laser-guided precision-guided bomb

The total cost of all of these munitions, using available data from U.S. military budget documents, is very roughly $43,646,000, at least. Unit costs fluctuate regularly due to a variety of factors. Furthermore, the exact price tag for different JDAMs can be somewhat difficult to calculate given how the individual components are budgeted.

The JDAM is really a family of kits that turn standard unguided ‘iron bombs,’ which can vary significantly in the kinds of effects they are designed to produce, into warheads for precision-guided munitions. This is exemplified by the (V)2 and (V)4 subvariants of the GBU-31/B mentioned here, which are built using standard high-explosive and bunker-buster bombs, respectively. No specific subvariants of the GBU-32, GBU-38, or GBU-54 were mentioned in the information provided. Standard JDAMs can also only be employed against static target coordinates. The LJDAM kits add a laser guidance component (akin to what is found on Paveway-series bombs) that enables strikes against moving targets.

No specific version of AGM-154 is mentioned, either, but the C and C-1 types, which have multi-stage bunker-busting warheads, are the only ones understood to be in service today. Remaining A variants, which were loaded with 145 small bomblets, were removed from U.S. service in 2008 as a result of new guidelines on cluster munitions issued under President George W. Bush. A planned AGM-154B, which would have contained six “smart” Sensor Fuzed Munition bomblets, was never produced. You can read more about the full JSOW family here.

2/2 https://t.co/DRQuyMTwNa

— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) March 8, 2026

We do not know exactly what targets any of these munitions were employed against. However, a picture that Jeff Rojas grabbed of one of VFA-41’s Super Hornets, seen toward the top of this story and in part below, shows a very interesting broken submarine kill marking, with the added text “Sub Buster.” The jet also has a number of more typical bomb-shaped kill marks.

Iranian naval vessels, including the country’s Russian-made Kilo class and other submarines, were top priority targets during Epic Fury. The U.S. military has previously confirmed that air-launched AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles (likely fired from MQ-9 Reaper drones) and ground-launched Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles were employed against submarines, specifically.

The video montage in the social media post below includes a clip, starting at 0:13 in the runtime, of a Hellfire missile hitting what looks to be a Ghadir class diesel-electric midget submarine in port.

U.S. forces are degrading the Iranian regime's ability to project power at sea and harass international shipping. For years, Iranian forces have threatened freedom of navigation in waters essential to American, regional and global security and prosperity. pic.twitter.com/gIBN02mowh

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 10, 2026

Bunker-busting JDAMs are also known to have been key munitions employed during strikes on targets in Iran during Epic Fury. TWZ previously called explicit attention to the employment of JSOW in the opening phases of the operation, as well. Navy strike fighter squadrons made significant use of SLAM-ERs in strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen last year, too.

Honest Abe is burning through the JSOWs like crazy. https://t.co/rQMZPBnwAz

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) March 1, 2026

1/ Aside from the launch of F/A-18E/Fs armed with JSOW C/C-1s, the video also shows F/A-18Es armed with SLAM-ER ATAs parked on the fligh deck. https://t.co/3TC4kKIn17 pic.twitter.com/OqQBbRrYGY

— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) March 16, 2025

It is extremely likely that the AIM-9Xs and AIM-120s were fired at Iranian drones, though they could have been launched at incoming cruise missiles, as well. At the time of writing, there are no known or reported instances of U.S. military jets engaging crewed Iranian aircraft in the course of the conflict to date. In 2024, the Navy carried out a crash program that increased the total number of AIM-9Xs that F/A-18E/Fs could carry per sortie, specifically in response to Houthi drone threats. Super Hornets loaded with nine air-to-air missiles are now referred to as “Murder Hornets.”

Notably absent in VFA-41’s tally is any mention of 70mm laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets. Air-to-air optimized versions of the APKWS II are now part of the arsenal available to U.S. Air Force F-16C Vipers, F-15E Strike Eagles, and A-10 Warthogs, and have become the service’s go-to aerial weapon for engaging drones. In February, the U.S. Marine Corps disclosed that it was working to integrate this capability onto its legacy F/A-18C/D Hornets. Whether the Navy has any such plans for the Super Hornet is unclear.

It is also important to remember that this is a discussion of the munitions expended by just one Navy strike fighter squadron. Lincoln‘s air wing includes four strike squadrons, three with Super Hornets and one with F-35Cs, as well as units flying other types of aircraft and helicopters. The carrier was just one part of a much larger array of air, naval, and ground forces that participated in Operation Epic Fury and subsequent operations against Iran. For additional context, consider that the entire Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, including its entire air wing and escorting ships, fired off 770 munitions in total, by the official count, during very active combat operations in and around the Red Sea between November 2023 and June 2024.

All of this speaks to the larger matter of how many munitions the U.S. military has expended in the course of operations against Iran this year, which is now fueling concerns about the sufficiency of remaining stockpiles and what it will take to replenish them.

As such, the tally of munitions launched from VFA-41 Super Hornets offers a very interesting view into that squadron’s contributions to Operation Epic Fury, as well as the full scale and scope of the conflict with Iran.

Special thanks again to Jeff Rojas for sharing the details about VFA-41’s participation in Operation Epic Fury and his pictures with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post All The Weapons A Single Navy Fighter Squadron Launched During Operation Epic Fury appeared first on TWZ.

When it comes to the future of Tail 844, the SR-71 Blackbird that mysteriously disappeared from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, few people have more insights than Tim Conners. When he worked at NASA in the 1990s, Conners was the lead propulsion engineer for the agency’s Blackbird program. He worked extensively on 844 and has an intimate knowledge of what made the iconic aircraft tick. Now, he brings an insider perspective on NASA’s secretive work to get the Blackbird back in the air and speculates on what it would take to do so, as well as the famed jet’s possible flight test role for the agency after 27 years of dormancy.

Late last month, we wrote about how satellite imagery taken over Armstrong showed that Tail 844 had been missing since at least May. The revelation was first made by Steve Trimble, Aviation Week‘s defense editor and friend of TWZ. It came after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman cryptically teased plans for a new high- and fast-flying X-plane with a silhouette of an aircraft that immediately drew comparisons to the Blackbird. Trimble reported just this week that NASA had been talking to ex-SR-71 program personnel about coming back to work on the aircraft. This confluence of events has led to rampant speculation about whether NASA was planning to resurrect the Blackbird and for what purpose?

In an exclusive interview with TWZ, Conners, now technical director for advanced weapons systems at Tiberius Aerospace, gave us his take on NASA’s Blackbird revelations and insights into what NASA is working on and how far along they are in the process.

Some of the questions and answers have been slightly edited for clarity.

Q: Tell me about your background with the SR-71 program. How did it begin? How long did it last? And what did you do?

A: So that basically fell in my lap when I was an engineer at NASA’s Dryden [Flight Research Center] back in the early ’90s when NASA took delivery of three of the airframes when the Air Force was retiring the fleet. So NASA got two A models and a trainer. Obviously, tail number 844, which is NASA’s designation, is the one that’s getting all of the attention right now. But those came to Dryden in the early ’90s. 

