Americas
The Sixteenth Air Force, also known as Air Forces Cyber, is now at full operating capacity, officials announced this month. According to the Air Force, the declaration means the Air Force’s Information Warfare organization “met a rigorous set of criteria, including an approved concept of operations and demonstrated performance of mission under stress in simulated and real-world conditions.” Gen. Mike Holmes, Air Combat Command commander and Lt. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber) commander made the announcement during a virtual ceremony held at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland July 14.
Raytheon announced Tuesday that it has delivered the first AN/SPY-6(V)1 radar array to Huntington Ingalls for installation on the Navy’s future USS Jack H. Lucas guided-missile destroyer. “SPY-6 will change how the Navy conducts surface fleet operations,” said Capt. Jason Hall, program manager for Above-Water Sensors for the US Navy’s Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems in a press release. The first 14-foot-by-14-foor modular array was transported from Raytheon’s Radar Development Facility in Andover, Mass., to the Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., company officials said. In November 2019, Raytheon received a $97.3 million contract modification for integration and maintenance of the AN/SPY-6(V) air and missile defense radar system on Navy vessels.
Middle East & Africa
Israeli Xsight Systems, a global provider of advanced runway safety solutions, announced that it will deliver an intelligent Runway Debris Monitoring System to Qatar’s Hamad International Airport (HIA) as part of the airport’s plan to upgrade its safety measures and acquire the latest and most advanced runway technologies. The RunWize system will be deployed on the airport’s two parallel runways, including a 4,850 meter runway that is one of the longest in the world. The installation is to be carried out by local company Bayanat Engineering Qatar (BEQ), a leading airport systems integrator in the Gulf and North Africa. RunWize provides real-time, automated foreign object debris (FOD) detection, location, identification and classification, chosen and defined by HIA as a Tier 1 system to take a major part in the airport’s robust eco-system harmonized with other critical interfaces.
Europe
Marshall Advanced Composites has received an order worth £890,000 from Honeywell for sonobuoy launch carousel assembly units. The order was received from Honeywell in Yeovil, UK and will be delivered throughout 2021 and 2022. The carousel assembly was originally designed for use on the Nimrod aircraft and is used to drop submarine-seeking sonobuoys. Each carousel holds 10 sonobuoys, which are dropped through apertures in the aircraft floor and can be reloaded in-flight. Marshall says it has been supplying sonobuoy carousel units to Honeywell for a number of years and delivered its 100th unit to the company in December last year. During that time Marshall updated the design so they could be installed on the S-92 and Wildcat helicopters.
Asia-Pacific
The Indian Air Force (IAF) is expecting delivery of the first five of 36 Dassault Rafale multirole fighter aircraft before the end of July, according to a 20 July statement by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) in New Delhi. The aircraft are expected to be inducted at Ambala Air Force Station (AFS) in northern India on July 29 “subject to [the] weather”, said the MoD, adding that no media coverage is planned on arrival. The final induction ceremony will take place in the second half of August.
SpaceX launched South Korea’s first communications satellite to be dedicated for military use Monday evening from Florida. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off as planned at 5:30 pm from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into a partly cloudy sky and headed over the Atlantic Ocean. The mission had been postponed twice over the last week. SpaceX confirmed the satellite deployed at 32 minutes, 49 seconds into the flight. SpaceX successfully recovered the first stage booster of rocket, which landed on a barge in the ocean about 350 miles east of the launch site. The booster is the same one that launched astronauts to the International Space Station on May 31.
Today’s Video
Watch: India Will Receive Six Rafale Aircraft To Guard Against China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnbJ1xU5lU