IperionX expands US titanium production

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  29 octobre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Microsoft, Amazon pledge to work with Pentagon following anonymous online rebukes

  By Aaron Gregg Microsoft executives launched a spirited defense of their work with the U.S. military on Friday in a blog post written by company president Brad Smith, who pledged to work with Pentagon as it embarks on a multibillion-dollar effort to build advanced artificial intelligence capabilities into its operations. Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos offered a similar statement last week at a conference in San Francisco hosted by Wired Magazine. “If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble,” Bezos said at the conference. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The two companies are responding to a broader wave of discontent that has complicated the efforts of Silicon Valley tech companies to work with the military. Search giant Google recently announced it would disallow its advanced algorithms to be used in weapons systems, and separately said it would decline to bid on a $10 billion opportunity to build the Pentagon's departmentwide cloud computing infrastructure. That contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or “JEDI” for short, is designed to give the Pentagon access to new weapons capabilities that are enabled by artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle submitted bids by the Oct. 12 deadline, company spokespeople confirmed this week, and the Defense Department is expected to award a contract next year. Amazon is seen as a front-runner because of its earlier work handling classified data for the CIA. The retorts by the executives followed a pair of anonymously written posts on the website Medium over the past month — both of which the site said had been verified by its editorial staff — in which self-described employees of Amazon and Microsoft raised concerns over the tech companies' relationship with the Defense Department. The Post could not independently verify the authenticity of the two Medium posts. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company could not verify the Medium post's authenticity, and an Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a blog post titled “Technology and the U.S. military” that was published Friday on Microsoft's website, Smith wrote that the company would continue to work with the U.S. military while looking for ways to ensure its technology is used responsibly. “To withdraw from this market is to reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way,” Smith wrote. "We are not going to withdraw from the future.” Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/26/microsoft-amazon-pledge-work-with-pentagon-following-anonymous-online-rebukes

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  20 août 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  ROBOpilot makes maiden flight in US Air Force tests

  By David Szondy A new US Air Force kit that can turn a conventional aircraft into a robotic one has completed its maiden flight. Developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and DZYNE Technologies Incorporated as part of the Robotic Pilot Unmanned Conversion Program, the ROBOpilot made its first two-hour flight on August 9 at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah after being installed in a 1968 Cessna 206 small aircraft. With modern autopilots, even small modern aircraft already have surprising ability to fly themselves, but there's a big difference between maintaining a course and actually flying an aircraft the way a human pilot does. From the opposite direction, autonomous drones are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but these tend to be highly specialized and expensive. Funded by AFRL's CRI Small Business Innovative Research project, ROBOpilot is designed to make these two paths meet in the middle by replacing the pilot seat (and pilot) with a kit consisting of all the actuators, electronics, cameras, and power systems needed to fly a conventional aircraft, plus a robotic arm for the manual tasks. In this way, ROBOpliot can operate the yoke, rudder, brakes, throttle, and switches while reading the dashboard gauges and displays like a human pilot. According to the Air Force, the installation is simple, non-invasive and non-permanent, using standard commercial technologies and components. This allows planes to be converted to unmanned operations without the complexity and costs of purpose-built UAVs, and switched back to human control configuration when required. The recent flight comes after a year of building and testing that involved trialing the device concept using a RedBird FMX simulator to demonstrate how well it can fly in a simulated environment before progressing to the real thing. The US Federal Aviation Administration-certified trainer showed that ROBOpilot could carry out autonomous takeoffs, mission navigation, and landings in both normal and abnormal conditions. "Imagine being able to rapidly and affordably convert a general aviation aircraft, like a Cessna or Piper, into an unmanned aerial vehicle, having it fly a mission autonomously, and then returning it back to its original manned configuration," says Dr. Alok Das, Senior Scientist with AFRL's Center for Rapid Innovation. "All of this is achieved without making permanent modifications to the aircraft." https://newatlas.com/us-air-force-robopilot-flight/61105/

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  13 mars 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  New Production Contracts for UH-60s, HH-60s, and P-8s

  by David Donald Sikorsky Aircraft received a contract modification on March 10 worth $525.3 million for 40 UH-60M Black Hawks. The batch comprises 38 being procured for the U.S. Army as Lot 44 of the service's MY IX multi-year procurement program. The other two represent the exercising of an option for two Foreign Military Sales aircraft for an unidentified customer. Managed by the Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, the work is due to be performed by the Lockheed Martin-owned company by the end of June 2022. The five-year MY IX program, the ninth such order covering H-60 helicopters for the Army, was awarded to Sikorsky in June 2017. Specifying 257 UH-60 medium-lift helicopters and HH-60M medevac versions, the initial deal was worth $3.8 billion, with options for up to 103 additional helicopters that would ultimately bring the value to $5.2 billion. At the end of February, the H-60 production line received another boost when the Department of Defense ordered 12 more HH-60W combat rescue helicopters for the U.S. Air Force. The Lot 2 batch is the second low-rate initial production tranche to be ordered, with a value of more than $500 million. The program of record covers 113 HH-60Ws to replace the aging HH-60G Pave Hawk. Initially known as the “Rescue Hawk,” the HH-60W has now received its official Air Force name of Jolly Green II. Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett announced the name at the Air Force Association (AFA) Air Warfare Symposium held in Orlando in late February. At the time of the order, Sikorsky had flown seven HH-60Ws, of which two are with the Air Force trials unit at Duke Field, Eglin AFB, Florida. The initial goal is to meet Required Assets Available (RAA) criteria by the end of 2020. In another DOD deal, announced on March 6, Boeing was awarded an $800 million contract by Naval Air Systems Command to procure long-lead materials associated with Lot 11 production of P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. This batch comprises 18 aircraft, of which eight are for the U.S. Navy. The remainder comprises six aircraft for the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) and four for the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). South Korea decided in June 2018 to order six Poseidons as a replacement for the Lockheed P-3CK Orions that serve with the ROKN's 615 Squadron at Jeju air base, while New Zealand announced its intention to buy the P-8 in the following month. In RNZAF service the P-8 is expected to serve with No. 5 Squadron at Whenuapai, which currently flies P-3K Orions. Both nations placed their orders for P-8As in March 2019. https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2020-03-12/new-production-contracts-uh-60s-hh-60s-and-p-8s