By luck of the draw, I was in the propulsion group. We were short-staffed for a number of reasons, and they needed an engineer on Blackbird. And I had been with NASA for about three or four years at that point, and I got tapped to prepare the NASA side of the mission for the upcoming research flights. So I had a few years to get familiar. That was a part-time job, by the way. I also owned the F-15 fleet at NASA as a propulsion engineer, and that was occupying a lot of my time, but it did give me an adequate amount of time to get familiar with the way that the airplane operated, at least from the propulsion standpoint. And then we began doing research missions in ’96. I left NASA in ’98, but I was able to support the program through two years of flight testing and all the years of preparation for those two years.

Q: Tell me more about your role with the Blackbirds.

A: I was lead propulsion engineer on the NASA side. So what NASA would do is they would assign disciplinary leads across from their industry and government counterparts. So Dryden’s disciplinary leads, their job was basically to make sure that any experimental packages were integrated safely with the airframe, and that we could execute the proposed test missions safely and successfully. I owned propulsion and I also owned performance. So if you recall the Lockheed Linear Aerospike rocket engine activity, that package weighed 20,000 to 25,000 pounds and was mounted externally on the back of the SR-71. That was a drag issue, obviously. So part of my role was to make sure that we could actually accelerate through the transonic drag rise with that package and get out to the target test conditions. 

Q: There is a tremendous amount of interest in seeing the Blackbird fly again. The biggest question seems to be why? What kinds of experiments or research would an SR-71 provide that couldn’t be done more effectively with a modern aircraft, rocket or unmanned vehicle? Can you walk us through some of the reasons NASA would like to see it in the skies again?

A: Yeah, that’s a question that everybody’s been asking. Why? I’m speculating, although I do have a good feel for where this is going. So bear with me. 

They probably are not going to do this for — or trying to do this — for aerodynamic reasons. You can do CFD [computational fluid dynamics]-based modeling in this speed regime all day long and very accurately in this day and age. It does not take a lot of time or money to do that. What you cannot do is an accurate representation of a new type of engine integrated into a high-speed airframe. You can do the conceptual modeling of it. Of course, it’s difficult to get the final installed answer, especially if it involves an engine that operates at long duration. That is where I think they’re going with this. I believe that they’re developing basically a high-speed engine test bed. That would make the most sense to me.

Q: That’s something you couldn’t do with a more modern aircraft or rocket or unmanned vehicle?

A: That’s a good question. But you know, probably two-thirds of that battle is just developing the airframe. It does depend on the size of the engine that you’re after. 

Obviously, if this were a Williams engine or that size class, you could get by with probably a bespoke drone to do your testing. That wouldn’t be that expensive. If your goal is to test something that’s man-rated or very large, like a J58-size engine, what better way to do it than use an airframe that’s already proven to fly at that speed?

Q: Were you asked to join a team at NASA tasked with getting a jet back in the air? Who else was asked, and what kind of team were they building?

A: I did not receive an offer. There was a tongue-in-cheek text that I got earlier in the year that said, ‘Hey, Conners, how would you like to help get the Blackbirds flying again?’ And that was from somebody who was positioned with inside information. That is where I first heard of this. This was back in spring, but nobody formally reached out to me.

I believe that the only one that’s been tagged so far, as far as a retiree, was Mike Relja. Mike was a crew chief on the Blackbird, and that makes sense that they would potentially want to pull on him. But there was no formal offer, and I tell you what: If somebody approached me to work it, I don’t think I could turn them down.

Q: Do you know where the idea for this project came from and who is in charge?

A: I don’t have an answer. I’d love to know as well.

Q: What can you tell me about this effort? What are the latest developments in this project that you know of?

A: So what I’m hearing is that they’re looking at doing power-on testing fairly soon. That’s pretty big. So of course that’s not engine power on. That’s external power applied to the airframe, seeing which systems still live, which ones don’t, and then moving from there. So that would be an expected first step. 

It’s an encouraging step. That means NASA would have gotten beyond cracking open all the bays, inspecting the interior, making sure that the thing at least passes visual inspection for airworthiness from that standpoint. 

Q: Have they actually gotten any systems working?

A: No, they’ve done the visual inspection, actually, putting electrons on the airframe. [To get systems working] would be the next step, but it is forthcoming, from what I understand.

Q: What is the timeline?

A: That’s supposed to happen within the next couple weeks.

Q: Really? Where is this work taking place?

A: That I do not know for sure. Although I assume it’s happening at [NASA’s] Armstrong [Flight Research Center].

Q: So what is going to happen?

A: That’s a good question. Let me tell you about what I heard more recently, and then you can begin to connect the dots. JP-7. People ask about the fuel. I think it’s pretty well known that NASA had a huge amount of JP-7 stockpiled that they received from the Air Force back in the early ’90s. So much that it was in a dedicated tank, like one of the giant jet fuel tanks at Edwards Air Force Base. You know, the tanks up on the ridge.

From what I understand, that supply unfortunately was discarded about 20 years ago, and JP-7 is a unique fuel. Obviously, low volatility. When I poked at what might be the way forward there, it didn’t sound like that was a showstopper. I got the impression that there’s been dialogue underway with refineries for a replacement or a surrogate that would work. So I went from being deflated, hearing that the fuel was gone, to being encouraged that potentially there was a surrogate workaround.

But that led to the question regarding the engines themselves, so the feedback there was more discouraging in that it looks like the engines are indeed unserviceable. I don’t believe that is based on an actual attempt to run them. It is based on inspection. Probably no surprise. They’ve sat idle, you know, for 27 years. That is what led to questions going back and forth regarding how the airframe would be powered. And that’s what led into where, if you connect the dots, that’s where the airframe would be used as an engine test bed. 

So different engines, they would have to be high-Mach bypass systems. We can speculate on which engine company might be developing those systems, but yeah, I don’t want to give it too much away because I don’t want us to lose the inside information that we got.

Q: Are they working on a completely different engine to power Blackbird?

A: I don’t know that for sure. I think if the J58s are not an option for powering the Blackbird, you either button it back up and walk away from it, or you go bring in engines that are already under development that we’re not privy to at this point in time. But there’s no other option. So what are we going to use? It’s not like we can slap in F100s or F110s. They’re not going to cut it.

Q: Obviously, restoring an aircraft sitting out in the elements for years into one able to withstand the rigors of Mach 3 flight is one hell of an undertaking. In your mind, what are the biggest hurdles to this endeavor?

A: Number one would be the engines for sure. Number two would be anything that’s made of elastomerics. Plastics, wiring. Covering connectors. All that stuff degrades and oxidizes with time. You can imagine what frayed wiring and broken wiring insulation – what kind of havoc that would create. What Blackbird has going for it is that all those casings and connectors were built for the rigor of sustained Mach 3.2 flight for an hour, an hour plus, so they are not going to deteriorate quickly. The question is: Have they deteriorated in 27 years? So, if the answer is not a significant amount, then we’ve probably addressed one of the biggest questions – other than the engines – regarding reviving the airplane. 

Q: Do you think NASA is going to attempt to just fly Tail 844 largely in its original configuration, or will they deeply modify it or build something new based on it?

A: Completely unknown. They definitely have the ability to modify the airframe, right? They did it before in the ’90s to carry the Linear Aerospike package. That was a huge undertaking on the airframe itself. They did it successfully. Armstrong still has a pretty deep bench in that area, so if they wanted to take on modifying the titanium structure, I think they could do it. 

