🔷 Saved Rounds!

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

⚡ PODCAST ALERT! We spoke with Epirus CEO Andy Lowery about High Power Microwave (HPM) weapons and their innovative work in this emerging tech space. Grab the show where you get your content: Spotify, Apple, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and YouTube.

Don’t forget to leave a rating and review!

They Said It
“The government is interested in learning about solutions that can operate above 50,000 feet, visually detect targets and engage multiple threats with its payload.”

— The Air Force, announcing its looking for information on low-cost capabilities to counter high-altitude balloons

Zoom in

The war in Ukraine has had massive attrition on both sides, but the narrative of picking apart Russia’s military piecemeal has not played out as expected.

Zoom in here to learn how Russia aggressively reconstituted its military force.

In that Number

69.92 percent

The Air Force’s fleet mission capable (MC) rate in 2023 was 69.92 percent, down from 71.24 percent in 2022. The service aims for an average of 75-80 percent.

Notable standouts were ~50 percent bomber fleet (B-1/B-2/B-52) and ~51 percent stealth fighter fleet (F-22/F-35) MC rates. Ouch.

Together with Epirus

Epirus

High-power Microwave (HPM) weapons are a type of directed-energy weapon that emits concentrated bursts of electromagnetic energy. These weapons neutralize swarms of drones by disrupting their electronic systems.

Epirus is a venture-backed defense tech company building the next-gen HPM systems and they’re being rapidly deployed with the Army now.

Get up to speed with our full feature write-up, then grab our podcast interview with CEO Andy Lowery that dives even deeper. This is a defense tech episode you don’t want to miss!

Check it out!

Spotify 
Apple
YouTube

Saved Rounds

• The Air Force bought the first Joint Strike Missiles (JSM), intended to fit inside the F-35A for long-range strike

• Poland is buying $735m in Lockheed Martin AGM-158 stealth cruise missiles for their F-16s

• Sikorsky began flight testing a drone featuring a novel “rotor blown wing” design for DARPA’s Ancillary program

• MDA Space joined Starlab Space LLC as a partner and equity owner to build a next-gen commercial space station (more on this later this year😉)

• Bombardier Defense opened a new office in Australia

• Latvia is investing $21m to develop a “drone army”

• SkyAlyne was awarded a $8B contract to supply 70 military training aircraft to the Royal Canadian Air Force

• Rheinmetall tapped Canadian company Quaze Technologies to integrate wireless charging for drones

• South Korea completed development of a new long-range SAM system and announced plans to develop a follow-on system

• China’s secretive spaceplane released an object into orbit

• GE Aerospace completed the next series of tests on its XA100 adaptive cycle engine

• The Army wants extended-range 155mm artillery that can hit moving targets without GPS

• BlueHalo received a $95 million Army contract to continue prototyping directed energy weapons

• Pratt & Whitney broke ground on a factory in Morocco

• Airbus is upgrading Turkey’s ALPIN Helicopter Drone

• Piasecki Aircraft was tapped by the Department of Energy to study the feasibility of hydrogen fuel cells for urban mobility

• Windracers revealed its twin-prop ISR/resupply drone has been operating in Ukraine since 2023 (pic!)

• The Spaceport Company was selected by DIU to demo the ability to use a sea-based launch platform to quickly send cargo or satellites to orbit

• Verizon is investing $100m into AST SpaceMobile to support direct-to-smartphone satellite services

• Boeing was awarded a $7.5B Air Force contract for more Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guided bomb kits

• India test-fired a new SEAD anti-radiation missile with a 180+ mile range

• Ukraine is ramping up deployment of robots to do medical evacuation

• Roboteam is supplying the Marine Corps with 200 tactical robots in a $30m deal

• IAI introduced a new anti-jam GPS nav system

• The Space Force narrowed its anti-jam satellite competition to Boeing and Northrop Grumman

• New Zealand decreased its defense budget by 20%

• North Wind is a new company spun off from Calspan Aero to focus on delivering hypersonic test infrastructure and services

• Milrem Robotics opened a new ground drone factory in Estonia

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