Martin UAV has secured a project to develop an unmanned aerial system with vertical takeoff and landing capability for the U.S. Navy after the company won in a technology demonstration program run by the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's AIRWorks division. The Plano, Texas-based unmanned technology maker said Wednesday its V-BAT platform participated in the Mi2 Challenge, where both Martin UAV and L3Harris Technologies were the finalists for the merit-based competition.

The U.S. Air Force performed flights of the General Atomics-built MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft equipped with the Reaper Defense Electronic Support System and a digital recorder in Europe through remote split operations. RDESS is an electronic support measure payload that provides MQ-9 with electronic sensing capability by gathering and geolocating signals of interest from standoff ranges, while the digital recorder collects multispectral targeting pod data to further develop machine learning and artificial intelligence applications.

The U.S. subsidiary of Elbit Systems will provide night vision devices and spare parts to the U.S. Marine Corps under a $41 million delivery order. Elbit Systems of America is scheduled to deliver Squad Binocular Night Vision Goggles to the military branch through March next year, as part of a $249 million indefinite-quantity/indefinite-delivery contract awarded in 2019, the company said Tuesday.

South Korea-based armored troop carrier developer Hanwha and Oshkosh, a maker of military trucks, have partnered to pursue the U.S. Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program that seeks to replace the service's M2 Bradley infantry vehicles, Breaking Defense reported Monday. The Oshkosh-Hanwha team joins the other four confirmed industry groups that have submitted bids for the Army’s OMFV program.

Industry teams led by BAE Systems and General Dynamics have submitted bids to the U.S. Army for a competitive program to replace the branch's Bradley infantry fighting vehicle platform. The two companies separately confirmed plans to join the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle competition nearly six months after Rheinmetall's U.S. subsidiary unveiled its own team that will pursue the OMFV program.

Unmanned aircraft system manufacturer Martin UAV has publicly unveiled a new vertical takeoff and landing platform intended to support applications such as logistics, search-and-rescue, firefighting and energy operations. Martin UAV said Tuesday that the V-BAT 128 UAS has the capacity for rapid assembly, vertical hover and flights of up to 20,000 feet.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has named the research teams that will work on a program that seeks to develop technologies that could help mitigate interference for wideband radio frequency systems. The selected teams that will work on the Wideband Adaptive RF Protection program are BAE Systems, Raytheon Technologies and its Collins Aerospace business, Northrop Grumman, Indiana Microelectronics, L3Harris Technologies, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Matice Wright-Springer, former vice president of government and corporate responsibility at ManTech International, has returned to Booz Allen Hamilton as a partner and senior VP for the global defense group under its aerospace account. “I was drawn back to Booz Allen because I want to help solve some of the complex challenges that our customers face," said Wright-Springer.

William Irby, a nearly three-decade aerospace and defense industry veteran, has joined unmanned aircraft system manufacturing company Martin UAV as chief operating officer.

Executive Mosaic is pleased to introduce Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency (SDA), as an inductee of the Wash100 Award for the first time. Tournear has become a 2021 Wash100 Award recipient for his leadership and commitment to satellite tech as well as maintaining the U.S.’s advantage over the space domain. 

TYSONS CORNER, VA, February 24, 2021 — Roger Krone, chairman and CEO of Leidos (NYSE: LDOS) and a 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, shared his views about pursuing complementary merger and acquisition deals and competing for big information technology contracts in the current federal market landscape, GovCon Wire reported Feb. 16.

The Space Development Agency plans to release a solicitation in August to buy 150 satellites and expects those spacecraft to be in orbit by 2024 to support the development of a multilayered system designed to improve surveillance and transmit data to weapons and ground systems, Federal News Network reported Tuesday. “What our architecture is based on is proliferation and spiral development,” Derek Tournear, director of SDA and a 2021 Wash100 Award winner, said Tuesday at a Space Foundation event.