X-Bow Bolt Launch. X-Bow Systems last week said it completed the second successful launch of its Bolt rocket, the first vehicle in the company’s new suite of modular boost solid rockets designed for orbital, sub-orbital, and tactically responsive launch. X-Bow conducted its first Bolt launch in June 2022. The recent test was done under the Responsive Development Experiment program for Los Alamos National Laboratory. “The XL-2B showcased X-Bow’s modular launch vehicle and motor designs in a rapid follow-on launch demonstration,” Joe Gooding, chief engineer for the XL-2B mission, said.
BlackSky Defense Contract.
BlackSky Technology last week said it received a multi-year contract worth more than $30 million from an international defense customer for on-demand, real-time imagery services. BlackSky has a constellation of commercial satellites that take electro-optical imagery of the Earth. The company sells the imagery and related analytic services to intelligence community, defense, and other customers. “BlackSky is an instrumental part of this customer’s day-to-day operations, improving situational awareness through high-frequency, dawn-to-dusk imagery and AI-driven analytics,” Brian O’Toole, BlackSky’s CEO, said. He added that the contract “triples this customer’s demand over the next two years.”
C-UAS News. Israel’s Elbit Systems this week at the Paris Air Show is unveiling a new digital radar warning receiver that is part of its electronic warfare suite for airborne self-protection and can detect and classify drones as a threat, and locate personal location beacons on ground forces and pilots. Elbit says that new processing capabilities allow the radar warning receiver to continue its legacy functions while adding the counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) capability. The receivers can also be configured to detect and geo-locate personal location beacons of ground forces or pilots on the ground for search and rescue missions. Elbit’s electronic warfare suite is on hundreds of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
…GBAD Industry Day. The Marine Corps on July 12 will host an industry day for an Installation-Counter small UAS (I-CsUAS) effort that has secret requirements. The Program Executive Officer, Land Systems, Program Manager, Ground Based Air Defense (GBAD) is organizing the I-CsUAS industry day at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The GBAD program is looking for solutions with components and sub-systems that do not require research and development and have technical readiness levels (TRLs) of 8 or 9, and when integrated together provide a system that is at least TRL 7.
…DroneShield and Epirus. Australia-based DroneShield and Epirus have completed the integration of DroneShield’s DroneSentry multi-sensor drone detection and defeat system with Epirus’ Leonidas high-power microwave C-UAS system for a fully integrated counter-drone solution that can track multiple threats and terminate them with directed energy countermeasures. DroneSentry consists of radio frequency and electro-optical sensors, and includes a smart-jamming UAS defeat module. Epirus is currently working under a $66 million Army contract to provide four Leonidas prototypes for field evaluations.
AI for Unattended Objects. The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology directorate last week said it awarded Alabama-based Analytical AI $199,500 to build artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that link objects such as unattended baggage to people. The award was under the Securing Soft Targets solicitation of S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program. Analytic AI’s technology “allows detection of change in object location and ownership, along with a near real-time look back and forward capability that can track the handler of unattended baggage,” S&T said.
Space Crickets. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 2nd that DoD has had no detailed conversations with its Chinese counterparts. “The right time to talk is every time, and the right time to talk is now,” Austin said. “Dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity, and a cordial handshake over dinner is no substitute for a substantive engagement.” It appears that the lack of China-U.S. military dialogue extends to space. “The biggest dynamic right now in our relationship with China with regard to space is a lack of communication and virtually zero transparency,” said Lt. Gen. John Shaw, the deputy head of U.S. Space Command. “That’s our biggest challenge.” China has more than 650 satellites in orbit and is expected to develop an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon targeting satellites in geosynchronous orbit, DoD said last December. China has also said it will put astronauts on the Moon by 2030 and will build a multi-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO). Shaw contrasted the radio silence with China on space with U.S.-Russian military engagement. “Even the Russians know how to communicate with us,” he said, adding that the Syrian deconfliction line continues to exist and that U.S. and Russian air operations centers were in contact during the war on ISIS to inform one another of operations.
