Israeli, British firms to deliver unmanned vehicles for UK experimental program

On the same subject

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  December 26, 2024 | International, Land

  BAE Systems secures $68m for additional CATVs

  BAE Systems has secured contracts totalling $68m to produce 44 additional cold weather all-terrain vehicles (CATVs) for the US Army.

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  July 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Indonesia says it wants to buy Austria’s entire Typhoon fighter fleet

  By: Mike Yeo MELBOURNE, Australia — Indonesia has expressed interest in acquiring Austria's fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, in yet another surprise defense procurement plan from the southeast Asian country. Indonesia's defense minister, Prabowo Subianto, wrote a letter to his Austrian counterpart, Klaudia Tanner, seeking to initiate negotiations to buy all 15 Typhoons belonging to the Austrian Air Force. In his letter, which was published by Indonesian news outlets, Prabowo said the potential purchase will assist in his aims to continue modernizing the Indonesian Air Force. He added that he understood the “sensitivity” of his proposal, which was likely to be a reference to the continued controversy surrounding Austria's 2002 acquisition of the Typhoon. That purchase has been dogged by questions about cost and the effectiveness of the aircraft. More recently, there have been allegations of corruption related to the original contract award. These culminated in Austria's 2017 decision to retire the aircraft from service this year in favor of a “more effective and cost-effective” solution for the central European country's air defense needs. Indonesia's interest in the fleet comes two weeks after the surprise announcement that the U.S. State Department cleared the country to buy the Bell-Boeing MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft. Indonesia has been seeking a fighter aircraft to serve alongside its fleet of 23 refurbished early-block Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Fighting Falcon jets. These are all former aircraft operated by the U.S. Air National Guard, and were delivered from 2014 onward. The decision to seek the Austrian Typhoons, which are all Tranche 1 aircraft configured primarily for air defense missions, is a blow to Russian aspirations to sell the Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker interceptor to Indonesia. Indonesia had selected the Su-35 as its next fighter to provide continuity with its existing fleet of Su-27 and Su-30s Flankers acquired in the early part of the last decade. Negotiations for the Russian jets ended in 2018, but Indonesia had been reticent to sign the $1.14 billion contract, reportedly over fears that it may be subject to American sanctions. The sanctions would come from a U.S. law, Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, that targets Iran, North Korea and Russia. CAATSA was passed by Congress in 2017 and is meant to discourage governments or entities from acquiring weapons or military hardware and parts from U.S. adversaries. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/07/20/indonesia-says-it-wants-to-buy-austrias-entire-typhoon-fighter-fleet/

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  May 4, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  DIUx wants drones that are out for blood

  By: Kelsey Atherton For drone delivery to make sense, with existing capabilities of drones, the cargo needs to be relatively light, it needs to have tremendous value, and it needs to urgently travel the last mile by air. This is why, to the extent we've seen drones used for delivery in the wild, it's more likely as a means to carry contraband into a prison than it is a practical alternative to the postal service. But there's one other cargo that fits the description, and that's blood itself. Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, the Pentagon's stand-up Silicon Valley-focused acquisition house, is looking for a drone that can carry a modest cargo of blood, through the dark of night toward where it's most needed. Call it “Dronesferatu.” From FCW: The specs of the solicitation from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental -- the ability to deliver a 5-pound package over 100 kilometers in “austere environments” -- strongly suggest that they're looking at an unmanned aerial vehicle system that supports refrigeration or other means of temperature control. “These deliveries, ideally automated, will provide essential items to critically wounded military personnel as quickly as possible after an injury occurs,” the April 23 solicitation states. “Ability to sustain a very high frequency of operations over an extended period of time is critical. Speed of delivery, reliability and robustness to failure and interference, response time, and overall delivery throughput are critical.” Getting the right blood to the right people as fast as possible means saving lives. To that end, DARPA's funded research into metabolic rate reduction to see if there's a way to make people bleed out more slowly, or into using female hormones to similarly prolong the survivable time without transfusion. In 2013, the U.S. Army conducted a study on pre-hospital transfusion for battlefield casualties being medically evacuated in Afghanistan, and in 2012 Canadian Blood Services even tested the viability of paratroopers transporting blood for transfusion. Consider blood drones complementary to this field of work. Early tests by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Uganda's Makerere University proved that small vials of blood transported by drone were just as viable as blood transported by car. Those same researchers followed up with a test of blood delivery from ship-to-shore, for possible use in response to coastal areas hit by natural disasters, where the roads are impassable but drones could still safely fly. The American startup Zipline demonstrated its own blood delivery drones in 2016, and has for a year and a half worked on delivering blood by robot to parts of Rwanda. DIUx's ask, that a drone fly over 60 miles and carry 5 pounds of blood, is not far off from what Zipline's drones can already do, with the company stating a range of 100 miles and a cargo capacity of just under four pounds. Weight and range tradeoffs are at the heart of aviation design, so it's likely that vendors have already pitched something within the bounds of the solicitation. Should that drone make a fast turnaround from ask to prototype to useful tool, the troops fighting abroad may gain a better shot at surviving otherwise-fatal blood loss. Unlikely that the reverse-vampire drones will look like bats, though. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/05/03/diux-wants-drones-that-are-drones-out-for-blood/