Military Embedded Systems

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. The first Boeing T-7A Red Hawk military trainer successfully arrived at Edwards Air Force Base on November 8, a move that kicks off the U.S. Air Force developmental flight-test campaign for the aircraft. When all tests are completed, the T-7A is intended to be the replacement pilot-training capability for the T-38 Talon, which was first fielded in the early 1960s.

DENVER, Colo. Boom Supersonic -- the company building a supersonic airliner -- is readying its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft for first flight sometime before the end of 2023, according to a company announcement.

COLCHESTER, U.K. Concurrent Technologies announced the launch of its highest-performance plug-in card (PIC) to date, the TR MAA/9sd-AFT.

RESTON, Va. SES Space & Defense (a wholly-owned subsidiary of satellite-communications company SES) won a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to provide medium-Earth orbit (MEO) low-latency high-throughput satellite (HTS) services.

WAKEFIELD, Mass. PICMG -- PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group, a leading consortium for the development of open embedded computing specifications -- has ratified Revision 3.0 of the MicroTCA.0 (µTCA.0) specification, a move that addresses urgent bandwidth requirements by defining 100 GbE and PCIe Gen 5 fabrics that improve system performance by four times while also expanding platform thermal design power (TDP), thereby enabling the use of higher-performance processors. 

RESTON, Va. Technology company SOSi and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC) have signed a task order worth $63 million under which SOSi will deliver artificial intelligence (Al) and machine learning (ML) technology development services.

ANDOVER, Mass. Mercury Systems announced that it signed an agreement with the U.S. Navy to develop manufacturing capabilities that would allow commercial photonics chiplets to accelerate edge processing in defense applications.

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. The U.S. Air Force's 52nd Combat Communications Squadron (CBCS), based at Robins Air Force base, is beta-testing two new deployable tactical-communications kits: the Agile Communications Package (ACP) and the Fly-Away Communications Terminal (FACT).

NATIONAL GUARD CAMP ATTERBURY-MUSCATATUCK, Ind. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Indiana National Guard hosted the second iteration of the Technology Readiness Experimentation 2023 event (T-REX) at Muscatatuck Training Center/Camp Atterbury, Indiana during mid-October, as part of the T-REX assessment of technologies that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) deems critical to warfighting efforts.

BOZEMAN, Mont. Defense-technology company Reveal Technology won a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant totaling $749,000 for research, development, testing, and evaluation of Reveal's Farsight platform.

MCLEAN, Va. Military shipbuiders HII announced that its Mission Technologies division won a $79 million contract to support the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) mission to develop, test, and field a missile defense system intended to protect the U.S. and its allies against enemy ballistic missile attacks.

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. U.S. Air Force personnel recently assembled at Eglin Air Force Base to take delivery of the ALIA electric aircraft from electric/aerospace company BETA Technologies, which partnered with the Air Force's AFWERX directorate to develop one of several zero-emission aircraft for the U.S. military. 

WASHINGTON. A different type of space antenna will be getting a ride to space on a 6U CubeSat as part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) 43 mission, slated for launch in March 2024. 

YUMA PROVING GROUND, Ariz. Raytheon reports successful demonstration of the capabilities of what it calls the Low, slow, small-unmanned aircraft Integrated Defense System (LIDS) during the U.S. Army's annual summer test period.

ARLINGTON, Va. Electronics provider CAES won a contract from the U.S. Navy for production of the AN/ALQ-99 low band consolidation (LBC) transmitter used in electronic-warfare (EW) systems.

AUSTIN, Texas. Artificial intelligence (AI) security provider HiddenLayer announced its selection by AFWERX (the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force) for a small business innovation Direct-to-Phase II contract aimed at implementing HiddenLayer's Machine Learning Security (MLSec) Platform to address new challenges posed by the use of AI.

ARLINGTON, Va. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as it looks into the near future in which military personnel widely rely on mixed-reality (MR) systems for their missions, recently launched the Intrinsic Cognitive Security (ICS) program to explore and validate mathematical approaches to ensure that MR system designs mitigate potential cognitive attacks.

WASHINGTON. Two companies -- Shield AI, a U.S. defense technology company and Sentient Vision Systems (Sentient), an Australia-based company that makes artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled real-time situational-awareness tools -- agreed to a long-term agreement to deliver Sentient’s ViDAR AI system for use on the Sentient V-BAT vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) uncrewed aerial system (UAS).

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. Military shipbuilding company HII won a $134 million contract to provide readiness and training software development support for the U.S. Navy. The Navy will use the live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) training systems to prepare troops for combat readiness.

MELBOURNE, Fla. L3Harris Technologies signed two contracts worth as much as $134 million to update portions of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) space domain awareness mission.