ORLANDO. Software company Mass Virtual has won a five-year, $59 million contract to provide virtual training in partnership with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Integrated Technology Platform (ITP); first orders totaling $8.1 million are scheduled to be completed by end of FY 2021. 

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla.The U.S. Air Force has announced the completion of the Integrated Battle Station (IBS) on the B-1B Lancer fleet. The eight-year project has been completed earlier than anticipated, and 60 aircraft went through the modification process that began in late 2012.

TIME MACHINE 2020 AI SESSIONS. Fighter pilot shortages, operation security concerns, and the need for rapid experimentation in the military have acted as driving forces behind the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Department of Defense (DoD). These themes were discussed by military industry AI leaders and data scientists to highlight how AI can bolster mission readiness at SparkCognition Government Systems’ (SGS) virtual Time Machine 2020 AI Sessions event, held this week.

LAUREL, Md. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has signed a contract worth $49.9 million with the U.S. Air Force to develop air warfare systems that will include munitions, cyberwarfare, and electronic warfare (EW) components, according to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. Abaco Systems has won orders from a major systems integrator -- which specializes in providing advanced technologies for the defense and aerospace markets -- for a quantity of Abaco’s PC821 FPGA Cards and FMC120 FPGA mezzanine cards, which will be deployed in a subsystem to provide FPGA [field-programmable gate array] processing capability needed to scan, analyze, and act on satellite-communications data for the U.S. Air Force.

Spoiler alert: Yes, they are – as militaries increasingly rely on satellites, especially in the age of guided munitions and hypersonic weapons, it’s becoming critical to protect space assets from cyberattacks.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa. Collins Aerospace Systems (a unit of Raytheon Technologies) has revealed that it is developing a software-programmable Open Mission Systems (OMS)-Compliant (SPOC) radio for the U.S. Air Force as part of a previously awarded $18.9 million contract.