Naomi Cooper

Aurora Flight Sciences, Bell Textron, Northrop Grumman and Piasecki Aircraft Corp. have begun designing prototypes of an experimental military aircraft capable of vertical take-off and landing under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative. DARPA expects one of the contractors to finish designing, prototyping, building and demonstrating the VTOL aircraft by spring of 2027 as part of the Speed and Runway Independent Technologies program.

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Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works advanced development arm has partnered with telecommunications services provider Verizon to demonstrate 5G-enabled visualization content streaming on edge computing devices for military sustainment missions. The partnership validated capabilities in three technology areas: 5G at the edge for latency-critical interactions of augmented, virtual and extended reality applications; streaming of real-time, 3D visualization content; and streaming to edge computing devices, Lockheed said Monday.

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The State Department has approved the Japanese government's request to purchase advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles manufactured by RTX from the U.S. government under a potential $224 million foreign military sale agreement. RTX will serve as the principal contractor on the potential FMS deal that covers the procurement of 120 AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM and three AMRAAM C8 guidance sections, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Friday.

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected Microsoft and PsiQuantum to design prototype technologies that could demonstrate how underexplored quantum computing approaches can achieve utility-scale operation. The companies will move forward to the next phase of DARPA's Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing program to develop and defend a system design for a fault-tolerant quantum computer prototype, the agency said Thursday.

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