But it’s a good question. Again, that would probably point to aerodynamic studies, and if it were me and my dollar as a taxpayer, I would lean on computational studies to get those answers. That’s what I tend to do in my day job is forego testing in lieu of computational when it involves external aero, but it’s when you do the integrated propulsion in this speed regime, that’s really when you need test data from the actual operating conditions. 

Q: As opposed to digital modeling?

A: Yes. For instance, say the aerodynamic databases for Blackbird are gone, which they might be. I know there are simple aerodynamic models that still exist, but like a true high-fidelity model that would go into a piloted simulator, that could probably be regenerated fairly quickly. Probably on the order of months computationally in this day and age. So I think simulation capability could be stood up in fairly short order. That, of course, will be foundational for the pilot training task.

Q: We’ll talk more about pilot training later, but first I want to ask about modernization. If NASA were to inject modernized features into the SR-71, what would you like to see? And what makes the most sense in terms of material science, avionics, propulsion and so on?

A: I’m not a materials expert. I think it would be really interesting to see how the airframe could be optimized using adaptive flight control capabilities. So, if the flight control system could be digitized, I think that would lead to some very interesting in-flight experiments. I doubt that that would be. I could be wrong, but if the goal is to get the airframe back up as a propulsion test bed, you don’t need to cut out the hydromechanical flight control system and replace it with a digital one. 

That all said, what I would like to see is what we talked about a few minutes ago, and that’s basically modern high-speed engine technology. So what could be done? The J58s were low operating pressure ratio systems. What could be done with a modern, digitally controlled, multistream, high-Mach engine, I think, would be truly trailblazing. 

One of the reasons why there’s interest in this speed regime, it was neglected for a number of years. The focus was on hypersonics. If you proposed anything going back, say, 15 years in the Mach 3.5 speed regime, it was ignored. The glitz and glamor was on hypersonics. Hypersonics is great tactically for certain scenarios, but the weaknesses of hypersonics are now becoming apparent. 

And as far as countermeasures, hypersonics still has a place. Don’t get me wrong, but every system cannot be hypersonic from an affordability standpoint. So, now you’ve seen it over the last, say, five years. A lot of systems are coming back on the scene that operate in the Mach 2 to Mach 4 regime, and there’s a reason they’re all fitting in there, right? You stay below the speed limit that requires more exotic metallics. You stay in the titanium regime. You can fly, of course, up to [Mach] 3.5 with brief excursions up to about [Mach] 4, so that is tactically relevant against a lot of military targets and defensive systems. So here it is. You know we now have a potential flying test bed that can carry engines in the J58 size class.

Q: How much could a project like this cost, and is it really economically feasible? How long do you think it could take?

A: I’ve been thinking that over, and I think it depends on who does it. I don’t want to disparage my former government brethren. I had great respect for the folks at NASA when I worked with them, but one of the reasons why I left the agency is because it was becoming so risk-averse. That was adding bloat to everything. And what we used to do quickly, we no longer could do quickly or cheaply at what was Dryden Flight Research Center, so that is what concerns me. 

If NASA could operate with the agility that it had, if Dryden/Armstrong could operate with the agility it had 30 years ago, they could do this work in probably a few years. I would say again, it would depend on what exactly they need to do to the airframe. If it’s to resurrect the airframe and bolt in new engines using existing interface hardpoints, that would go much, much more quickly than doing extensive airframe modifications.

Q: Given that 844 has been sitting idle since 1999, what would be the very first thing you would want to inspect or test before even considering putting it back in the air?

A: Exactly what I’m hearing the rumor is that they’re doing this. What is the condition of all the components in the airplane that are flowing electrons? Because if the entire airframe is shorted out, you know how it is. 

If you have a car where you’ve hooked up the battery cables backwards – I had a car once where somebody jumped in and did that. It ruined the car because I was chasing shorts constantly, constantly breaking down in the months that followed because the wiring was compromised, melted, bubbled all over the vehicle. And then it would get wet. You get shorts. That, I believe, is what one of the objectives of power-on testing is. To make sure continuity still exists, reliable continuity throughout the airframe. So that’s exactly the first step. 

I would say the second would be hydraulics. That vehicle is hydromechanical. So what is the state of the actuators and whatnot?

Q: And you said that work is taking place now?

A: It’s certainly being inspected. That was one of the reasons why they pulled it off of the display pad at Armstrong. But that work has been going on for a couple of months, and it certainly seems that there was at least reason to be encouraged and to go forward with this next step. Otherwise, they would have just towed it back to the parking spot.

Q: And the next step is testing the systems?

A: That is correct.

Q: We touched on this a little before, but how realistic is it to get an SR-71’s J58 engines operational again after nearly three decades of inactivity? What would worry you most about those engines? How many are left?

A: Well, that’s a good point. As far as [engines] that are readily available, there are several that are at the [Air Force Flight Test (AFFT) Museum at Edwards AFB]. I believe they’ve been stored outside. But if you consider all the museums around the world with Blackbirds on display, almost all of them have installed J58s, and there’s usually one sitting alongside the airframe on display, so there are plenty of engines. Whether or not they’re serviceable, that of course is the question. 

But probably the biggest problem with an engine – well, there are several with a gas turbine that sits unmoved for decades – it’s going to be that you’re going to flatten the bearings. Probably not visible to the eye, but rotating turbo machinery doesn’t like flats on the bearings. So for obvious vibration reasons, you got that. And you’ve got the seals. Seals are going to crack. Trapped fuel is going to turn to gunk and clog up lines. That engine was all hydromechanical, of course, or no digital controls on that because of the heat involved. So fuel hydraulics played a big role in that engine. 

There is likely a lot of goo in those lines. I believe that’s why they’ve essentially been written off as unserviceable. I was discouraged because one of the questions I asked that I didn’t get an answer to was: Did anybody try to run the engines or pull them apart? But I don’t even know if the instructions exist to unstack a J58 at this point. I’m sure it could be figured out with the right people, but you know how it is. Pulling something apart is a lot easier than putting it back together. 

Q: So there’s no manual for that anymore?

A: I don’t know if there’s a manual specific to that. Like I told Steve [Trimble] at Aviation Week, there certainly are operating manuals. You’ve probably seen the pilot’s manual for the SR-71A. It’s a beauty. There are a lot of copies online. You can get PDFs of those. They are very well-written, huge manuals. I know prints exist for the airplane. Those were in the keeping of the Edwards Museum. I believe those have been handed back over to NASA. So, it’s not like there’s a complete dearth of information.

When I was at NASA, I was the person who received everything that Pratt & Whitney had left on the J58s when the Air Force decommissioned the program, and that information was in two or three smallish boxes and consisted of hard copy code printout or printout of numerical data, along with some magnetic reels of code. It was not much. And I was told at the time the only reason I received that information was somebody missed it when the Air Force gave the destruct notice. It was under somebody’s desk, so it was not much in the way of knowledge transfer, unfortunately.

Q: What did you do with all that?

A: I left it behind in 1998 when I left NASA.

Q: What happened to it?

A: I have no idea. Hopefully, somebody scanned it. But again, that was J58 info, right? So if they’re going with a new engine, they’ll have the full digital models for those new systems. And I do believe that recreating the aerodynamic database, including inlet performance, that kind of data can all be regenerated fairly quickly with computational tools.

