Textron‘s Bell Helicopter subsidiary has conducted the first flight of a next-generation tiltrotor aircraft built to help U.S. military clients meet requirements for a vertical lift platform. Textron said Monday the V-280 Valor aircraft was designed to help users conduct various vertical lift missions previously infeasible using one aircraft as well as offer updated speed […] More

Textron‘s Bell Helicopter subsidiary has completed the prototype build of a tiltrotor aircraft platform designed for the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator program under the U.S. Army‘s Future Vertical Lift initiative. Bell said Wednesday it aims to demonstrate its V-280 Valor offering this fall through a maiden flight test. Lockheed Martin built V-280’s cockpit, avionics, distributed aperture system […] More

Meggitt Training Systems has received a $5.8 million order from the U.S. Marine Corps to produce 166 small arms training systems for use in marksmanship, collective and judgmental scenarios. The company said Tuesday this third order makes a total of $25 million worth of awards placed so far for the Indoor Simulated Marksmanship Trainers system under a $32.7 million indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract. Kathleen […] More

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a contract of an undisclosed value to produce five more AN/AES-1 Airborne Laser Mine Detection Systems for installation on the U.S. Navy‘s MH-60 helicopters. The company said Monday it will also provide subsystems, equipment and spares and technical support for the ALMDS mine countermeasure pods. AN/AES-1 systems are designed with pulsed […] More

The U.S. Navy has granted Lockheed Martin approval to start producing infrared search and track sensors for the branch’s Super Hornet aircraft. Lockheed said Thursday it collaborated with Boeing to develop and integrate the F/A-18 IRST technology and received the green light to move forward with low-rate initial production work. The system is comprised of […] More

QinetiQ announced that it has signed a contract with Autonomous Surface Vehicles to supply and support operations of autonomous surface target vessels. The partnership is part of QinetiQ’s new Marine Surface Target Service, which offers targets for ‘real’ test environments, evaluations and training. John Anderson, Managing Director for Weapons at QinetiQ, comments on how QinetiQ […] More