Tonight's All About the Upgrades

Author

Joe K.
May 25, 2025

First, the Teams link for 5:30 PM Pacific, 8:30 PM Eastern tonight.

Microsoft Teams meeting

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Meeting ID: 937 732 877 632 3 

 

Passcode: pj6wA7 

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With that, as I’m sure most of you are aware, my former employer wanted to go in a different direction and I was let go. I smile that my three years & three months happened and the time to study for a new direction has increased. So tonight’s about the upgrades…

More B-21s if B-52J Upgrade Doesn’t Work

A distinct possibility… according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. USAF Chief Allvin wants more B-21 6th Gen Stealth Bombers if the B-52J Upgrade doesn’t work out…

Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 80?

That’s a possibility according to President Trump and many news reports. Here’s a good YouTube reviewing the idea:

Upgrading the F-35 to NGAD Standards?

In the wake of Lockheed Martin losing the NGAD to Boeing’s F-47, Lockheed Martin has offered to, “get 80% of sixth-gen capability at half the price” into the F-35 family. To quote Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Talciet in Breaking Defense,

“Dogfights are not what we want anymore. In air-to-air combat, we want to shoot the other guys, I said, before he even knows we’re there. And you do that, first of all, with the critical sensors to find them. Then you make sure they can’t find you, and that’s the stealth technology. … “There’s some techniques with that we’ve used for our NGAD offering that can be applied, whether they’re materials, they’re geometries, they’re counter-measures for stealth, so I can’t be seen.”

Jim Taiclet, LockMart CEO

There’s more to this.