Q: We touched on this a little bit before, but how difficult would it be to reproduce the JP-7 fuel that powered the Blackbird? It would need designated tankers too, correct? 

A: So that was one of the questions I asked is whether or not that formulation exists still. The answer I got back was that essentially a refinery should be able to recreate a suitable surrogate. If you think about it, JP-7 was unique in that it had a very low volatility characteristic. 

What I’ve learned about Jet A from some of the ramjet work that I’ve been doing is that it has a ridiculously low volatility too, of course, by design. So I don’t know that JP-7 is that far apart from the chemical characteristics of a Jet A-class fuel, JP-8-type fuel. JP-8 was a significant change from JP-4, so the Air Force was using JP-4 in their fleet, and then moved to JP-8 to be consistent in the ’90s with the Navy with their formulations. That’s a lower volatility fuel, and at NASA we had to recharacterize the flight performance of all of our jets with JP-8, but it worked fine. 

We were concerned about operability – that we were going to have flameouts and engine relight and flight relay problems. Those did not materialize, so I don’t want to oversimplify it, but I am thinking that you might be able to take an existing Jet A and with the right additives knock down the volatility to a level that’s safe for flying in the Blackbird. 

Q: What would need to happen to have aerial refueling jets be able to handle fuel for the Blackbird?

A: There were dedicated JP-7 tankers for the Blackbird. I don’t know if they can take an existing system and flush it. It would depend on the formulation, right? JP-7 was notorious for its unseemly characteristics. It was toxic. 

I had a shirt that got dripped on when I was standing under the wing of the Blackbird once, and I had to throw it out. I could not get the stink out of that shirt from the JP-7. It was a weird fuel. So if you can get one that’s more aligned with the fuels used in the service, then I don’t believe that’s going to be a showstopper as far as tanker support, but you do know tanker support is going to be required for that airplane. 

Q: You said the JP-7 fuel stank. What did it smell like?

A: I just remember it turning my stomach. Like I kept smelling something as the day went on, and I reached over and saw a stain on my shoulder. I don’t recall what happened the rest of the day, but I just remember being repulsed by the odor and then not being able to get it out when I washed the shirt. 

Q: Beyond the fuel, the SR-71 depended on a huge ecosystem of specialized equipment, fluids, personnel and procedures. Which parts of that infrastructure would be hardest to recreate today?

A: That was something that Mike Relja pointed out when he talked to Steve Trimble. That’s a good one. You probably heard that the J58s were started with a start cart that was basically a bank of Buick 12-cylinder engines, all next to each other. It’s a beautiful-sounding system, but very unique. But what is starting, you know, other than you’re either doing a power takeoff via shaft, or you’re using compressed air. It depends on what the engine demands. So I think the start cart development would be fairly straightforward. 

But there is a lot of specialized equipment, like Mike pointed out, the wings when they’re split up, they are held in place by a specific scaffolding. The way the engines were craned out of the wing required special equipment. Pulling the inlet spike off that required a special cradle. Those are not insurmountable, but you don’t want to wait till the last minute to realize you need unique equipment. So it’s all got to be taken into consideration.

Q: Could existing SR-71s in museums realistically be used as sources of spare parts for 844, or would cannibalizing those aircraft create more problems than it solves? Were those airframes left structurally intact? 

A: I believe that was the agreement with the Blackbirds. If a museum were to put one on display, there was a certain expectation regarding care and maintenance. Not so much maintenance, but care and preservation. If you think about it, many of them are under [a] roof in climate-controlled facilities. I know several of them that are preserved like that, including one here in Tucson. That, of course, is the best place for preserving anything with elastomerics and plastic. So I think it’s encouraging that so many of them have been so well cared for. Again, it’s going to come down to which components, regardless of whether or not they’re indoor or outdoor, which components are going to fail first, and I believe that’s the exercise NASA is looking at. 

Then you’ve got to start beating down, chasing supply chain sources for some of this, and you know the nightmare that’s out there with supply chain and aerospace. So it’s not going to be an easy task. I don’t want to act like it is. I don’t think it’s insurmountable though.

Q: So these aircraft can be used as sources of spare parts?

A: Sure, absolutely.

Q: Is anyone with a Blackbird already contributing parts?

A: I know that the Edwards Air Museum is contributing what they can as far as spares and prints. I don’t know who else, although I believe the second NASA SR-71A went to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in Oregon. I would expect them to be in the loop. 

(TWZ reached out to the Evergreen to find out what, if anything, it is contributing to this effort.)

Q: How difficult will it be for modern test pilots to fly Tail 844, or whatever aircraft is created from this project? What would actually be the hardest part of training a pilot to fly the aircraft today? Do you think they will convert it into an unmanned configuration?

A: Well, that would be a difficult airplane to convert to unmanned, unless it went with a digital backbone, and like I said, I think that would be an enormous undertaking. It’s not unheard of. NASA, along with McDonnell Douglas, converted a couple of F-15s to all-digital backbones before the F-15E program began. It can be done. It’s just expensive. It’s not easy. 

But the piloting task starts with a good simulator, right? The piloting task is absolutely a big deal. I saw it firsthand at Dryden. That said, it took a couple years, probably two. I would say that’s about right for the Dryden pilots, who are pretty good at what they do, to learn to fly the Blackbird safely, and that was with the use of the two-seat trainer, which we’re not going to have this time.

So I think the key to this happening is getting a digital sim together very quickly, and it wouldn’t surprise me if NASA has begun this process already. Getting that together, plus getting the former pilots who are still with us in the seat to make sure that it aligns with what they recall as far as the unique features of the airplane. 

I have 100 hours of stick time on the Air Force Blackbird simulator. I’m not a pilot, but I used to pre-fly the maneuvers for the pilots and NASA on the high-drag missions, so I’m familiar with the way the airplane flies up and away, and it is a bear to fly. It is not easy. So training is not insurmountable. Like I said, it takes a good, high-fidelity sim. NASA is expert at building those kinds of simulators, modular simulators quickly. In this day and age, we should be able to put a high-fidelity sim together fairly quickly for training. 

If you recall, the cockpit is an analog nightmare on a Blackbird. Breakers everywhere. Dials everywhere. I doubt that somebody suggested that we go with an all-digital cockpit. That would be so much work to do. But if we go for it with just a pure analog cockpit that we used previously, that’s going to require a lot of familiarity. I do believe that the training systems might still exist for that. It would just be for that airplane. It would just be getting them all cobbled back together.

Q: What made the Blackbird so difficult to fly?

A: It’s a low-G airframe, so you got to baby it. It’s easy to get an angle of attack out of range. And then with those chined surfaces, it’s easy to get a pitch-up with the airplane. That’s how I always managed to wreck it in the sim. I would let alpha get away from me.

Q: Do you know if any of the pilots have been recalled for this effort to get this thing flying again?

A: No, I don’t know.

Q: It has been close to 70 years since the A-12 Oxcart first flew. There had to have been other high-speed aircraft that at least came and went in the classified test environment. Considering all the work in hypersonics today, it isn’t hard to believe new platforms exist. Why would the SR-71 still have relevance here, and why not use one of those aircraft instead, if they exist? If they do, is it because the SR-71 is declassified? 

