Americas
D-J Engineering Inc. won a $30 million deal for machine shop requirements for supplies related to EA-18G and P-8A aircraft components and related platforms/requirements for Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane. Each awardee will be awarded $10,000 obligated at time of award. These contracts include options which, if exercised, would bring the total value to the ceiling of $30,000,000 to the four vendors combined. Each contract has a five-year base with option years that can take the contract up to10 years ending April 2034. Fiscal 2024 Working Capital Fund (Navy) funds in the amount of $40,000 to satisfy the contract minimums will be obligated at time of award which amounts to $10,000 for each of the four awardees. All the work will be performed at the locations listed above for the awardee of each delivery order. The funding will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year and has indefinite availability for obligation. All other funding will be made available at the delivery order level as contracting actions occur. This contract was competitively solicited via the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment Module and publicized on the System for Award Management website, with six offers received. The Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, Crane, Indiana is the contracting activity.
The US Air Force Test Pilot School (USAF TPS) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have achieved a significant milestone in the field of aerospace machine learning. Their collaborative Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program successfully demonstrated autonomous dogfighting maneuvers using an AI-powered system onboard a modified F-16 aircraft, the X-62A VISTA. In September 2023, the ACE program achieved a world first by flying the X-62A VISTA against a live, manned F-16 fighter jet in a simulated dogfight. The test carefully built up safety by initially focusing on defensive maneuvers. The complexity then increased to offensive maneuvers, culminating in high-aspect nose-to-nose engagements where the aircraft were as close as 2,000 feet apart while traveling at 1,200 miles per hour. This accomplishment signifies a major leap forward for the application of machine learning in flight-critical aerospace systems.
Middle East & Africa
The CyberTech conference of 2024 in Israel took place last week. The number of exhibiting companies was smaller than in previous years. So too was the number of international visitors. Still, the visitors who came to Pavilion 2 at the Expo in Tel Aviv were able to see Israel’s cybersecurity industry. The exhibition was divided into three sections. In the conference area, visitors listened to lectures and presentations, including from Gabi Portnoy, Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, who stated that “the intensity of cyber-attacks against Israel has increased threefold since the beginning of the war.”
Europe
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reportedly struck a Russian long-range radar with kamikaze drones on Tuesday. Seven drones struck the Nebo-U radar in Russia’s bordering Bryansk Oblast, rendering it inoperative, The Kyiv Independent revealed citing an SBU source. The estimated $100 million radar could peer 700 kilometers (435 miles) into Ukrainian air space, the outlet added. “Thanks to the destruction of this radar, the enemy has fewer opportunities to detect air targets along Ukraine’s northern border,” The Kyiv Independent quoted the source as saying.
Asia-Pacific
China is bolstering its space capabilities and using its civilian program to mask its military objectives, the head of the US space agency NASA said Wednesday, warning that Washington must remain vigilant. “China has made extraordinary strides especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. And I think, in effect, we are in a race,” Nelson added. He said he hoped Beijing would “come to its senses and understand that civilian space is for peaceful uses,” but added: “We have not seen that demonstrated by China.”
According to Jane’s. the US Navy has commenced operations of its Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton Broad Area Maritime System (BAMS) in the European theatre, with the first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) departing Naval Air Station (NAS) Sigonella in Sicily for its first sortie on April 17. The milestone was logged by online flight tracking services about two weeks after the USN announced in late March that the first of an undisclosed number of UAVs had arrived in its Sixth Fleet area of operations.
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