Marines are finally about to receive their first new pistol in 35 years. “The M18 will replace the Beretta M9 that the Corps adopted in 1985.”
The inside story of two supersonic flights that changed out America. F-35 limited on supersonic flight update: “So an engineer whose specialty is structures would see that it would be hotter than they predicted, which would lead them to tell us: ‘If this airplane is going to last 40 years long, then we have to manage this exposure.’ ” Who could have thought that reality doesn’t always perfectly match an engineering model? The Bs get bubbling and blistering, the Cs get thermal damage to tailboom and horizontal tail.
You have to see the Incredible Mini F-35 This Guy Has Been Building for Years. Joel Vlashof’s 1/10 scale F-35B can take off vertically and hover just like the real thing.
Research shows how to make lead act like gold, enabling optical computing. Interesting throughout. “This technique represents an opportunity in both materials science and chemistry to substitute simpler and cheaper compounds that can mimic the desired properties of more expensive materials.”
Air Force wants cyber experts to ‘make a living’ off hacking its tech. A slice: “As the force develops emerging technology, like artificial intelligence and the network-of-networks Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), hackers will be drawn into the design process itself.”
DIU update: The agency reduced its time to award a prototype contract from 187 days down to 127 days, but still not reaching its goal of 60 days.
Space force lays out acquisition reform. Finally we get into financial management. “Perhaps the most important recommendation in the report, according to the Air Force, is the consolidation of budget line items along mission portfolios, such as missile warning or communications, instead of by platform.”
Pete Modigliani summarizes the Space Force’s alternative acquisition system proposal. He concludes: “Congress and DoD leadership would be wise to implement all these recommendations immediately and explore scaling many of these reforms beyond the space domain.” Appropriate to keep the bold emphasis.
Google lands defense department deal to fight cyber threats. “Google will provide a central control system that will allow the DIU to run its web services and applications across” cloud providers. The article reminds us that DIB’s Josh Marcuse recently joined Google.
STRIKEWERX Aimed at quick-turn fixes to global strike problems. ““It became apparent that Global Strike Command needed a storefront to be able to reach out” to potential partners, “in the same way that AFWERX does.” Oh, there’s also LaunchWERX if you didn’t know.
USAF solicitation offers seed money for Skyborg loyal wingman UAV. “Multiple companies could each win $400 million to contribute technology toward a best-of-breed Skyborg drone.” In the running: Boeing, General Atomics, Kratos, and Lockheed Martin.
USAF releases B-52 engine replacement RFP, award expected July 2021. Target of 30 percent fuel efficiency savings from P&W TF33. My prediction who gets the win if Roper is still in office in a year: “Should Rolls-Royce win the competition, the F130 engines for the B-52 would be digitally engineered, manufactured, assembled and tested at our facilities in Indianapolis.”
As DevOps Accelerates, Security’s Role Changes. Recommended. “DevOps adoption rates have increased, with 25% of companies reporting three to five years of practice, and another 37% reporting one to three years… Nearly 75% of GitLab respondents say they have shifted testing left, meaning it’s closer to the development process…
Short paper from Kessel Run leadership: “Scaling Faster: Force Multipliers in an Agile Enterprise.” And related: The Army eyes Kessel Run model to boost software capabilities.
Eglin F-35A crashes upon landing, pilot ejects. “The crash marks Eglin’s second recent fifth-generation jet mishap, following the May 15 crash of an F-22 assigned to the base.”
Army scientists develop new materials for hypersonic weapons attack. “They get hot enough to melt most metals, so you need a way to mitigate that. Additive manufacturing can help.”
Pentagon halts rare earths funding program pending further research.
DoD creating standards for AI programs. “DoD has “so many hundreds of programs that we really couldn’t do a fair evaluation of each individual activity.”
Russia’s Su-57 stealth fighter could soon have a robot in the cockpit. Unverified claims it should appear, but no doubt they’re working on it.
Northrop to build next-gen OPIR missile warning satellites under $2.4 billion contract modification. Here’s the contract.
The Navy’s next jet trainer won’t be able to land or take off from an aircraft carrier. Was a new trainer program downgraded for other priorities? “… looking to buy an existing land-based design that would be limited to doing touch-and-gos on aircraft carriers and would be unable to perform catapult launches from or arrested landings on those ships.”
Dynetrics joins DARPA’s unmanned dogfighting effort. “The first technical area will develop the actual dogfighting algorithms. The second will determine how to build and measure trust between pilots, the algorithms and unmanned platforms and the fourth will integrate the manned and unmanned systems together. Dynetics has been selected for the third technical area, where it will work to scale the advances made by the other team.”
AFSOC to finally mount a laser weapon on an AC-130 gunship. Been in the works for 5 years, but “The challenge on having the laser is funding.” Aiming to test in FY 2022.
The White House is rewriting contracting language to clarify security liability. And here’s some 2 cents: “Cloud service providers should be held responsible for security; otherwise, it would be passing the “hot potato”. Government customers would not have the total control of how to manage.”
The GAO is wrong about the Air Force’s Next-Gen Battle-Management System. “Like a latter-day version of this Dowding System, the Air Force’s Air Battle Management System, or ABMS, is meant to exploit the power of networked information.”
DOD adopts zero trust approach to buying microelectronics. Moving away from “trusted foundry” model.
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