A: Yeah, that could very well be what we’re looking at here. I’ve had friends ask that question this week. We were talking about the SR-72. Where is that at? I don’t know. I know people who went to work on it years ago. I’ve never heard anything since. So it could be that that’s so deep black that there’s no way that platform could be used as a test asset. So I think it’s precisely what you said. The Blackbird’s no longer classified, and that it’s possible that the engines that might be used in Blackbird wouldn’t be classified either.

Q: Would any of those engines be applicable for this SR-71 reboot?

A: Certainly.

Q: Do you know if they exist anywhere?

A: No. But from what was leaked or hinted at regarding the size of the vehicle, it would seem that whatever was the power plant for that aircraft, it would be about the right size.

Q: What do you think generally about the renaissance of sorts in high-speed aerospace capabilities in recent years?

A: I worked on HAWC [Hypersonic Airbreathing Weapon Concept] at Raytheon, which became HACM [Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile]. One of the systems that I helped design was the inlet isolator used on HACM, which is not operational yet, but it will be. But it’s an air breather by Raytheon. That gave me a lot of exposure to the level of exquisite technology that’s required to field a system like that.

It is expensive. It’s difficult. Supply chain is a challenge. There’s a reason why they cost what they do per unit. So you see the push to develop lower-cost hypersonic systems like Castelion’s Blackbeard [lower-cost hypersonic missile]. It’s not an air breather. So I think it’s an easier problem than what we dealt with at Raytheon with an air breather. But nevertheless, it’s impressive that they’ve gotten a price point down to what they’ve gotten, so you see that happening in hypersonics. 

You’re kind of stuck in the same block of speed, but the price is dropping. And then meanwhile, you’ve got this massive group of munitions that are setting up camp in a Mach 2 to Mach 4 speed regime for reasons I mentioned. Those are running much cheaper per shot and per effect, which is why that’s happening. So that you give up something on survivability by pulling down into that speed range, but the price point allows you to volley at such a level that you overwhelm the defensive systems.

Q: If an SR-71 took to the skies again, would it not be one of the highest-profile aviation moments in a generation? It would certainly capture the imagination of many young and old. What do you think about the social aspect of all this?

A: I have yet to find anybody who isn’t excited by the prospect. Certainly, everybody within aviation thinks it’s cool. Some of my family who don’t know much about airplanes – they all think it’s cool. Everybody thinks it’s just super. That said, everybody also wonders why we’re doing it. But what’s funny is everybody still says, ‘Let’s do it anyway because it’s such an iconic airplane, beautiful airplane, an inspiration.’ Hopefully, there would be a good reason to spend the money. But I think even if it’s a bad reason, everybody wants it to take to the skies again.

Q: If you were a betting man, Tim, what would you say are the odds of this thing flying again?

A: I would give it a 25% chance.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post Former SR-71 Engineer Talks NASA’s Blackbird Revival Program appeared first on TWZ.

Germany is moving ahead with plans to give its unusually large F125 frigates a medium-range air-defense capability, helping address one of the most conspicuous weaknesses of a four-ship class that has long attracted attention for having relatively little combat power for its size.

Diehl Defense and Germany’s Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) have signed a contract to adapt and develop the IRIS-T SLM surface-to-air missile system for operational use aboard the German Navy’s F125 frigates. Under the agreement, Diehl will build prototypes and conduct comprehensive test firings intended to validate the system’s integration and performance within the existing F125 architecture. Each frigate will be fitted with two new launchers, each capable of holding 16 missiles, for a total of 32.

“The aim is to make the system mission-capable on the German Navy’s F125 frigates,” Diehl said in today’s announcement. The company described the prototype construction and test-firing phase as necessary to ensure “the seamless integration and maximum performance” of IRIS-T SLM within the frigate’s existing architecture.

The program has moved notably quickly, reflecting the urgency of the requirement.

Germany began examining the feasibility of integrating IRIS-T SLM with the F125 in 2024, with BAAINBw and Diehl studying the technical risks and requirements of adapting the normally land-based system for shipboard use. That effort led to the development of a navalized demonstrator in 2025. In October of that year, the F125 frigate Baden-Württemberg took part in a German Navy Maritime Firing Exercise off Andøya, Norway, carrying an experimental anti-air warfare module based on IRIS-T SLM. Diehl says the module went from concept to firing in less than 10 months and met all established test and evaluation objectives.

The Bundeswehr subsequently reported that Baden-Württemberg fired three live IRIS-T SLM missiles during the exercise. The ship’s radar supplied target data to the missile system, demonstrating the basic integration between the F125’s sensors and the navalized air defense architecture.

The exercise established that the concept could work at sea; the contract signed now is intended to turn that demonstration into a qualified fleet capability.

The German parliament’s Budget Committee approved the adaptation effort on September 23, with the German Defense Ministry describing it as a means of expanding the F125’s self-defense capabilities in response to the current air threat. The ministry also pointed to IRIS-T SLM’s combat experience in Ukraine.

The effort needs to be seen in the context of why the F125 has been such a controversial warship in the first place.

As TWZ examined in 2017, the F125 is a roughly 7,200-ton, 490-foot warship with an unusually small core crew and a concept of operations centered on long-duration deployments, stabilization missions, crisis management, conflict prevention, and international intervention rather than high-end fleet combat. The class was designed to spend long periods away from Germany and operate with relatively modest manpower requirements.

But its armament does not remotely match the size and sophistication of the hull. As completed, the ships were equipped with eight RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, a 127mm gun, remotely operated guns and, for close-quarters air defense, two RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launchers. The F125 has no medium- or long-range surface-to-air missile capability and no organic sonar or dedicated anti-submarine warfare weapon system.

At the same time, the TRS-4D/NR radar and other sensors can see far beyond the engagement envelope of the close-in air-defense weapons, but there is little the ship itself can do with that information against an aircraft or incoming missile at medium range.

Nearly a decade later, IRIS-T SLM is emerging as an answer to at least part of that problem.

Even with IRIS-T SLM, the F125 is well short of being an air warfare destroyer. It also still lacks an organic anti-submarine warfare capability or the kind of large vertical-launch missile battery found on Germany’s F124 frigates.

However, it does fill a gap between the F125’s original short-range defenses and the capabilities of other ships or aircraft operating around it.

IRIS-T SLM is designed as a medium-range surface-to-air system, with an engagement range of around 25 miles and an altitude envelope of approximately 65,000 feet. As shown in the 2025 demonstration, the F125’s radar can feed information directly into the missile system, exploiting the ship’s existing sensor capabilities.

Rather than rely heavily on escorts for protection against airborne threats outside the short range of RAM, an IRIS-T-equipped F125 could at least contribute to its own medium-range air defense. Recent operations in the Middle East have underscored the importance of this in contested maritime environments.

It also gives the ships a more useful role in a task group. The threat environment has changed substantially since the F125’s original concept was drafted. Cruise missiles, drones, loitering munitions, and increasingly sophisticated aircraft mean that even ships operating away from a major naval war can face threats well beyond the range of their existing close-in defenses.

In November 2024, Germany confirmed that the F125 frigate Baden-Württemberg, returning from an Indo-Pacific deployment, would avoid the Red Sea and sail around Africa because of the Houthi missile and drone threat. The German Defense Ministry explicitly cited the ship’s limited air defense capability and its inability to provide an effective air-defense umbrella for itself or its accompanying replenishment ship.