…Offset Test. In 2007, China tested a direct ascent ASAT (DA-ASAT) that generated 3,000 pieces of orbital debris larger than 10 cm, and on Nov. 15, 2021, Russia launched its Nudol DA-ASAT against the defunct Russian Cosmos 1408 electronic intelligence satellite in LEO—a test that DoD has said generated about half that of the Chinese test. “When the Russians did their test back in 2021, we kinda had an idea it was coming,” Shaw said. “In fact, I was on console in our joint operations center in Colorado Springs, and I actually was hopeful. They have a tradition. They consider themselves the senior spacefaring nation. I was like, ‘You know, they’re just gonna do an offset test. They’re gonna aim at this target, launch it, and it’s gonna miss by 100 meters on purpose because they understand space, and they want to continue that tradition of being that senior, responsible, space faring nation.’ I was wrong, and I’m sad that I was wrong. They didn’t need to. They could have done an offset test. I’m not sure exactly why they didn’t. We can always theorize about that—whether it was messaging, whatever, or whether they just didn’t care.”
Reaper Communications. Austin, Texas-based CesiumAstro said on June 16th that AFWERX, the U.S. Air Force’s innovation center, has awarded the company a $3.6 million contract under the Tactical Funding Increase program to demonstrate the company’s satellite communications (SATCOM) terminal aboard a General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper. CesiumAstro said that the award “directly supports the Department of Defense’s need for enhanced, higher throughput connectivity aboard airborne vehicles.” The company said that it recently developed an “industry-first multi-beam active electronically steered array (AESA) for both commercial and defense in-flight connectivity applications supporting multiple orbits” and that the “low-profile SATCOM antenna provides make-before-break handover with no moving parts, enabling ultra-reliable communications.” Shey Sabripour, the founder and CEO of CesiumAstro, said in a statement that the company’s contract will support the Air Force “in realizing the tactical advantages of AESAs” on the Reaper. Raytheon Technologies said last month that it has chosen CesiumAstro to supply its Vireo AESA radio frequency communications payload for Raytheon’s seven missile tracking satellites for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency Tranche 1 Tracking Layer.
Spain FMS. The State Department on June 14 approved a new foreign military sale with Spain for the purchase of 153 additional Excalibur 155mm extended-range guided artillery projectiles for $48.2 million. The new deal adds to a previous FMS case with Spain worth $21.9 million for 118 of the Raytheon Technologies-built Excalibur projectiles, raising the total to 271 weapons. “The proposed sale will improve Spain’s capability to meet current and future threats and will enhance interoperability with U.S. forces and other allied forces. The enhanced capability will also strengthen its homeland defense,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.
Tech Transition. The House Armed Services Committee’s draft version of the FY ‘24 NDAA includes a directive for each military department to establish a new Principal Technology Transition Advisor role to help oversee the transition of research and development efforts into programs of record. The new senior civilian role would advise their respective service secretary on technology transition efforts, to include opportunities to leverage science and technology work from industry and academia. Each advisor would also be tasked with developing and maintaining metrics for tracking the outcomes of R&D projects. The directive follows lawmakers’ push to ensure innovative technologies can cross the “valley of death” into actual capabilities.
Army VTOL. HASC’s Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems Subcommittee is seeking information from the Army on its research and development plans for hybrid and electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) platforms. The panel included a directive in its portion of the draft FY ‘24 NDAA for the Army Secretary to deliver a report on the service’s VTOL efforts, to include how VTOL is being incorporated into the Future Vertical Lift modernization initiative, details on how such capabilities could be fielded in the future and if there’s any collaboration with the Air Force’s Agility Prime program. “These systems will enable more modern, versatile, and lethal power projection in support of Army multi-domain operations (MDO). The committee encourages the Army to continue to explore the development of novel VTOL concepts, including hybrid and electric propulsion technologies for unmanned aircraft systems that enable Army MDO,” the panel wrote.
