WASHINGTON Fiscal 2004 budget decisions are expected to provide the first concrete insight into what direction the U.S. Navy wants to take under a new operational concept put forward by the service’s military leadership. Chief of Naval Operations Adm.

LONDON PARIS Industry officials are touting NATO’s Prague Summit capability “transformation” agenda as a key opportunity to make progress finally on a longstanding, if unfunded, requirement for an alliance equivalent of the U.S. E-8C Joint-STARS airborne surveillance platform.

WASHINGTON Hoping to make its aircraft more resilient in the face of increasingly sophisticated infrared-guided airdefenses, the U.S. Air Force’s Special Operations Command (Afsoc) is upgrading self-protection gear on some of its helicopters and specially configured C-130s.

TOKYO Japan’s Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT-1R), scheduled for launch next year to geosynchronous orbit, constitutes Japan’s first attempt at combining independent payloads for more efficiency and cost-effectiveness.