Ironically, the F125’s large hull, extensive electrical power, sophisticated radar, substantial aviation facilities, long endurance and relatively spacious mission areas were always supposed to provide room for a flexible approach to future missions. Yet the class’s original weight and integration constraints made adding major weapons difficult, a concern TWZ also highlighted in 2017.

IRIS-T SLM offers Germany a way to add a meaningful capability without undertaking the much more invasive redesign associated with installing a conventional vertical-launch system. The 2025 demonstration used an AAW module mounted on the ship’s deck rather than a conventional VLS installation, and today’s program is focused on adapting the system to the F125 architecture.

Once IRIS-T SLM is installed, the F125 will still be an unusual frigate. It is enormous by the standards of its mission, optimized for endurance, and lacks some of the weapons traditionally associated with a high-end surface combatant. But it will bring more to a contested fight.

The program should give the class a credible medium-range air-defense role, and provide Germany with a way to get considerably more utility out of four ships whose original design philosophy was always somewhat controversial.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Germany Is Finally Giving Its F125 Frigates Some More Teeth With IRIS-T SLM Surface-To-Air Missiles appeared first on TWZ.

Seven companies are said to now be in the running to develop a lower-cost and highly modular drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. Though the field has some well-established entrants and some far lesser known names, the inclusion of Otto Aerospace in this group is particularly unexpected and interesting to examine. Otto has made bold, but still unrealized pronouncements about disrupting the aviation industry with potentially revolutionary high-efficiency designs that could have civilian and military applications. TWZ has been steadily tracking the company’s developments since we first reported on the existence of the Celera 500L aircraft back in 2017.

Air & Space Forces Magazine first reported on Wednesday that Otto Aerospace (previously Otto Aviation), as well as Anduril, Chaos Industries, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Grid Aero, Shield AI, and Swarm Aero, had “made the cut” for the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) program, citing anonymous sources. The MMA effort formally kicked off in July, and the Air Force is now aiming to have a fleet of at least 500 of these drones by 2032.

An industry source has also told us that these seven companies are moving ahead in the MMA program. The Air Force has not yet offered an official confirmation.

“The Air Force’s partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit is accelerating requirements development and rapid prototyping by leveraging commercial innovation and reducing timelines,” a spokesperson for the service said when we asked for more information. “We continue working with industry to inform requirements and assess potential solutions as we shape the future MMA capability.”

TWZ has also reached out to all of the companies on the list for more details.

As mentioned, it is unexpected and especially interesting to see Otto named here in the context of MMA. The company’s core design philosophy centers around what is called laminar flow. Broadly speaking, this refers to liquid or gaseous “fluids,” including air, flowing in smooth, regular layers across a surface with little to no mixing between them. In aviation, optimization for laminar flow translates to reduced drag and improved aerodynamic efficiency. This, in turn, can offer a host of benefits, including when it comes to fuel economy, extended range, and overall performance, as well as reductions in operating costs.

With this in mind, all of the designs that Otto has shown to date, starting with the Celera 500L, have been based around teardrop-shaped fuselages to maximize laminar flow benefits. Many of them also feature long, slender glider-like wings. The sudden and unannounced appearance of the very exotic and futuristic-looking Celera 500L at the Southern California Logistics Airport in 2017, at which time nothing was known about the aircraft or its manufacturer, caused a stir in the broader aviation community. TWZ was the first to report on the plane and then unmasked its identity.

On top of the laminar flow-optimized shaping, the Celera 500L was a pusher-propeller design powered by a single high-efficiency, turbocharged, multi-fuel V12 piston engine. A relevant patent held by Otto also describes a novel exhaust system with a heat exchanger that provides an additional boost in thrust.

Otto conducted an extensive test campaign with the Celera 500L, taking the aircraft up to an altitude of 15,000 feet and to a speed of 250 miles per hour. The company posited that this would translate to a cruising speed of around 460 miles per hour at the design’s intended operating ceiling of 50,000 feet.

Development focus at the company has since shifted to the jet-powered Phantom 3500, which has a much revised design compared to the Celera 500L. Otto has said previously that it expects this aircraft to burn just 115 gallons of fuel per hour, further underscoring the benefits of its laminar-flow-centric approach. Comparably sized business jets like the Bombardier Challenger 350, Cessna Citation Latitude, and Embraer Praetor 500 consume around 300 gallons per hour, according to the company, citing data from Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI).

It is also worth noting here that Otto has already developed a drone with a “highly laminar-flow efficient airframe” for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company announced the successful completion of a flight test campaign in May. The pusher-propeller design has a teardrop-shaped main body, a glider-type main wing, and a T-tail at the end of a boom that extends to the rear of the aircraft. DARPA plans to use that drone to demonstrate laser-based power beaming technology that could be used to relay electricity to forward operating locations. The technology could also dramatically extend the endurance of an electrically-powered drone, potentially allowing it to stay in the air indefinitely.

The drone for DARPA is far too small to meet the Air Force’s MMA requirements. However, “the program leveraged Otto’s aerodynamic expertise to design and flight-test an unmanned vehicle that could inform design parameters for future energy-relay systems or more extremely fuel-efficient, long-endurance platforms,” per a press release Otto put out in May.

TWZ has highlighted in the past how the general range, fuel economy, and other advantages inherent to Otto’s designs could be even more pronounced in a configuration that does not need to support a human crew. Furthermore, Otto has previously shown militarized concepts, crewed and uncrewed. As we’ve written in our earlier coverage of the Celera 500L:

“Though primarily aimed at civilian and commercial operators, Otto’s new website also highlights the potential for the Celera 500L to use its long-range and high fuel economy to support military missions, including transporting personnel and cargo, as well as conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. A version of the aircraft, possibly unmanned, equipped with any number of sensor suites could be an impressive persistent surveillance and communications relay platform able to orbit over particular areas for very long periods of time and cover a wide swath of the battlefield from its high perch. It could also be able to reposition itself quickly and transit to its tasking area at jet-like speeds.”

While we have yet to see an explicit MMA proposal from Otto, a laminar flow-optimized drone could be a very attractive offering, given the program’s focus on reducing costs while having an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles, among other capabilities. A more efficient design could further translate to a drone that needs less fuel to meet range and other requirements, which, in turn, could allow for a smaller and/or cheaper design overall. Weight and physical space savings afforded by reduced fuel demand could be used to increase ordnance and other payload capacity, too. You can read more about what is known about the MMA requirements here.

There are more companies beyond Otto in the running. With the Air Force aiming to buy hundreds of MMA drones in the coming years, there will be stiff competition.

General Atomics, which developed and produced the MQ-9A, has publicly put forward its own proposal for a successor, called Wildfire. The new drone draws heavily on experience with the Reaper, as well as other drones in the company’s portfolio, and you can read more about what is known about that design here. General Atomics declined to offer additional comment in response to questions regarding the current state of the MMA program. As an aside, General Atomics is also now on contract to build higher-end FQ-42 Vengeance drones for the Air Force, one of two designs intended for higher-end air combat the service is acquiring under its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program.

