Military Embedded Systems

GERMANTOWN, Md. Hughes Network Systems reports a recent successful in-flight demonstration of its HeloSat satellite communications (SATCOM) system from a Black Hawk helicopter; company officials say that the HeloSat transmitted consistent, real-time, full-motion video to a live global audience from the Black Hawk as it surveilled the landscape below. 

ARLINGTON, Va. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded contracts worth a combined $30.4 million to build payloads and platforms for DARPA's Blackjack program, a project that aims toprove the military utility of low-Earth orbit constellations and mesh networks of low-cost satellites. 

ANNAPOLIS, Md. Artificial intelligence (AI) research and development firm GMATEK has been tapped by the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Program Executive Office – Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO-USC) to perform research and development in multisensor fusion and analytics to detect, mitigate, and compensate for sensor degradation onboard unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs). 

STOUFFVILLE, Ontario. Wolf Advanced Technology (WOLF) has agreed to supply to Herrick Technology Laboratories (HTL) a newly designed SOSA-aligned module, the VPX3U-RTX5000-SWITCH, for integration into new Herrick adaptive waveform processing applications.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. Defense spending during and post the COVID-19 pandemic under three scenarios -- gradual containment, severe pandemic, and global emergency -- will either stagnate or decline as governments around the world allocate funds to contain the pandemic and reactivate the economy, according to a new study from Frost & Sullivan, "Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis of the Defense Industry." 

JOHNSTOWN, Penn. Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) has agreed to a contract modification worth $2.75 million with the U.S. Marine Corps Installations Command (MCICOM) to continue to provide functional and technical programmatic support for securing the Marine Corps’ Facility Related Control Systems (FRCS). The most recent accord is the second of two option periods on the original contract -- awarded in March 2018 -- and runs through March 2021. 

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico. Applied Technology Associates (ATA) has won a contract as part of the U.S. Army Directed Energy Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (DE-MSHORAD) prototyping initiative to supply the Independent Target Acquisition and Tracking System (ITATS) for the future system.

WASHINGTON, DC. The United States Air Force (USAF) has awarded development contracts to 28 vendors for its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) that could be worth $950 million over five years. 

MERRIMACK, N.H. BAE Systems' FAST Labs research and development organization won a contract worth $3.5 million from Lockheed Martin to provide Mission Intelligence for Tactical Systems (MITS) advanced sensor fusion, artificial intelligence, and autonomy capabilities for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Squad X program.

FREMONT, Calif. The global market for directed-energy weapons systems will reach $4.02 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 18.15%, according to a new market study from BIS Research, "Global Directed Energy Weapon Systems Market − Analysis and Forecast 2020-2030."

HUDSON, New Hampshire. BAE Systems reports that it successfully completed test shots of its APKWS [Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System] laser-guided rockets from a tactical configuration ground-based weapon system for the first time. The ground-launch capability, says the company, builds on hundreds of successful shots during combat from rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft.

VALENCIA, California. Intelligent biosensor/digital health provider PercuSense has won a contract worth $4.6 million from the U.S. government's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop a continuous monitoring platform for warfighters that enables early detection of toxic chemical exposure.

AMSTERDAM. The total global defense budget -- estimated at approximately $1.8 trillion in 2020 -- is expected to grow to around $2.3 trillion by 2028, a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 2.8%, according to a new study by Market Forecast, "Global Defense Budget Analysis -- Forecast to 2028."

SAN ANTONIO. The radar technology landscape used in the naval arena is shifting toward multirole and modular systems, especially with the arrival of newer gallium nitride (GaN)-based active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, according to the findings of a new market analysis from Frost & Sullivan, "Global Naval Radar Market, Forecast to 2028."

PALO ALTO, Calif, Software-security firm ForAllSecure has garnered a contract worth $45 million with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to deploy its "Mayhem" next-generation fuzzing software across multiple DoD branches.

CHANTILLY, Va. Cybersecurity contractor Perspecta has completed the acquisition of DHPC Technologies (DHPC -- Woodbridge, New Jersey), a developer of electronic warfare (EW) technologies that is already a provider to the U.S. Army.

DALLAS. Lockheed Martin has won a contract worth $6.07 billion from the U.S. Army for the production of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptors and associated equipment.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa. Collins Aerospace Systems (a Raytheon Technologies unit) has received its eighth delivery order from the U.S. Army to provide AN/PRC-162 ground radios for the Handheld, Manpack and Small Form Fit (HMS) program.

SAN DIEGO. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) reports that U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) pilots and sensor operators from Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 1 (VMU-1) recently conducted their first operational flight of an MQ-9A Reaper unmanned aircraft system (UAS) in the Middle East, with the operators located in Yuma, Arizona.