John Parker, manager of tiltrotor business development at Boeing, has said the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force might consider upgrading their fleet of Bell Boeing-built V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft with new weapons such as lasers and sonic waves, DoD Buzz reported Thursday. Oriana Pawlyk writes Parker told reporters Tuesday that officials have evaluated AGM-176 Griffin missile, […] More

DigitalGlobe has launched a new web-based subscription service for international defense and intelligence customers to access the satellite operator’s library of more than 2.7 billion square miles of imagery. SecureWatch is designed to combine multisource geospatial intelligence content such as satellite imagery with different refresh intervals and resolutions, geographic information system layers, news stories and social media […] More

Research and Markets has released a report that predicts the global unmanned aerial vehicle flight training and simulation market to rise at a 7.29 percent compound annual growth rate through 2021. Research and Markets said Monday its “Global UAV Flight Training and Simulation Market 2017-2021” report covers an in-depth market analysis and discussions on the market landscape, vendors and […] More

A Visiongain report has estimated worldwide revenue for military unmanned aerial vehicles reached $7.4 billion last year. The company’s Military UAV Market Report 2016-2026 report  also covers analyses and forecasts on high-altitude long endurance UAVs, medium-altitude long-endurance drones and three other military UAV submarkets over the next 10 years in eight countries that include the U.S., Australia and Japan, ReportBuyer […] More

Ron Epstein, senior equity analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has said he expects defense-related investment accounts valued at approximately $179 billion to grow at a rate of 10 percent “depending on the year.” “Fiscal ’17 is where we are today, ’18 is transition, and then I expect to see acceleration going to fiscal […] More

Boeing and Saab have conducted the first flight test of a trainer aircraft the companies jointly developed for the U.S. Air Force‘s T-X competition. Boeing said Tuesday lead T-X test pilot Steven Schmidt and Air Force chief pilot Dan Draeger flew the aircraft for approximately 55 minutes to demonstrate key aspects of the single-engine jet as […] More

The National Defense Industrial Association hosted a meeting on Nov. 14 to allow representatives from companies to present their commercial off-the-shelf technology platforms to Will Roper, director of the Defense Department’s strategic capabilities office, the National Defense magazine reported Monday. Sandra I. Erwin writes executives from Allegheny Technologies, Battelle, Creative Micro Systems, Endeavor Robotics, General Atomics, […] More

The defense sector trade group Aerospace Industries Association has elected new members its executive board of governors for 2017 that includes at least 20 government contracting industry leaders. AIA said Thursday Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was chosen to serve as the association’s chairman of the board and Raytheon chief executive Thomas Kennedy was elected vice chairman. David Melcher was reappointed […] More

Bell Helicopter, a subsidiary of Textron, has introduced a shipborne unmanned aerial system designed to combine helicopters’ vertical lift function with the speed and range of fixed-wing aircraft. Textron said Thursday it expects production of the Bell V-247 Vigilant tiltrotor UAS to  begin in 2023 to support operations in maritime environments and locations without runways. Bell developed the UAS platform to help military customers […] More

Liberty University’s School of Aeronautics now offers an on-campus training program for pilots of fixed-wing and multi-rotor small unmanned aircraft systems. The Federal Aviation Administration‘s regulations on the commercial use of drones work to allow the training program’s students to fly small UAS weighing less than 55 pounds on campus, the university said Tuesday. The […] More

Textron subsidiary Beechcraft has selected a Northrop Grumman-built navigation technology as an “inertial product option” for the King Air turboprop aircraft series. The LCR-100N, developed by Northrop unit LITEF, works to send navigation data to an autopilot system and helps aircraft to navigate in extreme latitudes and coast through satellite outages when used in conjunction with a flight management system, Northrop said Wednesday. Beechcraft […] More

A Govini report indicates the U.S. military unmanned aerial systems market has experienced a compound annual growth rate of about 6 percent over the past five fiscal years, Defense News reported Wednesday. Lara Seligman writes the research firm observed the Defense Department‘s strategic pivot  to the Asia-Pacific region and efforts to implement a third offset strategy have […] More