🔷 Saved Rounds! 5.21.24

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

📺 PODCAST: Check it out on YouTube or download the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Pandora, iHeartRadio, etc.

They Said It
“If the price of a platform is variable and the Pentagon plans for three and isn’t really adjusting for inflation, eventually they’re going to realize they get two.”

— Eric Fanning, head of the Aerospace Industries Association, on the growing angst of defense companies absorbing inflation costs that the Pentagon is not factoring into contracts

Word of the Week

Foreign Military Financing: The FMF program provides US grants and loans to friendly foreign governments to purchase US-made weapons, defense equipment, services, and training.

Why It Matters: The US announced another $2B in Ukraine military aid—all FMF—making it the largest-ever amount of FMF given to Ukraine. In addition, this FMF was given an exception to purchase from Ukraine’s defense industrial base, joining Israel and Taiwan as the only other countries granted this exception. We have some great intel on this next week…

In that Number

34.8 hours

The Air Force flew a RQ-4 Global Hawk 34.8 hours, setting a new endurance record

Zoom in

Last week, we highlighted the fixation on a 2027 Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Zoom in here for part II of the series: Why the US Air Force and Navy have drastically different spending plans to prepare for conflict with China.

They Said It
“You can never have enough mass because you can't be in more than one place at the same time.”

— Mike Baulkwill, combat air strategy director at BAE Systems, speaking on how small the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) and making the case for increasing the number of combat aviation units.

This comes at the same time as NATO’s Eurofighter technology upgrade program awarded its first contracts and may keep the Typhoon relevant into the 2040s even as 6th-gen fighters and combat collaborative aircraft enter service.

This week is National Maritime Day, which honors the thousands of dedicated merchant mariners who serve on US-flagged vessels around the world.

In this spirit, we focused our latest podcast on the Merchant Marine!

Check it out on YouTube or download the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Pandora, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your content!

In that Number

10, and another 10

The Pentagon wants to buy 68 F-35s next year, but top lawmakers want to cut it by 10, and another 10 (to 48) if corrective actions aren’t taken to address program issues.

Only 75-110 F-35s out of a planned 156 will be delivered in 2024 due to issues with TR-3 upgrades that put deliveries on hold. It’s so bad that Lockheed Martin is running out of places to park F-35s at its production plant.

The cuts would shift $1B into test infrastructure to support the program.

Saved Rounds

• Aurora Flight Sciences beat General Atomics to win a $8.3m DARPA contract to design an experimental cargo Wing-in-Ground Effect (WIG) seaplane

• Mayman Aerospace received a pre-order for 300 of its AI jet-powered VTOL drones

• Denmark announced another $813m in military aid for Ukraine, with $348m for air defenses

• The UK revealed an in-development RF-directed energy weapon

• The Space Force (and Navy and Army) are working on hybrid SATCOM terminals that can use multiple frequencies to connect multiple military and commercial constellations across varying orbits

• The UK picked 90 (not a typo) companies and organizations to compete for a $1.26B hypersonic missile program

• High Eye’s Airboxer VTOL drone won a Dutch Navy program

• Airbus Defense’s twin-prop Eurodrone completed its preliminary design review

• Marshall (a UK company) was awarded a US Air Force contract to prototype a containerized logistics system for easily transporting aircraft support equipment

• Leidos and Elroy Air announced they will demo their autonomous resupply drone for the Marine Corps this summer

• Romania was approved to buy 300 AIM-9X Block II missiles for their F-16s

• Australia unveiled a record $37 billion defense budget

• Congress wants to establish an Army drone branch, though the Army dismissed the idea

• Aerojet Rocketdyne has partnered with Lockheed Martin to provide propulsion for the Missile Defense Agency’s $17B Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) program

• Rheinmetall established a new joint venture in Ukraine to support air defense systems in-country

• The Air Force’s effort to retire 100+ F-15Es is meeting stiff resistance in Congress

• Microsoft’s $22B Army infantry HoloLens IVAS goggle program hinges on upcoming tests

• General Atomics’ MQ-9A completed advanced flight training with the Marine Corps using the SkyTower pod for the first time (USMC-specific airborne network extension MQ-9 payload)

• Nammo signed a deal with Raytheon to expand its solid rocket motor supply base

• Kongsberg, Diehl, & MBDA are teaming up to develop Norway and Germany’s 3SM Tyrfing supersonic strike missile

• Finland plans to build an explosives factory to support military needs—there is currently only 1 factory in Europe (Poland)

• India is reducing its financial commitment to South Korea for their joint KF-21 jet fighter program

• TAI claimed 20 of its Turkish KAAN “better than the F-35” fighters would be delivered by 2028

• Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon reached an agreement over an IP dispute for the “F-35-in-a-box (FIAB) sim software

• Airbus is developing manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) for the Eurofighter to serve as a testbed for Europe’s FCAS 6th-gen fighter program

• Poland received its final Bayraktar TB2s, completing the 24-drone acquisition

• Edge unveiled a new loitering munition prototype

And finally…

• The Indian Army introduced a hexacopter drone with a machine gun

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