UK Army selects battle-tested Tekever drone to replace Watchkeeper
The UK Ministry of Defence announced this week that it has chosen the Tekever AR5, a surveillance drone built by the UK-based company Tekever, to replace the British Armyβs aging Watchkeeper fleet under a deal worth up to $533 million over the next ten years. The program, called Project CORVUS, will see the Army field [β¦]
U.S. Marine Corps attack and utility helicopters are heading into a major upgrade built specifically to carry the next generation of weapons, and the electrical rewiring needed to make that possible just landed a $33.6 million contract. Naval Air Systems Command handed Bell Textron, the Fort Worth, Texas manufacturer that builds both helicopters, the deal [β¦]
An electric motor smaller than a coffee mug might decide whether Americaβs drone army flies during the next crisis, and the U.S. Army has placed a nearly $80 million bet on building that motor at home instead of buying it from a country Pentagon planners increasingly view as an adversary. The Department of War announced [β¦]
A Formula 1 engineering firm has unveiled a nearly supersonic combat drone designed to fly wing to wing with fighter jets, and it costs less than a fraction of what those crewed aircraft run. MGI Engineering announced the launch of the T-022 Vortex, describing it as the first UK-built Autonomous Collaborative Platform of its kind, [β¦]
A Croatian drone manufacturer has laid out an ambitious bet that Europeβs appetite for weapons it doesnβt have to import from China or the United States is only getting bigger. Orqa announced Wednesday it is scaling its annual manufacturing capacity from roughly 290,000 products today to 500,000 by the end of 2026, a jump the [β¦]
HDT Robotics, doing business as BLADE, announced Wednesday it has been selected as one of five industry partners for the U.S. Armyβs Project Sustainment initiative, a program run through the National Advanced Mobility Consortium that focuses on automating how supplies reach troops in combat zones where the enemy is actively trying to disrupt that resupply [β¦]
Echodyne, a radar manufacturer based in Kirkland, Washington, announced Thursday it has built a plugin that lets its MESA radar systems plug directly into ATAK, the Android Team Awareness Kit software that has become the default shared map and situational awareness tool across much of the U.S. military and a growing list of public safety [β¦]
Sikorsky, the Lockheed Martin subsidiary best known for the Black Hawk helicopter, announced Wednesday at the Farnborough International Airshow that its Nomad 100 uncrewed aircraft has completed initial ground and flight testing under DARPAβs Early VTOL Aircraft Demonstration program, known as EVADE, a fast-track Pentagon research effort designed to push new vertical takeoff aircraft from [β¦]
A congressman whose own military career started at Fort Campbell has had four of his ideas written into the bill that funds and governs the entire U.S. military for the next year. Rep. Matt Van Epps, a Tennessee Republican representing the stateβs 7th District, announced Wednesday that four of his amendments were included in the [β¦]
Boeing and Lufthansa Technik Defense signed an agreement Wednesday at the Farnborough International Airshow to establish general terms for sustaining Germanyβs new CH-47F Block II Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, laying the groundwork for a network of parts warehouses across the country to support the aircraft once they enter Luftwaffe service. The Bundeswehr selected the CH-47F Block [β¦]
GE Aerospace and Magellan Aerospace Corporation announced Wednesday they have signed a memorandum of understanding to establish maintenance, repair and overhaul capabilities in Canada for the F414-GE-39E engine that powers the Saab JAS 39 Gripen E fighter, an agreement the companies explicitly tied to whether the Canadian government actually decides to buy the Gripen for [β¦]
NODA AI announced Wednesday it has secured a $10 million contract from the Department of War, the current name for the Department of Defense, to develop software that lets American military drones and autonomous vehicles keep executing a commanderβs orders even after enemy jamming or cyberattacks cut off their communications links. The contract funds an [β¦]
Raytheon, the RTX-owned defense manufacturer based in Andover, Massachusetts, announced that the U.S. Navy awarded it a $1.8 billion contract extension for hardware production and sustainment of the SPY-6 family of radars, building on an initial contract the company received in March 2022. The extension carries options that, if the Navy exercises all of them, [β¦]
The British defense giant unveiled BlackThorn, a new family of modular warheads built specifically for the current wave of cheap, mass-produced weapons reshaping modern warfare, from autonomous drones and one-way attack munitions to counter-drone interceptors, missiles and unmanned ground vehicles. BAE Systems designed the warhead family to be modular, meaning the same core technology can [β¦]
BAE Systems, Boeing and Saab announced they have signed a formal teaming agreement to jointly pursue the UKβs next generation pilot training program, built around Boeingβs T-7 trainer jet, and the deal commits the companies to building a brand new final assembly and integration facility inside Britain. Advanced fast jet training currently runs through the [β¦]
BAE Systems announced at the Farnborough International Airshow that it has signed a licensing agreement with an unnamed strategic defense partner to support local manufacture of the Light Gun artillery system inside Ukraine, giving Kyivβs defense industry direct access to the technical know-how behind a weapon British and Commonwealth forces have relied on for half [β¦]
A Ukrainian drone maker that helped push the Russian Navy out of much of the Black Sea is bringing its combat-tested kamikaze boats to American shipyards. UFORCE, the London-registered parent of Ukraineβs MAGURA unmanned surface vessel program, signed a memorandum of understanding this week with RECONCRAFT, the Alaska-founded builder of Special Operations combatant craft, to [β¦]
The U.S. Marine Corpsβ Program Manager Light Armored Vehicles held what the service calls a Marine Touchpoint event last month for the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle, letting Light Armored Reconnaissance Marines get hands-on time with the new vehicle, including a test drive, months before the program reaches its next major design review. The Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle, [β¦]
A robotic gun mount built by a Texas firm just landed a spot on one of the Marine Corpsβ most important counter-drone vehicles, giving Marines a way to turn an ordinary machine gun into an autonomous, AI-guided weapon. Allen Control Systems announced that the Marine Corps selected its Bullfrog autonomous weapon station for the serviceβs [β¦]
A helicopter maker and an electric aircraft startup just proved they can bolt cutting-edge autonomy software onto a brand-new aircraft in under two weeks, a pace that would have sounded absurd for military aviation programs just a few years ago. Sikorsky, the helicopter manufacturer owned by Lockheed Martin, announced at the Farnborough International Airshow that [β¦]