The other company building CCA drones for the Air Force is Anduril, with its FQ-44 Fury, and it has now also been named in relation to the MMA effort. Anduril has unveiled two other very different tactical drones since 2025, the twin-engine hybrid-electric tail-sitting Omen, designed primarily for surveillance and reconnaissance, and Thunder, an armed tiltrotor pitched as an uncrewed companion for crewed rotorcraft. Neither of those uncrewed aircraft would seem to directly align with the stated MMA requirements, but might serve as a starting place. Anduril also has a history now of developing new uncrewed platforms and other systems discreetly, and sharing them with the public only when they have become relatively mature.

What design Shield AI might be offering is unknown. The MMA requirements would seem to sit between the company’s V-BAT drone, which is in service with several armed forces today, including in the United States and Ukraine, and the much higher-end X-BAT that is now in development. Shield AI has been working to expand on the V-BAT design, including plans to integrate air-launched munitions. Both V-BAT and X-BAT are also vertical-takeoff and landing designs. Beyond drones, Shield AI remains a major developer of artificial intelligence-driven autonomy packages for the U.S. military and others.

Earlier this month, newcomer Swarm Aero unveiled a new drone with performance and capabilities that align with the stated MMA requirements earlier this month. Called Gamera, the design has a single propeller at the front of a small central fuselage, together with sponsons holding large fuel cells on either side and a twin-boom tail configuration broadly reminiscent of the OV-10 Bronco light attack aircraft, as TWZ previously reported on in more detail.

Grid Aero is publicly developing a twin-engine cargo drone called the Lifter Lite, in part with funding from AFWERX, the Air Force’s internal technology incubator. Whether the company might work to adapt the Lifter Lite, which has been undergoing testing at least on the ground, to meet the MMA requirements or has proposed something entirely different is not known.

The last firm on the list, Chaos Industries, does not appear to show any drone designs on its website at the time of writing. It is primarily known as a developer of radar systems, especially for use in counter-drone systems. The company declined to comment in response to TWZ queries regarding the MMA program.

To reiterate, the Air Force still has not confirmed the full list of MMA program contenders. Otto’s participation would be a standout, but the field as it is understood now features a number of very established drone makers, as well as emerging start-ups, all vying for a very lucrative opportunity. On top of the potential just to supply hundreds of drones upfront, those uncrewed aircraft look set to be a key part of the Air Force’s force structure for years to come, and will need to be supported throughout their lifecycles. The MMA requirements put heavy emphasis on modularity and open-architecture systems to allow for the rapid integration of new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line.

The Air Force has also previously raised the possibility of selecting multiple vendors to produce designs under the MMA program, or to pursue follow-on rounds of competition to help meet its operations requirements. This is exactly how the service has been running the CCA program, and has already led to the aforementioned production contracts with General Atomics and Anduril. In addition, the Air Force is targeting a base $10 million unit cost for each MMA drone, a price point that would help make losses more tolerable, and could open the door to acquiring a fleet of far more than 500 examples.

It is also important to remember that the Air Force has tried and failed on several occasions to develop and field an MQ-9A replacement. As TWZ has previously explored in great detail, the service’s view of what that drone should be has also evolved over time, with the current MMA program squarely focused on a more affordable option that does not put a heavy premium on survivability. The Air Force has acknowledged potential budget and other hurdles to its new effort. At the same time, heavy continued operational demand for Reapers, coupled with dozens of losses in the course of the war with Iran, as well as other operations in and around the Middle East in recent years, have put major new emphasis on finally finding a successor.

Overall, beyond what is already known about potential MMA offerings, it will be very interesting to see what Otto and the other contenders put forward to finally succeed the iconic Reaper.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Hunt For MQ-9 Reaper Successor Surprisingly Includes Exotic Aircraft Manufacturer Otto Aerospace appeared first on TWZ.

After nearly seven years of waiting, Taiwan has received the first two aircraft from its long-delayed purchase of 66 new-build F-16C/D Block 70 fighters from the United States.

The two single-seat F-16Cs, serials 6727 and 6728, touched down at Chihhang Air Base near Taitung on October 2. They are the first factory-new fighter aircraft delivered to Taiwan in 25 years and mark the beginning of the aircraft acceptance and integration phase of the Republic of China Air Force’s (ROCAF) so-called Peace Phoenix Soaring project.

The two jets have also had an unusually eventful trip to Taiwan.

They began their journey to the island on August 17, flying from Lockheed Martin’s production facility in Greenville, South Carolina, to Hawaii. The aircraft were subsequently forced to remain there for more than a month after an unexpected issue prevented them from continuing across the Pacific as planned. The reasons for the delay have been the subject of considerable speculation, including weather and tanker availability.

The two jets finally departed Hawaii again on October 1, stopping in Guam before making the final leg to Taitung today.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo said today that more of the aircraft will arrive before the end of the year, although he did not provide a specific number.

Taiwan receives first 2 F-16V Block 70 fighter jets

Taiwan took delivery Friday of the first two of 66 F-16V Block 70 fighter jets purchased from the United States, with the aircraft landing at Chihhang Air Base in the eastern county of Taitung at around noon. pic.twitter.com/hbqdV6io26

— Focus Taiwan (CNA English News) (@Focus_Taiwan) October 2, 2026

The 66-aircraft purchase is worth approximately $8 billion. Taiwan originally expected deliveries to begin much sooner, but production-line adjustments, supply-chain problems, and software issues contributed to delays. COVID, too, had an impact on the production line.

The program’s delivery schedule has slipped repeatedly. Defense Minister Koo said in March, May, and again through his deputy in June that the first aircraft were expected to arrive by the end of September. That deadline passed without an F-16 reaching Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense acknowledged in late September that development and production of the aircraft’s new electronic warfare self-protection system had also been a factor.

The Block 70s are being equipped with L3Harris’ AN/ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield electronic warfare suite, and the system was not yet fully through its development and production process when the first aircraft were otherwise ready for delivery. L3Harris announced on September 3 that it had completed production of the first 35 Viper Shield systems, underscoring that the electronic warfare equipment was itself still moving into production as Taiwan’s fighters were approaching delivery.

Taiwan chose to acquire the AN/ALQ-254 rather than the AN/ALQ-257 electronic warfare system used on U.S. Air Force F-16s.

Lawmakers have questioned whether the system meets requirements associated with earlier work to modernize earlier F-16A/B Block 20 fighters to the F-16V standard. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Koo argued that those requirements applied to the earlier Block 20 upgrade rather than the new Block 70 purchase. Other international F-16 Block 70 operators are also using Viper Shield.

Taiwanese officials have defended the decision, citing the specific requirements of Taiwan’s F-16 fleet and associated procurement considerations. The system is intended to provide the new fighters with a modern electronic warfare and self-protection capability against increasingly sophisticated radar and missile threats.

There are also still questions about when the Viper Shield system itself will be fully ready.

Weapons deliveries have also not kept pace with the aircraft themselves.

Taiwan is receiving AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles as part of the F-16 package, with 200 ordered. The C-8 version incorporates upgrades from the U.S. Air Force’s Form, Fit, Function Refresh (F3R) effort, including new electronics and improved electronic-counter-countermeasures intended to make the missile more capable in a heavily contested electromagnetic environment. For Taiwan, the missile will provide the new F-16s with a modern beyond-visual-range air-to-air weapon that can be cued by the aircraft’s AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), as well as other sources of targeting information through the F-16’s networked systems.