BALTOPS Unmanned Tech. The U.S. 6th Fleet is again working with the U.S. naval research enterprise to conduct mine countermeasures (MCM) operations with new unmanned technologies during the NATO Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 23 exercise in June. The Navy said this year’s exercise has a focus on experimenting with unmanned undersea vessels (UUV) using automatic target recognition technology for in-stride detect to engage sequence to reduce the time conducting MCM operations; launching UUVs via Unmanned Surface Vessel (USVs) rather than small manned vessels; autonomous collaboration testing using an unmanned aerial vehicles and USV to map a shallow water and surf zone area; and testing a Joint Personnel Recovery (JPR) scenario with a USV sent to a distressed pilot to recover personnel via a remote controlled system. The Navy noted this was the first time a JPR was conducted with a USV.
AFDM. This month Austal USA said it started construction on the Auxiliary Floating Dry Dock Medium (AFDM) for the Navy at its Mobile, Ala., manufacturing facility. The AFDM is the third program on Austal’s new steel assembly line, after the first two of four U.S. Navy Towing, Salvage, and Rescue (T-ATS) ships, T-ATS-11 and -12. Dave Growden, Austal USA vice president for new construction, said “this dry dock will be a first for Austal, but we’re up to the challenge. Our talented shipbuilders are always ready for whatever we require of them whether it’s the fourth ship in a multi-ship program or the first of a new design.” The AFDM is a “Rennie”-type floating dry dock with continuous wing walls and multiple sectional pontoons for stability and displacement required to lift and submerge vessels from the water. The floating dry dock will have a clear deck working area of nearly 91,000 square feet. The craft is 694 feet long.
Fort Drum Missile Defense. The House Armed Services’ Strategic Forces subcommittee’s part of the FY ‘24 defense authorization bill would restrict 20 percent of the travel funding for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy until the department submits a late report to Congress on a missile defense site within the contiguous U.S. The FY 2023 defense policy bill directed the Defense Secretary, via the Director of the Missile Defense Agency, to submit a report to the defense committees assessing the requirement for a missile defense interceptor site in the contiguous U.S., with a funding profile of the costs of development and construction of a site at Fort Drum, N.Y., which had previously been identified as the preferred location of a potential East Coast missile defense site.
Aegis Ashore Enhanced? Another provision in the House Armed Services’ Strategic Forces subcommittee’s section of the FY ‘24 defense authorization bill would direct the Missile Defense Agency director to submit a report to the defense committees on potential enhancements to the Aegis Ashore missile defense sites in Poland and Romania. This includes an assessment of the “feasibility and advisability” of enhanced sensor systems to detect broader arrays of missiles, fielding a mixed fleet of defensive interceptors, and hardening the facility. It also would include a funding profile detailing the costs with those options. The report is due within 180 days of the bill enacting.
Netherlands’ MQ-9As. The U.S. State Department has approved the sale of four General Atomics’ MQ-9A Reaper Block 5 drones and related equipment to the Netherlands for $611 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said on June 16. Along with the drones, Dutch requested equipment includes 30 Embedded Global Positioning Systems/Internal Navigation Systems devices, Airborne, with Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM) or M-Code; eight AN/DAS-4 Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems; 20 Lynx AN/APY-8 Synthetic Aperture Radars; Selex Seaspray Synthetic Aperture Radars; SeaVue Maritime Radars; M299 Hellfire Longbow missile launchers; AN/ARC-210 radios; Line-of-Site (LOS) Ground Data Terminals; Ruggedized Aircraft Maintenance Test Stations (RAMTS); AN/APX-119 and other Identification Friend or Foe transponders; KIV-77 Cryptographic Appliques; KY-100M narrowband/wideband terminals; AN/PYQ-10 Simple Key Loaders; satellite communications earth terminal subsystems (SETSS); spare parts, consumables, and accessories and repair and return support. “The Netherlands already has MQ-9A aircraft in its inventory and will have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces,” DSCA said.