May 22, 2019 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR
WASHINGTON – Boeing Phantom Works, the company's advanced technology arm, is introducing a new flat satellite communications (SATCOM) broadband antenna that would bring high-speed data to military aircraft. Space News reports.
9 May 2019 -- The low-profile electronically steered flat conformal antenna and a multi-channel terminal will be in production next year and the launch customer will be the Navy's future unmanned mid-air refueling tanker, the MQ-25, which Boeing is developing under an $805 million contract.
The initial market for the phased array antenna and terminal will be operators of militarized Boeing jets like the Navy's P-8 surveillance aircraft and the Air Force's KC-46 aerial refueling tanker, to bring a smart skin design approach these contemporary aircraft.
Compared to airborne command centers such as the president's Air Force One, most military aircraft have limited connectivity. The majority of military aircraft have narrowband terminals that get kilobits of data. A phased array antenna would give them access to government and commercial Ka-band satellites that provide from 10s to 100s of megabits of data throughput, Gathmann said.
June 5, 2023 | International, Other Defence
New orders for U.S.-made goods rose for a second straight month in April, boosted largely by defense spending, but the overall manufacturing industry continued to struggle under the weight of higher interest rates.
August 2, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
As it looks to get new technologies developed and into the field as quickly as possible, the Department of Defense has been making greater use of Other Transaction Authority (OTA), a quick-strike contracting mechanism that has gone in and out of fashion since the 1950s, but is now seeing a resurgence. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), for example, recently awarded a $49 million OTA to Enterprise Services, teaming with four other companies, for DISA's National Background Investigation Services (NBIS), a shared service intended to combine a number of separate systems to speed up process investigations. The Navy also took the OTA route in awarding Advanced Technology International a $100 million deal to manage work on the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Command's Information Warfare Research Project. The Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental (DIUx), created in 2015 to foster innovation in partnership with industry, has made extensive use of OTAs, telling Congress earlier this year it had awarded 61 other transaction agreements worth $145 million, with the agreements reached within an average of 78 days. What both projects have in common are that they involve prototyping new technologies and involve companies that don't usually work as DoD contractors. They also aim for rapid development and deployment. The Navy contract “will accelerate acquisition and bring non-traditional sources, research and development labs, and industry together to provide new, innovative information warfare solutions,” said Rear Adm. C.D. Becker, commander of SPAWAR Systems Command. Full article: https://www.meritalk.com/articles/are-otas-the-thing-of-the-future/
January 13, 2021 | International, C4ISR
DEFENSE Rafaut acquiert Secapem Rafaut vient d'acquérir Secapem, une PME innovante spécialisée dans les systèmes d'entraînement des forces armées. « Avec cette opération, le chiffre d'affaires de Rafaut, un peu au-dessus de 90 millions d'euros, va s'approcher des 100 millions d'euros », précise Nicolas Orance, directeur général du groupe, qui souligne que Rafaut entre, avec cette opération, dans « une phase plus active d'acquisitions, pour répondre aux enjeux de taille critique, en ayant toujours à l'esprit de maintenir la complémentarité entre le civil et la défense ». Le modèle dual du groupe, civil et militaire, est en effet gage de résilience. Le rachat de Secapem permet à Rafaut d'acquérir des activités liées aux systèmes d'entraînement au tir réel et des solutions de scoring hautes technologies pour les forces armées, précise L'Usine Nouvelle. L'opération concerne aussi Lun'tech, filiale de Secapem depuis 2013, qui propose des solutions complémentaires pour l'entraînement aux tirs guidés par radar. L'Usine Nouvelle du 13 janvier