Industry

Navistar International Corp. was awarded an $880 million contract to upgrade more than 2,700 mine-resistant trucks for the U.S. military.

Navistar announced Tuesday it had received the contract for upgrading the chassis of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, improving their off-road capabilities for the terrain in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the new military will be “more agile, flexible, ready to deploy, innovative and technologically advanced.”

A California lawmaker on Thursday will convene a roundtable with defense-industry officials in San Diego, a major West Coast hub of the defense sector.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a House Armed Services Committee member, will host the meeting, along with Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), who chairs an HASC subcommittee on business challenges faced by the defense industry.

“The roundtable will feature local businesses involved in the defense industry and address the issues these businesses face working with the Department of Defense, as well as the challenges ahead,” according to Hunter’s office.

Turkey has committed to buying two F-35 fighter jets, a government agency said Thursday.

The decision to purchase the F-35 planes, announced by Turkish Defense Industries Undersecretary Murad Bayar Thursday, is another positive sign for Lockheed Martin's F-35 program, which is a ripe target for Pentagon budget cuts.

Boeing’s decision to close a Wichita aircraft facility led lawmakers to accuse the defense contractor of dishonesty in talks.

The price of the 179 flying gas stations Boeing plans to build for the U.S. Air Force will not change despite production work being performed at a different facility than long planned, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

“We expect no change in price or schedule at the moment,” the spokesman, Doug Holmes, told The Hill.

After vowing to assemble new U.S. Air Force tanker planes in Kansas, Boeing will now build them in Washington state.

During the epic U.S. Air Force KC-X tanker competition, there were several constants in an ever-changing narrative. One was that a Boeing win would bring new jobs to its Wichita, Kan., facility — but the aerospace and defense giant appears poised to change that.

Two Lockheed Martin-made missile systems will give a key U.S. ally in the Middle East a missile defense arsenal one company official on Tuesday predicted will be “the best in the world.”

The sale comes amid Mideast tensions stemming from Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil passageway.