JOHN MCHALE, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

The Starliner Spacecraft completed its first flight test at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, according to officials from Boeing, the Starliner builder. This test of an uncrewed orbital flight vehicle was flown to demonstrate the quality and performance of the transportation system prior to crewed flights.

LISA DAIGLE, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S -- a Raytheon Technologies business) will replace the U.S. Air Force's the A-10C Thunderbolt II mission computer with the RI&S Common Open Secure Mission Computer (COSMC), which is a modernized processing system for combat systems aimed at enhancing air dominance and improving sustainability.

LISA DAIGLE, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

Unmanned-systems company AeroVironment announced that it won a $6.2 million firm-fixed-price contract award from the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) to supply its Puma 3 AE small unmanned aerial system (SUAS) plus spares.

DENIS SMETANA, CURTISS-WRIGHT
RUSSELL OBERT, NORTHROP GRUMMAN 

Virtualization software and model-based design provide a path that not only enables system designers to maintain legacy software for avionics and other mission-critical systems but also makes it possible to migrate that code to modern higher-performance processing platforms, for example from an older PowerPC-based VME board over to a new x86 or Arm-based VME or OpenVPX module.

EMMA HELFRICH, TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Collins Aerospace announced that its Perigon computer will be the first certified aviation solution to use the Intel Atom x6400E processor. The processor will underpin Perigon’s ability to support customers’ next-gen flight control and vehicle management needs across a range of commercial and defense platforms.

AVIATION MAINTENANCE MAGAZINE

Predictive engine maintenance harnesses the power of engine sensor data, digital monitoring/transmission tools, artificial intelligence-enabled big data analysis, and modern digital modeling techniques such as “digital twins” (creating virtual versions of engines whose “operational lifespans” mirror their physical counterparts) to predict maintenance issues before they occur.

LISA DAIGLE, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

Swarm technology -- groups of uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) that employ algorithms to augment the overall functioning of the system or group in real time-- is increasingly finding uses in military applications, according to a study by Market Forecast, "Swarm Technology -- Market and Technology Forecast to 2030."

JOHN MCHALE, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

The new Enhanced Flight Vision System (EFVS) from Collins Aerospace is now being installed on Boeing 737 aircraft. The new EFVS includes the Collins’ EVS-3600, a multi-spectral imaging sensor to that enables pilots to “see through” poor visibility and darkness better than the human eye.

LISA DAIGLE, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

Mercury Systems won a contract worth $24 million contract award from a leading defense prime contractor for avionics systems that will be used in a rotary-wing platform for the vertical heavy-lift market.

AVIATION MAINTENANCE MAGAZINE

Collins Aerospace announced the opening of a new additive manufacturing center and the expansion of its maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capabilities at its campus in Monroe, North Carolina. 

EMMA HELFRICH, TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Through the acquisition of three Lockheed C-130J-30 and KC-130J Hercules aircraft, the German Bundeswehr has announced it will equip all aircraft with HENSOLDT’s latest generation of defense sensor technology, MILDS Block 2.

LISA DAIGLE, ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

Military rotorcraft maker Bell Textron has signed a teaming agreement with Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) that will add SNC to the Bell Textron team that is working on the Bell 360 Invictus competitive prototype as part of the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program.

RAMBUS

The growth of computing, graphics, neural processing power, communication bandwidth, and storage capacities have enabled amazing solutions. These innovations have created great value for society, and that value must be protected from exploitation by adversaries.

INTERFACE CONCEPT

Today’s defense systems are highly sophisticated and based on high-performance mission computers, servers, workstations and signal processing nodes that need to exchange large amounts of information. This critical and strategic information is transmitted via communication networks requiring high availability, reliability and robustness.