October 15, 2024 | International, Land
November 16, 2023 | International, Aerospace
General Atomics fires back at critics of MQ-9 drone after downing
Experts have questioned the sustainability of flying expensive aircraft in contested environments.
On the same subject
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September 13, 2019 | International, Aerospace
Lockheed To Migrate F-35 Backbone To Cloud Architecture
Lee Hudson and Steve Trimble Lockheed Martin intends to migrate its F-35 digital support backbone, the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), to a native-cloud architecture by year's end and field it in 2020. A joint government and industry team tested an early version of the new framework in both lab and flight test environments in May, company spokesman Mike Friedman said in a Sept. 11 statement to Aerospace DAILY. “By moving all ALIS applications to a cloud-native, open architecture, we can rapidly develop and test pieces of ALIS without having to load the entire system for each upgrade,” he said. “And instead of aggregating many fixes over a 12- to 18-month period into a single upgrade, the new approach allows developers to create, test, receive feedback and implement fixes every few weeks while reducing development and fielding costs.” The new construct still must be tested in an operational environment so that developers can garner user feedback to refine their approach. Separately, the newest ALIS software release, 3.1.1, is saving pilots an average of 35 min. in report generation and review. The new software release also is saving maintainers 40 min. each day in report generation and several hours weekly in managing fleet directive reports, he added. “This latest release leverages the development work Lockheed Martin completed in 2018 with its internal investment funding,” Friedman said. “In 2018, Lockheed Martin invested approximately $50 million in ALIS and will continue investing approximately $180 million through 2021 to modernize ALIS and enhance enterprise sustainment systems.” Extrapolated across the enterprise of more than 425 aircraft flying today, it will save more than 20,000 manhours annually. Lockheed Martin has invested in additional time saving and efficiency ALIS automations and is working with the government on implementation and fielding plans, Friedman said. https://aviationweek.com/defense/lockheed-migrate-f-35-backbone-cloud-architecture
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February 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Design Milestone Reached For Air-Launched Hypersonic Missile
Steve Trimble ORLANDO—Lockheed Martin expects to complete the critical design review (CDR) on Feb. 27 for the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), the U.S. military's most technologically ambitious hypersonic weapon, an executive said. The key milestone, indicating an imminent design freeze, comes as part of an unusual development schedule imposed on the ARRW program. The technical complexity of ARRW stems from its high lift-to-drag profile, a shape the U.S. military has never tested successfully in flight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) program, which shares the advanced ARRW profile, is intended as a risk-reduction measure for ARRW, but still has not completed a self-powered flight test. In fact, the CDR milestone for ARRW originally was scheduled to come after a first flight for TBG, but the Air Force has kept ARRW on its original pace even as schedules for the DARPA program have slipped. “The [original TBG and ARRW] schedules were more serial,” said John Varley, vice president of hypersonics for Lockheed's Missiles and Fire Control business. “As we're moving fast, things are merging together and becoming more parallel. If we waited until all that was done, we wouldn't be moving at the pace that the customer is looking for.” Indeed, Jeff Babione, president of Lockheed's Skunk Works, said last June that he expected the first TBG flight by the end of last year or early next year. But U.S. defense officials now say they expect the DARPA program to enter flight testing later this year, after a planned test of the Block 1 version of the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, a low-lift-to-drag shape for intermediate-range Army and Navy missiles. In other ways, ARRW is further along in development than most military acquisition projects at the CDR milestone, Varley said. “It's not the traditional way of doing it, because at CDR you wouldn't have hardware built, you wouldn't have [demonstration/validation] testing done. And this is very mature,” he said. https://aviationweek.com/shows-events/air-warfare-symposium/design-milestone-reached-air-launched-hypersonic-missile