November 14, 2023 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR
State-owned Rosoboronexport had announced a new counter-drone weapon to be on display, but the equipment was nowhere to be seen.
July 9, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
If enacted, the increase would be nearly twice as much as France had previously committed to boosting its year-over-year budget in the last two years.
July 15, 2019 | International, Other Defence
By Matthew Cox Heckler & Koch Defense Inc. will soon begin delivering thousands of 7.62mm squad-designated marksman rifles to the Army to give infantry and other close-combat units a better chance of penetrating enemy body armor. H&K will deliver "between 5,000 and 6,000" variants of the G28 rifle, which the Army plans to issue as its new squad designated marksman rifle (SDMR), according to a July 12 H&K news release. Under the agreement, the rifles will be manufactured by H&K in Oberndorf, Germany, and will begin to arrive in the H&K-USA facility in Columbus, Georgia, early next year, according to the release. Once there, H&K-USA workers will install scopes and mounts purchased by the Army under a separate agreement. "This is a significant achievement for Heckler & Koch," H&K-USA's chief operating officer, Michael Holley, said in the release. "The HK SDMR system will add much-needed capabilities to virtually every squad in the Army. We are honored by this opportunity." The new SDMRs are part of an interim effort to make squads more lethal ahead of the Army's fielding of the Next-Generation Squad Weapon system sometime in 2022, service officials have said. In May 2017, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Senate Armed Services Committee members that the service's current M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round will not defeat enemy body armor plates similar to the U.S. military-issue rifle plates such as the Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert, or ESAPI. As a short-term fix, the Army selected the G28 as its M110A1 Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System in 2016, to be used with the service's new 7.62mm enhanced performance round to give squads more penetrating power. In the past, the Army relied on the Enhanced Battle Rifle, or EBR, 14 -- a modernized M14 equipped with an adjustable aluminum stock with pistol grip, scope and bipod legs -- to fill the growing need by infantry squads operating in Afghanistan to engage enemy fighters at longer ranges. But the EBR is heavy, weighing just under 15 pounds unloaded. The M110A1 weighs about 11 pounds. In the long term, the Army is working with gunmakers to develop the new Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) that is slated to fire a special, government-produced 6.8mm projectile that promises higher velocities at greater ranges, service officials say. The program is being designed to produce an automatic rifle version to replace the M249 squad automatic weapon and a carbine version to replace the M4 carbine. Army officials said recently that they expect to begin receiving prototypes of the NGSW in July and August and that the weapon could be fielded to units beginning in late fiscal 2020. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/12/army-receive-762mm-squad-marksman-rifles-early-next-year.html
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