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- 🔷 Saved Rounds 4.8.25
🔷 Saved Rounds 4.8.25
Welcome to Tuesday's Saved Rounds, where we send out all the goodies we couldn't squeeze into our Sunday newsletter.
In that Number
20,000
The last US Air Force F-16 left Luke AFB, ending a 42-year era that trained more than 20,000 pilots.
Zoom in
The Pentagon is racing to embrace AI and autonomy—at least that’s what you hear.
Zoom in here for a breakdown that follows the money by data-scraping budget request documents.
They Said It
“the current state … is inadequate”
— Lt. Gen. (ret?) Dan Caine on the state of electronic warfare training ranges, during his testimony to become the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Our friend Jell-O from the Fighter Pilot Podcast debuted his memoir last Tuesday, April 1st (no joke).
Through the Yellow Visor:
The Life and (Mis)Adventures of a US Navy Fighter Pilot.
From an 8-year-old at an airshow to a Navy Commander with 3,000+ hours in the F/A-18, Jell-O shares his highs, lows, and everything in between—including his time as a combat pilot and TOPGUN instructor.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn how to land on an aircraft carrier (or, in Jell-O’s case, how not to), and you won’t believe the life-threatening medical condition he overcame to climb back into the cockpit of a high-performance jet fighter.
Saved Rounds
Embraer is planning to up its investment in its KC-390 tanker to compete in the US
Sweden bought 4 Embraer C-390 airlifters
The Portuguese Air Force plans to join Embraer and the Brazilian Air Force to explore equipping the KC-390 tanker for ISR missions
Airbus UK was tapped to build a Mars rover for the European Space Agency
Isar Aerospace's first Spectrum launch attempt failed
China launched a classified TJS-16 satellite, and a ‘companion’ appeared near its TJS-15 satellite
Airbus unveils the French Army’s NH90 special ops helicopter prototype
Lockheed Martin won the $4.9B Army contract to build the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) Increment 1 (300-mile surface-to-surface weapon)
The Air Force’s 6th and final F-16 arrived to begin VENOM conversion for CCA testing
Poland signed a nearly $2B deal for Patriot air defense systems
HII secured a 10-year $133M Air National Guard contract for live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) training services for distributed mission operations (DMO) events
India leased KC-135 tankers from US-based Metrea amid serviceability issues with its Russian-origin Ilyushin Il-78MKI tanker fleet
Voyager Technologies acquired LEOcloud for space cloud services
GE Aerospace was awarded the avionics subcontract by Bell as part of the ‘digital backbone’ for the Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program
The Marine Corps fast-tracked a new remote-controlled tug for their growing MQ-9 Reaper fleet
Anduril unveiled an undersea submarine surveillance system
Northrop Grumman received a $14m contract for more F-16 AESA radar upgrades, bringing the upgraded $1.69B
MDA Space acquired SatixFy for $278m
Radiance Technologies acquired electronic warfare company Phased n Research
The Space Force awarded first commercial reserve contracts
Leonardo unveils new M-346 cockpit display that looks like the F-35 setup
Slingshot is developing AI to use photometric fingerprints of pixels to track objects in orbit
DARPA’s AtmoSense program accidently discovered it can sense when objects pass through the atmosphere by continually seeing anomalies from SpaceX rockets
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