FORT WORTH, Texas. Bell Textron Inc., a Textron Inc. company, has announced agreements with nine premier aerospace industry leaders to form Team Invictus. The companies are producing the Bell 360 Invictus prototype submission as part of the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program.

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.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. Northrop Grumman Corporation has won a not-to-exceed $2.37 billion undefinitized contract modification for Phase 1 of the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) Polar program from the United States Space Force (USSF).

BETHESDA, Md. Squad X prime contractor Lockheed Martin has awarded BAE Systems a contract to provide key autonomy and artificial intelligence capabilities that aim to advance the effectiveness of tactical robotic air and ground vehicles and create true partnerships between ground warfighters and machines at the small-unit level.

CHANTILLY, Va. Perspecta Inc., U.S. government services provider, announced that it won an Other Transaction Agreement from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command to deliver the Army Training Information System (ATIS). The four-year, fixed-price award represents new work for the company with a total potential ceiling value of $237 million.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. Real-Time Innovations (RTI), software framework provider for smart machines and real-world systems, announced that Kratos, National Security Solutions provider, has selected RTI Connext DDS as the connectivity framework for its military simulators including the Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Training System (RVCTS).

UNITED KINGDOM. The Royal Air Force (RAF) has selected the Collins Aerospace Systems FasTAK Gateway to advance its tactical data link capabilities on the ground as part of the RAF’s Air Support Operations Squadron Digital Command and Control experimentation program.

HOUSTON, Texas. KBR announced that it has been awarded a $33.5 million task order from the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to provide product and life cycle analysis of common avionics for the 638th Supply Chain Management Group (SCMG) and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC). 

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.

MOSES LAKE, Wash. magniX and AeroTEC, aerospace testing and engineering companies, announced the flight of an all-electric Cessna Grand Caravan 208B. The flight of the eCaravan, magnified by a 750-horsepower (560 kW) magni500 propulsion system, took place at the AeroTEC Flight Test Center at the Grant County International Airport (KMWH) in Moses Lake, Wash.

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.

TEMPE, Ariz. Comtech Telecommunications Corp. announced that during its third quarter of fiscal 2020, its Tempe, Ariz.-based subsidiary, Comtech EF Data Corp., which is part of Comtech’s Commercial Solutions segment, received a $4.7 million contract for engineering services from a large prime U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) contractor to support a critical Air Force and Army Anti-jam Modem (A3M) program under the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC).

WASHINGTON. The U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting (GEO) satellite program, commonly referred to as NGG, completed its preliminary design reviews (PDR) for its two candidate mission payloads, May 21.

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona. Elements of the Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) technical standard are leveraging standards developed by the VITA Standards Organization, specifically VITA 65, also known as OpenVPX. VITA has also become a participating member of the SOSA Consortium along with the Air Force, Army, and Navy. This harmonization between the services, industry, and industry standardization bodies helps drive the SOSA initiative’s strong momentum within the defense community. This webcast titled, "SOSA and VITA: Enabling Open Standards for Improved Capability," to be held on Wednesday, June 24, at 2 pm Est., will cover how the SOSA Consortium is working with VITA to enable standardization of VITA-based standards within the SOSA Technical Standard.