Major innovation in civil airliner airframe technology has been slowing considerably since the 1960s. It’s a highly competitive market, and the need for efficiency, through lowest possible seat mile costs, has meant incremental refinements in airframe design, while the power plant and avionics community have raced forward.

Long Beach, California-based JetZero, is developing a radical blended wing body design that promises to revolutionize the critical mid-market, 250 seat airliner segment. Airlines are interested, but critically, the company won a $235 million development contract from the U.S. Air Force in 2023, intended to deliver a working demonstrator by early 2027.

Ominously, $14 million of fiscal 2026 funding is on the chopping block, as the Trump Administration redirects resources toward other needs, including the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system. It’s unclear whether this drop in government funding will delay the first flight of the technology demonstrator, but there is a global backlog of airliner orders from both major companies, so the timing for JetZero could be ideal, if enough private funding can be generated to fill the gap. 

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Engineered products, particularly consumer goods, have improved continuously since the advent of mass production century and a half ago but that process is accelerating as more devices become software defined. Assembling, configuring and preparing software defined devices for the end user usually require some kind of instruction manual, and one way that manufacturers save money is to move those manuals online. The removal of the constraints of ink on paper means that user manuals can be as long as the manufacturer wishes, and the result has been more, instead of less complexity for the product end user. It doesn’t have to be that way. 

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Both the former Biden and now Trump Administration’s rejection of the proposed buyout of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel will represent a turning point for the iconic American corporation. Nippon Steel has the investment capital and the technology to turn around U.S. Steel, but political considerations, especially in the new administration, mean that the future of U.S. Steel is very much in doubt.

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A key plank in the Donald Trump election platform was the widespread implementation of tariffs on goods imported into the United States. Historically, tariffs have been a popular strategy to boost domestic employment, but the globalized supply chains over the last 30 years have changed the way most production goods are manufactured. What happens to the cost of US production if critical inputs face tariffs?

A test case may be the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a major commercial aircraft program which was designed from the outset to have a widely distributed supply chain of major assemblies, with Boeing acting as an integrator and final assembler of those components. Special exemptions will likely be built into any tariff policy for American firms building globalized products. 

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The successful in-flight capture of the SpaceX Super Heavy booster on its launch pad is a major step forward toward reusability of this very large and expensive stage. The idea of catching the vehicle and suspending it in the air isn’t new. In the mid-1950s, the Ryan X-13 Vertijet demonstrated a similar system, dangling a small jet aircraft from an extendable cable, mounted on a hydraulically erectable platform.

The benefits then were like the advantages that SpaceX predicts for their much larger system, faster turnaround and weight savings by deleting landing gear. The Ryan X-13 program failed, both because of the inadequacy of jet engines of that time, and a lack of a real need for the capability. But for SpaceX, the applications for low-cost heavy lift to orbit are just beginning.

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During the Cold War, most nations on Earth had three choices: ally with United States, with the Soviet Union, or attempt to maintain nonaligned status. With rapid advancement in aviation technology after World War II, most nations realize the need for high-performance military aircraft for national security, but the highest performance airplanes and weapon systems came from either the United States or the Soviet Union. Until French aerospace company Dassault developed the Mirage 3.

The Mirage 3 offered supersonic capability on a par with the fastest military aircraft in the world, combined with a simple, maintainable airframe and critically, used French derived engines, radars, and weapon systems. And to the Mirage weapon system could be purchased on a cash and carry basis, giving nonaligned nations the ability to procure high-technology aircraft without the political entanglements of the Cold War power structure. In the process, it cemented France as a major global power in the advanced aerospace sector, a status the country enjoys today. 

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3D printing, or additive manufacturing as it’s known in the industry, have revolutionized warfare, as seen in the current Ukraine Russia war. The ability to mass-produce first-person view drones in the thousands has created a new battlefield, where traditional doctrines about armor and logistics have been changed forever. Not only do the drones make attacking armies more vulnerable, additive manufacturing allows production to be extensively decentralized, making it much harder for adversaries to degrade production capability.

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The Scaled Composites Vanguard has taken to the air, and like most designs from Northrop Grumman’s experimental division, it’s different. Small, light in weight and powered by a relatively low power jet engine, the aircraft has the look of a miniature stealth fighter plane, and can carry 2,000 pounds of ordnance, including two air to air missiles in an enclosed weapons bay. The airplane is clearly designed to have a low radar cross-section, essential for survival in any contested airspace today.

For Northrop Grumman, this may be a replay of the company’s low-cost, lightweight fighter concept, a big hit from the early 1960s: the F-5 Freedom Fighter. 

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Orbital launch services are the key to the commercial development of space. Crude flight gets the headlines, but the vast majority of launches carry communications and Earth resources satellites, and of course, military applications.

But are there too many players in the market? Space X is in the low-cost launcher, but their major market is internal, with Starlink. And with the upcoming retirement of the ISS, the market for crewed flight is uncertain. The market may bifurcate into:
(1) fewer, heavy launch providers; and
(2) multiple small sat launchers with fast reaction capability.

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As software controlling everything from video games to jet airliners has become too complex to make completely error proof, the move to increasing flight automation continues to carry risk. No one knows this more than Boeing, but the fundamental problem of systems that are too complex for humans to check means that safety may ultimately be handed over to artificial intelligence.

First, for checking human generated code, then permitting the code itself, and finally, the piloting of the airplanes themselves. 

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