November 1, 2019 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has selected General Dynamics Land Systems' Multi-Utility Tactical Transport, or MUTT, for its Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport unmanned ground system program of record.
The initial contract for the eight-wheel drive robotic vehicle totals $162.4 million and includes support hardware, user training and technical support. The contract will wrap up at the end of October 2024, according to an Oct. 30 Defense Department announcement.
GDLS will produce 624 systems for the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport, or SMET, program under the contract and will begin delivery in the second quarter of fiscal 2021, an Army spokesperson confirmed to Defense News.
Four companies were chosen at the end of 2017 to compete to build the robotic vehicle that will help troops carry equipment on the battlefield.
A team of Applied Research Associates and Polaris Defense; General Dynamics Land Systems; HDT Expeditionary Systems and Howe & Howe were selected to build 20 platforms each that were issued to two infantry brigade combat teams for testing and analysis of utility in the field.
Polaris' MRZR X was evaluated as well as HDT's six-wheel drive Global Hunter WOLF, or Wheeled Offload Logistics Follower. Textron-owned Howe & Howe offered its Grizzly unmanned vehicle, which is powered by an electric engine.
HDT's Global Hunter WOLF was recently picked, along with three other teams to include Textron and QinetiQ North America, to compete to build vehicles for the Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light effort.
The Army selected those teams from an array of companies chosen to participate in a demonstration event in the fall of 2017 at Fort Benning, Georgia. Other companies that participated in that demonstration included American Robot Company; Lockheed Martin; AM General; Robo-Team NA; and QinetiQ North America.
For the SMET program, the Army was looking for a vehicle that can carry about 1,000 pounds worth of soldier equipment. This equates to lightening the load of nine soldiers across an infantry squad. The Army wanted the robots to be able to travel 60 miles over three days and to be able to provide a spare kilowatt hour of power while moving and at least 3 kilowatt hours while stationary.
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July 17, 2018 | International, Aerospace
By SAMANTHA MASUNAGA A decade after the U.S. Air Force commissioned the next generation of GPS satellites, the first of these spacecraft is finally set to launch into orbit later this year. As with other national security missions, a roughly 200-foot-tall rocket will blast the massive satellite to space, fulfilling a contract worth more than $80 million. But as nations develop technology to disable or shoot down satellites — as China did to one of its own satellites with a ground-based ballistic missile in 2007 — the U.S. military has started to look at options for rapidly and cheaply launching smaller crafts into space. An experimental program spearheaded by a Pentagon research agency could eventually be part of that solution. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, along with aerospace giant Boeing Co., is developing a reusable spaceplane expected to launch small satellites 10 times in 10 days. The vehicle's first test flight is set for 2021, which hints at the Defense Department's growing interest in reusable rocket technology, particularly its potential to drive down launch costs and speed up turnaround time. In recent weeks, the spaceplane's rocket engine, known as the AR-22, completed 10 test fires in 240 hours without need for refurbishments or major repairs, said Jeff Haynes, program manager at Aerojet Rocketdyne. The test firing took place at NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi from June 26 to July 6. The engine test is “really good progress,” said Claire Leon, director of Loyola Marymount University's graduate program in systems engineering and former director of the launch enterprise directorate at the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center. “SpaceX has had its success,” she said. “I think this engine test also demonstrates that other companies are doing the technology development and having success that will enable reusability.” The title of first reusable system belongs to NASA's Space Shuttle, though more recently, several commercial space firms, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Stratolaunch and British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit, have developed systems that would reuse aircraft to launch satellites from the belly of a plane. https://www.stripes.com/news/the-military-is-building-a-space-plane-now-it-looks-to-have-an-engine-up-to-the-task-1.538009