The first flight test of the F-35 STOVL version, originally scheduled around the end of March, will be delayed until late September, the acting F-35 deputy PEO said today at the Navy League conference. There is good news. The refreshingly candid and approachable deputy PEO, Capt. Wade Knudson, said that the delay will not cost taxpayers any more money.

UPDATED: With Latest CRS Analysis Doubling the Navy’s Projected Shortfall
The Pentagon’s top weapons analysts are reportedly arguing that the Navy does not face a fighter gap, something Boeing and various lawmakers have argued is a pressing problem the country must fix. A congressional source tells us that “apparently PA&E is convinced that there isn’t actually a strike fighter shortfall, while the Navy is convinced they’ll be 240-plus planes short of Naval strike fighters… We’re trying to figure out how PA&E can possibly come to this conclusion, but we’re not getting many answers.”

My colleague Colin Clark and I stumbled across a cool technology — Global Situational Awareness — at the Navy League conference. Offered by DRS Technologies, it’s a geospatial information system that also allows sharing of data from almost any source — UAV videos, schematics, photos, SAR, IR etc. — on a pretty simple touchscreen. The imported data can be overlaid on the geospatial data and used for mission planning and a host of other applications. Anderson Cooper and CNN — eat your hearts out.

The Navy needs a fundamentally different way of procuring ships.” The Navy faces a “pressurized” period, the sort of time, when “we have to go ahead and make decisions we otherwise would not make.” The Navy cancelled LCS because “costs were taking off at an uncontrollable rate.” The Navy restructured DDG 1000 because it was a “not the ship I envisioned us needing in the future.” That litany of woe and tough times all came from Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, at this year’s Navy League conference.

UPDATED: With Adm. Mullen Saying He is Not a “Proponent” of Arming Merchant Marine And Piracy “Is Not My Priority Right Now.“
The head of the Maritime Administration, who oversees America’s merchant marine, said today that he opposed the arming of US merchant seamen to counter pirates. “We do not want to arm mariners in any event,” James Caponiti, acting Maritime Administrator, said at today’s Navy League conference in Washington. He said the risks were just too great even though there is training for mariners to be trained in the use of small arms.

The Marines, in what could offer some lessons for the KC-45 tanker program, is building KC-130J airoborne refuelers that will boast substantial ISR and firepower, according to our colleague Byan Mitchell at Military​.com. In what looks a classic Marine approach, the Corps is basically building a modular system is can apply whenever needed to provide streaming video to commanders, as well as an impressive weapons suite.

Rep. Jack Murtha had insisted that his plan to divide the tanker buy between Boeing and Northrop Grumman would not only ensure the contract was not challenged but would actually save the country billions of dollars. We all make mistakes and Murtha seems to have realized that he may have made one in this case.

A former head of Air Combat Command is aware of “no analysis whatsoever” that could have produced a requirement that the Air Force buy just 187 F-22 air superiority fighters. Retired Gen. Richard Hawley told a group of largely sympathetic senators that the only “detailed analysis” he knows of came up with a requirement for 381 F-22s, the number needed to fight two simultaneous wars.