Details of the AFRL’s Off-Board Sensing Station program remain highly classified, though the effort is expected to field an unmanned aircraft that can fly ahead of fighters and relay targeting information and other threat data back.
The wide range of equipment on display by China was dominated by armed and unarmed drones, but also covered fighter jet models, air-to-air missiles, long-range air and missile defense systems, anti-tank and C4ISR kit.
“This is just crazy,” agreed Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante.
L3Harris is also in the process of setting up an engineering center at joint venture laboratory where “we will be doing waveform development, crypto, and that type of niche technology that complements the production capabilities in Saudi Arabia.”
In this op-ed retired Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari lays out why FARA had to go, and where Army aviation should fly from here.
Breaking Defense was given exclusive access to the Foundry, the US Navy’s office developing its Integrated Combat System, vital for the surface fleet.
NIMR has teamed with Saudi Arabia’s SAMI to eventually locally produce the JAIS inside the Kingdom, NIMR CEO Abri du Plessis told Breaking Defense.
“I won’t go into details of the nature of that drone for security reasons,” Pat Conroy told reporters in Canberra. “But I want to assure everyone in this country that we are spending lots of time working on drones.”
In addition to halting the FARA competition, service leaders want to end UH-60 V Blackhawk production, postpone moving the Improved Turbine Engine Program into production, and phase out legacy drones.
