Crude ground robots emerge on the battlefields of Ukraine, experts say

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  April 14, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  AeroVironment Awarded $10.7 Million Puma™ 3 AE Contract for United States Navy and Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program

  Simi Valley, Calif., April 7, 2020 – AeroVironment, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVAV), a global leader in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), today announced its receipt of a $10,677,987 firm-fixed-price contract award for Puma™ 3 AE systems and spares on Feb. 18, 2020 for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (SUAS) Program. Delivery is anticipated by April 2020. “Puma 3 AE is a combat-proven enabler of U.S. Navy and Marine Corps tactical operations, providing persistent situational awareness, expeditionary reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition, force protection and overwatch – anywhere and at any time,” said Rick Pedigo, AeroVironment vice president of business development. “Its versatility, ruggedness and reliability in a wide range of operating environments – over land and sea – consistently provide the actionable intelligence warfighters need to proceed with certainty.” The AeroVironment Puma 3 AE is a fully man-portable unmanned aircraft system designed for land and maritime operations. The hand-launched Puma 3 AE has a wingspan of 9.2 feet (2.8 meters), weighs 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms) and can operate for up to 2.5 hours at a range of up to 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) with a standard antenna, and up to 37.2 miles (60 kilometers) with AeroVironment's Long-Range Tracking Antenna (LRTA). Capable of landing in water or on land, the all-environment Puma, with its Mantis i45 EO/IR sensor suite, empowers the operator with extended flight time and a level of imaging capability never before available in the small UAS class. AeroVironment's family of small UAS comprises the majority of all unmanned aircraft in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) inventory and its rapidly growing international customer base numbers more than 45 allied governments. To learn more visit www.avinc.com. About AeroVironment Tactical UAS The RQ-20A/B Puma™, Puma™ LE, RQ-11B Raven®, RQ-12A Wasp®, together with the VAPOR® Helicopter comprise AeroVironment's family of tactical unmanned aircraft systems. This family of systems provides increased capability to the warfighter that gives ground commanders the option of selecting the appropriate aircraft based on the type of mission to be performed. This increased capability has the potential to provide significant force protection and force multiplication benefits to small tactical units and security personnel. AeroVironment provides logistics services worldwide to ensure a consistently high level of operational readiness. AeroVironment has delivered thousands of new and replacement tactical unmanned air vehicles to customers within the United States and to more than 45 allied governments. About AeroVironment, Inc. (AV) AeroVironment (NASDAQ: AVAV) provides customers with more actionable intelligence so they can proceed with certainty. Based in California, AeroVironment is a global leader in unmanned aircraft systems and tactical missile systems, and serves defense, government and commercial customers. For more information visit www.avinc.com. Safe Harbor Statement Certain statements in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are made on the basis of current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, economic, competitive, governmental and technological factors outside of our control, that may cause our business, strategy or actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, our ability to perform under existing contracts and obtain additional contracts; changes in the regulatory environment; the activities of competitors; failure of the markets in which we operate to grow; failure to expand into new markets; failure to develop new products or integrate new technology with current products; and general economic and business conditions in the United States and elsewhere in the world. For a further list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see the reports we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not intend, and undertake no obligation, to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. E-mail Facebook TwitterShare Additional AV News: click here AV Media Gallery: click here Contact: AeroVironment, Inc. Steven Gitlin +1 (805) 520-8350 pr@avinc.com Mark Boyer For AeroVironment, Inc. +1 (310) 229-5956 mark@boyersyndicate.com View source version on AeroVironment, Inc. : https://www.avinc.com/resources/press-releases/view/aerovironment-awarded-10.7-million-puma-3-ae-contract-for-united-states-nav

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  March 26, 2024 | International, Land

  France might requisition arms producers to speed up production to help Ukraine

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  September 3, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  DoD ‘Office’ Functions Move To Cloud In Multi-Billion-Dollar Contract

  By BARRY ROSENBERG WASHINGTON: Overshadowed by the dispute with DoD's planned single-award JEDI cloud contract is another multi-billion-dollar single-award cloud contract awarded today that will actually determine the software that military personnel and civil servants use every day. Under the $7.6 billion 10-year Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) cloud contract, the Pentagon will use Microsoft productivity tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, email, collaboration, file sharing, and storage — Office 365. Those applications presently reside mostly on legacy desktop computers, and will transition to a cloud-based solution across all military services. The result should be improved cybersecurity, for one thing. “The notion is that if you have it professionally and centrally managed it should be better patched and configured than having hundreds of individually managed servers,” said David Mihelcic, former chief technology officer at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and now a consultant with DMMI. “This seems reasonable, but I don't think there is any cyber magic in DEOS either.” The joint General Services Administration/Defense Department DEOS blanket purchase agreement was awarded to CSRA (acquired by General Dynamics in April 2018 for $9.7 billion) and its subcontractors Dell Marketing (a wholesale distributor of computers, peripherals, and software) and Minburn Technology (a value added reseller that specializes in Microsoft enterprise software agreements). The award includes a five-year base period with two two-year options and one one-year option. “DOD's cloud strategy includes both general purpose and fit-for-purpose clouds (and) DEOS is a great example of a fit-for-purpose cloud that supports our multi-cloud strategy,” said DOD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy in a statement. “DEOS will streamline our use of cloud email and collaborative tools while enhancing cybersecurity and information sharing based on standardized needs and market offerings. “The journey to the cloud has been, and will continue to be, an iterative learning process. All lessons learned from pilot programs and the department's early cloud adopters have been rolled into this solution. DEOS takes advantage of technical, security and contractual lessons from these ongoing pilots, while military services are leveraging them to assess the readiness of their infrastructure to support migration to DEOS.” DEOS includes voice, video, and text collaboration capabilities, which the DoD already has with capabilities under enterprise services like: Defense Collaboration Services (DCS), which provides secure web conferencing and instant messaging services on the Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) and Secure Internet Protocol Routing Network (SIPRNet), and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) chat. “Will it be an improvement over the current capabilities? I guess we will see,” said Mihalcic. “I can't say I found the collaborative capabilities of O365 better than what we had in DoD.” While DEOS on the surface appears to provide a back-office function, it can also be considered a weapon system given that it will provide common enterprise applications at local base, post, camp, and station levels — including deployed and afloat organizations — over the sensitive but unclassified NIPRNet and the secret SIPRNet, to include operations in Denied, Disconnected, Intermittent, and Limited Bandwidth (D-DIL) environments. “I would say almost certainly (DEOS is a warfighting capability), especially the SIPR instance,” said Mihelcic. “DoD uses email, chat, and DCS collaboration in support of warfighting today and this will now take on those needs. “As for DIL environments, DISA had threshold requirements for deployable instances in the draft RFP. The vendor most likely will satisfy with existing MS Exchange and Sharepoint software on deployable servers. To be honest, I think that most tactical units, including deployed Marines and Navy afloat, will stick with what they have.” https://breakingdefense.com/2019/08/dod-office-functions-move-to-cloud-in-multi-billion-dollar-contract/