Welcome to Tuesday's Saved Rounds, where we send out all the goodies we couldn't squeeze into our Sunday newsletter.

🦃 ALERT!: We pushed up the release of latest episode to give you something to get you through the holiday. Check it out on YouTube or download the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your content.

Paveway

Have you heard the story about how the laser-guided bomb went from concept to combat? If not, our latest epsode is for you.

We have the full story, from the innovations from Texas Instruments and Ford Aerospace...

To the rapid design iterations…

to the first combat testing in Vietnam in 1968.

And we tracked down one of the F-4 fighter pilots who was there 56 years ago to tell us all about it!

Whether you have no idea about anything to do with laser-guided bombs or are an instructor fighter pilot who thinks they know everything about Paveway LGBs—trust us, you will learn something in this episode.

The audio is great, but if you couldn’t tell, we scoured the internet for a ton of rare photos and graphics to tell this story—its all in the video version.

Check it out!

YouTube 

Apple 

Spotify

They Said It
“We do not have a whopper in STRATCOM headquarters. Nor would we ever have a whopper in STRATCOM headquarters.”

— Gen. Anthony Cotton, head of US Strategic Command, talking about WOPR (the War Operation Plan Response, pronounced "whopper").

It’s the computer that can auto-launch a nuclear counter-strike in WarGames, a 1983 movie that answers the call for all those who ever wondered how Ferris Bueller and the quirky-yet-shy Allison from The Breakfast Club could save the world with Tic-Tac-Toe.

Our audience lives in 2 camps here—those who have no idea what any of that means and those who are now looking up to see if the girl from The Breakfast Club was actually in WarGames.

Zoom in

Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) are the latest craze, but while everyone is focused on drones and their autonomy, how much time have you given to command and control?

Zoom in here for a think-tank dive into that very topic.

In that Number

$39B

A judge ruled that Ligado’s whopping $39B lawsuit against the US government can proceed.

The issue is that Ligado licensed an L-band spectrum from the FCC to develop a wireless cell phone network, but it sits right in the spectrum used by Department of Defense programs like GPS.

This reminds us of when the FCC licensed part of the B-2 bomber’s radar spectrum without telling anyone, forcing the Pentagon to spend $1.3B to develop a new radar—with no new capabilities—just to operate in another frequency range.

Or, the FAA debacle limiting the use of Link 16 datalink.

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Saved Rounds

• The UK, Australia, and the US announced a trilateral hypersonic project under AUKUS Pillar II

• Canada & Australia jointly pledged $474m for hypersonic defense tech

• Leidos’ Dynetics won a $670m Army contract for hypersonic glide tech

• The UK announced it's retiring a swath of drones, helicopters, and ships to free resources for ongoing and future modernization programs

• Lockheed Martin and F-35 program office have a handshake deal for the next 2 lots of fighters

• Boeing was awarded a $2.4B Air Force contract for 15 more KC-46A tankers and a $1.7B contract for 7 P-8 Poseidons for Canada and Germany

• Teal Drones (Red Cat subsidiary) won the Army’s Short-Range Reconnaissance (SRR) program, which could lead to production of up to 6,000 drones

• Textron won a $277m contract to supply 26 T-54A Marlin twin-prop trainers to the US military (replacing T-44C trainers)

• The Space Force is finalizing its first contracts for the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve

• Teledyne Space Imaging is partnering with Satlantis on a new high-resolution satellite sensor (sub-10cm performance)

• Baykar announced its Bayraktar TB3 performed its first carrier take-off and landing

• Draken won a red air training contract for the Royal Netherlands Air Force

• Inversion Space raised a $44m Series A round to further develop reentry vehicles to deliver cargo from space

• Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works flight-tested manned autonomously-flown L-29 jets performing a counter-air mission controlled by a L-39 aerial controller

• Lockheed Martin started production of the 1^st Navy E-130J TACAMO aircraft

• Anduril was awarded a Marine Corps contract for a Counter Unmanned Aerial System (CUAS) Engagement System (CES) for the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS)

• Anduril static fire tested its new hypersonic solid rocket motor

• Anduril won a $100m Space Force contract to autonomously process and distribute data from a global network of military space sensors (IDIQ contract ceiling, not award amount)

• Lockheed Martin is teaming with Iceye to adapt its ATR algorithms to The Finnish company’s SAR satellite imagery

• SNC’s RAPCON-X ISR jet flew for the first time (selected For Army’s ATHENA-S program)

• SpaceX’s Starshield has received a majority of the $660m of orders from the Space Force

• Sweden stepped to fund Ukrainian domestic production of long-range missiles and drones

• MBDA is building hubs in Germany to boost guided missile production

• TEKEVER (European drone maker) raised $73m to scale production and expand into new regions

• Lockheed Martin demoed a double launch of its Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) during a recent production qualification flight test

• India hailed a historic hypersonic missile test, fueling speculation given the limited details

• Croatia is buying 6 Bayraktar TB2 drones for $95m

• Morocco exempted defense firms from taxes in a move to incubate its national defense industry (~$13B annual defense budget)

• ANELLO Photonics secured Series B funding to produce its chip-based optical gyroscope technology that allows autonomous systems to operate in GPS-denied environments (investment was co-led by Lockheed Martin)

• The EU allotted $300m for its first-ever joint procurement of weapons & ammo

• The Army awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to expand production capacity for the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) missile to 650 units annually

• INDOPACOM is replacing a pile of partner-nation networks with just one

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