Government Technology

Textron’s Bell subsidiary has conducted a flight demonstration of its proposed offering for the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift program, the Dallas Morning News reported Friday. The pilots flew the V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft on Thursday at Bell’s flight research center in Arlington, Va., 10 months after the plane made its initial flight at the company’s Amarillo, Texas-based […] More

The U.S. Navy and the Missile Defense Agency have tested the interception performance of the Raytheon-made Standard Missile-3‘s Block-IIA variant with a land-launched target. The Navy’s USS John Finn destroyer launched the SM-3 IIA missile to intercept the ballistic target during the test in Hawaii, marking the missile’s second fulfilled interception, Raytheon said Friday. “This second […] More

Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer of Microsoft, has said the company believes the U.S. military needs access to industry-developed technologies as it works to defend the country from threats. Smith wrote in a blog entry posted Friday that the tech sector’s involvement in public debate is vital with regard to policy and ethical issues […] More

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has created a mixed reality system designed to amplify a person’s facial movement to detect social gestures, emotional signals and other forms of nonverbal communication. The Mixed Reality Social Prosthesis technology works by overlaying facial imagery with psychophysiological data through the use of Microsoft’s HoloLens holographic platform, APL said […] More

Dominic Delmolino, chief technology officer of Accenture’s federal services business, has said agencies should deploy artificial intelligence systems as “subservient or assistive” tools as they decide on veterans benefits, vendor invoices, disputes and other matters, Federal News Network reported Monday. Delmolino noted that potential AI users should watch out for the possibility of bias in an […] More

NASA will perform on Thursday, Oct. 25, wind-tunnel tests of a small-scale model of a supersonic aircraft at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Langley engineers will test an eight-percent scale model of the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology X-plane to gather data needed to build up the control systems for the aircraft, NASA […] More

A consortium of satellite operators has proposed obligating up to 200 megahertz of C-band spectrum to support the deployment of 5G terrestrial services in the U.S. Intelsat said Monday the updated proposal is an 80 percent increase from the C-Band Alliance’s original plan to repurpose a portion of the 3.7K to 4.2K MHz frequency band in the […] More

Savi Technology has received orders from two Defense Department agencies to supply more than 48K active radio-frequency identification tags. The company said Monday it will provide the tagging systems as part of the second and final option year under DoD’s potential $102M RFID-IV contract. U.S. and international defense clients have received more than 1M tags from the company […] More

General Atomics‘ electromagnetic systems business recently helped the Missile Defense Agency demonstrate a targeting platform designed for use with the MQ-9B unmanned aircraft system. The company said Friday it tested the MDA’s Airborne Tracking and Targeting System in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise or RIMPAC that took place around the Hawaiian Islands from late June […] More

Alion Science and Technology has secured a spot on a potential $794M  contract to develop and advance unmanned undersea vehicles for the U.S. Navy. The McLean, Va.-based company said Wednesday it will supply the service’s UUV family with rapid prototype material technologies related to the products, ancillary and peculiar support equipment. Alion will also contribute to […] More