BELGIUM. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has signed a Foreign Military Sales contract with the U.S. Air Force for Belgian Ministry of Defense to acquire the MQ-9B SkyGuardian Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS).

WASHINGTON. A new U.S. Navy information warfare project received a two-year extension and $400 million in new funding, the Navy announced. James Guerts, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, approved a funding ceiling increase and extension for the Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP) of the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command.

ARLINGTON, Va. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Australian Defense Force have signed an agreement to collaborate on the joint design, development, testing, and demonstration of dynamic multiplatform electromagnetic maneuver warfare resource allocation management (EMW RAM) tools and decision aids for airborne use.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. Abaco Systems has won orders from a major systems integrator -- which specializes in providing advanced technologies for the defense and aerospace markets -- for a quantity of Abaco’s PC821 FPGA Cards and FMC120 FPGA mezzanine cards, which will be deployed in a subsystem to provide FPGA [field-programmable gate array] processing capability needed to scan, analyze, and act on satellite-communications data for the U.S. Air Force.

MELBOURNE, Fla. L3Harris Technologies has received a contract from the U.S. Navy for the Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MUSV) program. This is the Navy’s first program for an unmanned surface vehicle to support the Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations strategy.

WASHINGTON. The U.S. Army has developed a new system for land mine identification that it says will reduce false alarm rates. Vadum, Inc., North Carolina State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Army Research Office all collaborated to develop the Vibration-ENhanced Underground Sensing system (Venus), the Army said

ANDOVER, Mass. Mercury Systems, Inc., company specializing in secure mission-critical technologies for aerospace and defense, announced the receipt of a new U.S. patent covering various methods to protect controller area network (CAN)-based systems from malicious cyberattacks.

NEW YORK, N.Y. Persistent Systems, LLC, company specializing in mobile ad hoc network (MANET) solutions, announced that it has completed Phase I of the U.S. Army Robotic Command Vehicles (RCV) program.

TAMPA, Fla. CAE USA has won a contract from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the U.S. Air Force Air Education and Training Command (AETC) and its Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT 2.5) initiative.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. Liteye Systems has launched a counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) solution that it calls the Trailer Anti-UAS Defense System (T-AUDS), an on-the-move or fixed-site C-UAS package that the company says is able to detect and defeat radio-frequency-controlled and silent flight drones while mobile and then transition quickly to static mode. 

CANADA. Elbit Systems’ Canada-based subsidiary GeoSpectrum Technologies is set to make the first delivery to a military customer of a through-water communications system featuring its C-Bass family of compact very low frequency (VLF) underwater transducers. The undisclosed NATO customer is expected to receive the long-range acoustic communications system before the end of August.

WASHINGTON. Damage control software to track the spread of the COVID-19 virus is being rolled out to U.S. Navy vessels, the Naval Sea Systems Command said. The software will be delivered in laptop computers to171 surface ships, and will be used to repurpose the existing Advanced Damage Control System (ADCS), officials said.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. Northrop Grumman's construction of the first B-21 Raider stealth bomber, slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, is back on track, a U.S. Air Force official said. Randall Walden, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, acknowledged that some B-21 subcontractors were affected by the pandemic

HAIFA, Israel. Elbit Systems announced that its THOR multirotor Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) mini unmanned aerial system (UAS) successfully underwent a series of environmental-durability tests ahead of Elbit's delivery of more than 1,000 THOR units to an army in Southeast Asia. 

ARLINGTON, Va. The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) has awarded BAE Systems a contract worth approximately $19 million to develop a prototype design for a new state-of-the-art Wargaming Center to be built at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.