The AIM-120C-8 is particularly relevant as Taiwan fields more F-16s against China’s increasingly capable fighter fleet, which includes aircraft equipped with long-range air-to-air missiles such as the PL-15.

Taiwan’s F-16 Block 70s will also be armed with the AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), intended for attacks against enemy air defense systems. According to Roy Choo, a defense journalist and TWZ contributor, the first of the new AGM-88F (remanufactured from U.S. Air Force AGM-88B) missiles arrived in Taiwan back in 2022, for the F-16V fleet.

The major gap is the AGM-154C Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The precision glide weapon is intended to give Taiwan a longer-range strike capability against ground targets without requiring the launching aircraft to fly directly over heavily defended areas. According to the latest reporting from Taiwan, deliveries of the AGM-154C have been held up by delays on the U.S. production line and may not begin until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. Existing stocks of these weapons were also heavily used in Operation Epic Fury.

The two aircraft now sitting at Chihhang are significant for another reason. Unlike Taiwan’s existing F-16V fleet, they are new-production aircraft rather than older fighters that have been upgraded.

Taiwan received 141 F-16A/B Block 20s that were upgraded to the F-16V configuration under a separate modernization program completed in 2023. The new Block 70s incorporate many of the same technologies — including the APG-83 — but are built from the ground up as new aircraft.

The Block 70s will also bring a significant new passive-sensing capability to Taiwan’s F-16 fleet. Under a $328.5-million U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract awarded to Lockheed Martin in February, Taiwan is receiving the company’s IRST21 Legion-ES infrared search and track system. Designed specifically for the F-16, the long-wave infrared sensor can passively detect and track airborne targets without emitting radar energy. That gives the aircraft another way to search for and track threats while reducing its own electromagnetic signature. The IRST21 also gives the F-16s a passive way to detect and track low-observable targets, potentially providing another means of finding Chinese stealth aircraft without relying solely on radar.

In 2019, Lockheed Martin displayed a model of a Block 70 F-16 with what appeared to be a podded IRST system on one of its chin stations at the biennial Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition in Taiwan:

The mysterious IRST pod at TADTE – https://t.co/avpx5djZMM pic.twitter.com/86lqxu6fN6

— Alert 5 (@alert5) August 16, 2019

The new fighters will therefore complement Taiwan’s upgraded F-16A/Bs while expanding the overall number of modern F-16s available to the ROCAF.

The timing matters.

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft operate around Taiwan on an increasingly routine basis, forcing the ROCAF to maintain a persistent air-defense posture. The additional F-16s will provide more aircraft for missions ranging from air defense and counter-air operations to maritime strike.

The F-16V fleet is also being tested for a more specialized intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance role. The ROCAF has recently been conducting flight and systems integration testing of the MS-110 advanced reconnaissance pod, part of its Phoenix Scout project. The service plans to acquire six pods to replace older reconnaissance equipment. Based on the DB-110 digital sensor architecture, the system combines visible-light and infrared imaging with long-range, day-and-night reconnaissance, and real-time image transmission, allowing imagery to be passed more rapidly to ground command and intelligence elements. Integrating the pod with the F-16 and associated ground systems will give Taiwan another means of monitoring activity around the island and its surrounding waters.

But Taiwan remains heavily outnumbered across the Taiwan Strait.

China is fielding an increasingly sophisticated combat aircraft fleet that includes the J-20 and J-35 stealth fighter, large numbers of advanced fourth-generation fighters, airborne early warning and other force-multiplier aircraft, and a growing variety of uncrewed systems.

And the F-16s will face the same fundamental problem as Taiwan’s other combat aircraft in a major conflict: staying operational.

China possesses extensive missile and air capabilities that could threaten Taiwan’s airbases, aircraft shelters, fuel supplies, command-and-control infrastructure, and other elements needed to keep fighters flying. You can read more about how the ROCAF would likely go to war with China in this previous in-depth feature.

Basing the new F-16s at Chihhang Air Base, operated by the 7th Tactical Fighter Wing, is significant, Choo told us.

“The basing of the aircraft at Chihhang allows the ROCAF to readily project air power south and eastwards, especially over the Bashi Channel, which is one avenue PLA can gain access to the Philippine Sea and beyond,” he explained. “Previously, ROCAF fighters from other bases maintain QRA detachments there”

The F-16 delivery today is only the beginning of a much larger effort to get all 66 aircraft into Taiwanese service.

According to the latest information from the ROCAF, 63 F-16C/D Block 70s remain in various stages of production and delivery in the United States, with some already moving through the handover process. The remaining aircraft will be delivered according to production, flight-test, and acceptance milestones before being ferried to Taiwan.

Once the full order is delivered, Taiwan will operate more than 200 F-16s when the new Block 70s are combined with its existing fleet.

That will give the ROCAF a considerably larger force of modern F-16s, with substantial commonality between the upgraded F-16V fleet and the new-production Block 70s.

The aircraft will still need to go through Taiwan’s acceptance procedures, while pilots and maintenance personnel complete the necessary conversion and training work. The new jets will then be progressively incorporated into the ROCAF’s operational units.

Remarkably, the arrival of the first Block 70 fighters today marks the first delivery of new fighters to Taiwan since 2001, when the last of the 150 F-16A/B Block 20s were delivered.

“The ROCAF’s surviving fleet of 139 F-16s, 53 Mirage 2000s, and 129 F-CK-1s was largely inducted in the 1990s, when Taiwan held the upper hand in the cross-Strait air-power balance,” Choo explained. “Even then, there remained a requirement for additional fighters, prompting the island’s first formal request to purchase 66 F-16C/Ds during the 2006 Monterey Talks.”

“By the late 2000s, these fighters were approaching the limits of their combat effectiveness as the PLA air fleet expanded in both size and capability. Fortunately, substantial upgrades began to be rolled out to the F-CK-1s and F-16s from the 2010s.”

In the wake of the 2019 acquisition of the F-16C/D Block 70s, questions arose over the aircraft’s asymmetric value as the Taiwan military increasingly focused on developing a plan for asymmetric capabilities in response to the PLA’s growing combat power.

“However, developments in recent years have underscored the continued importance of a capable fighter fleet not least for policing Taiwan’s airspace amid the PLA’s sustained gray-zone air operations around the island,” Choo added.

The timing of today’s arrival is also notable.

The aircraft reached Taiwan just days after U.S. President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. The delivery comes amid questions in Taipei about the future pace of U.S. arms transfers, after Trump said in May that a proposed $14-billion Taiwan arms package was being held in abeyance. He had approved an $11-billion package in December 2025.

Washington continues to say that its policy toward Taiwan has not changed.

Beijing, for its part, continues to oppose U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and regards the island as part of Chinese territory.

It has taken nearly seven years to get the first two F-16C/D Block 70s, to Taiwan. But their arrival marks the first step in a major modernization of the ROCAF’s F-16 fleet, adding new-production fighters with improved radar, electronic warfare, sensors, and weapons to a force that is already operating upgraded F-16Vs.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Taiwan’s First F-16 Block 70s Have Finally Arrived appeared first on TWZ.