BAE Systems has teamed up with automobile firm Mahindra to build a new facility in India that will be used to assemble, integrate and test the BAE-built M777 howitzers. BAE Systems’ move is in line with India’s plan to procure 145 M777A2 LW155 artillery guns for the Indian army through a foreign military sales contract with […] More

Companies continue to explore new drone defense technologies to address the potential threat from unmanned aircraft systems as they prove hard to detect using existing radar technologies, GCN reported Tuesday. Mark Pomerleau writes that NEC, Battelle and Lockheed Martin currently have programs that seek to bolster drone defense through capabilities ranging from detection to disruption. […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies has finished the critical design review of an atmospheric pollution measurement tool that the company is developing for NASA under the agency’s Earth Venture Instrument program. NASA plans to integrate the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution instrument into a commercial satellite to measure Earth’s ozone, nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde concentrations over […] More

John Casper is vice president of finance for the defense systems group at Orbital ATK. He brings more than two decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, business integration and financial reporting to his role and oversees the aerospace company’s armament systems, digital electronics and missile products businesses. Prior to joining Orbital ATK, Casper spent […] More

The U.S. Marine Corps demonstrated an unmanned aircraft system equipped with a Harris Corp.-built data link technology during USMC’s Talon Reach exercise, Defense Systems reported Thursday. Kevin McCaney writes Small Secure Data Link platform is designed to leverage very high and ultra high frequency radio networks and certified to protect classified communications. Harris derived the […] More

Lockheed Martin has begun the environmental testing phase for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series following completion of assembly work on the spacecraft. The environmental testing aims to assess the capability of GOES-R to withstand launch and extreme environmental conditions in space, the company said Wednesday. Lockheed said it will […] More

Boeing‘s Phantom Works business has built an ultra-lightweight truck called Phantom Badger that the company could offer for the U.S. Army‘s Ultra-Light Combat Vehicle program, Breaking Defense reported Monday. Sydney Freedberg Jr. writes that a component of the U.S. Special Operations Command asked Boeing to design a vehicle that its V-22 Osprey aircraft can carry. The company […] More

Northrop Grumman has agreed to invest $17.5 million into a three-year space solar power research program the company initiated with California Institute of Technology. The initiative is meant to produce technologies applicable to the ultralight photovoltaics, ultralight deployable space structures and phased array and power transmission areas, Northrop said Monday. “The potential breakthroughs from this research could […] More

NASA has chosen Dynetics, HRL Laboratories and Orbital ATK to develop and build ultra-lightweight materials in support of efforts to reduce the mass of future spacecraft for deep-space missions by 40 percent. The agency said Tuesday the companies will work to manufacture ULW core panels that are 12-by-12-by-1-inch in size as part of the 13-month, $550,000 awards for the first phase […] More

Visiongain forecasts that the global cybersecurity market will reach a value of $75.4 billion by the end of 2015 due to continued cyber issues and legislation and investment activity focused on cyber capabilities. The company said Tuesday its latest report on the market covers an analysis of cybersecurity growth through 2025 across the network, data, endpoint, application, cloud security, identity management and […] More

The Lockheed Martin-built Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft has detected aurora-like atmospheric lights and a dust cloud at orbital altitude during its mission for NASA‘s Mars Exploration Program. NASA said Wednesday MAVEN’s Langmuir Probe and Waves instrument and Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph observed the two phenomena in the spacecraft’s fourth month on Martian orbit. The dust cloud, which has been present throughout MAVEN’s […] More

A new Research and Markets report forecasts that the market for military electro-optical and infrared systems will climb in value at a 7.71 percent compound annual growth rate to reach $16.35 billion revenues by 2020. The company said Thursday that strategies to establish uncontested market space and increased military spending will drive fast-paced growth for the EO/IR market, particularly in the […] More