🔷 Saved Rounds 7.9.24

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

📢 BREAKING NEWS: On Sunday, we talked about Boeing’s acquisition of Spirit Aero and ended on a note about a looming legal situation over the 737 MAX crashes. Boeing has agreed to accept a plea deal to avoid a criminal trial. Boeing, who could be barred from federal contracts, has already initiated talks with the Pentagon to manage the fall-out. The move has precedent—in 2006 the Air Force cited “compelling national interest” to let Boeing do business after another criminal and civil settlement.

They Said It
"Today when we operate in space it's really positional warfare. And typically, that's because we only have the fuel we've launched with and so we never want to move or if we do, we always ask the question of how much life is this going to take off the back end of the satellite."

— Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, on how on-orbit refueling could unblock the current restrictions with positional warfare in space

Zoom in

The Air Force’s $130B Sentinel ICBM missile program has been in the news for cost estimation and program management woes, but there’s another battle lurking.

Zoom in here to learn more about the ongoing battle between BAE Systems and Guidehouse for the program’s $12B integration support contract.

In that Number

45 hours

The Air Force flew a Boeing KC-46A Pegasus on a record 45-hour nonstop flight around the world.

Check our exclusive interview with Anduril and General Atomics about the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. These 2 companies were recently selected to build the first air vehicles.

The Air Force expects to buy 100+ CCAs by 2029, with an overarching goal of fielding 1,000+ CCAs and realizing the program’s goal of cost-effective scalability.

Check it out!

YouTube 

Apple 

Spotify

Saved Rounds

• Peru is in the final stages of buying up to 24 FA-50 light combat jets from South Korea and joining the KF-21 fighter aircraft program

• Lockheed Martin secured a potential $226m contract for more Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles and launching assemblies

• X-Bow (rocket developer) acquired Spencer Composites, the company’s supplier of motor cases for hypersonic rockets

• The Army is looking for more sensors to add to its High-Altitude Platform-Deep Sensing (HAP-DS) initiative

• Italy seized Chinese military drones, disguised as wind turbines, heading to Libya

• Boeing delivered the Army’s first CH-47F Block II Chinook

• The Navy is pushing its T-45 replacement effort to 2028, a 2-year delay

• Turion (a venture-backed startup) won a Space Force contract for grappler debris-capture technology

• Orbit Fab completed a ground test of its satellite fueling payload

• The US announced it will provide $2.3B more in military aid to Ukraine

• Hanwha Aerospace was tapped to supply jet engines for South Korea’s KF-21 fighter program

• Russia’s Red Line unveiled a drone that intercepts other drones

• Mastodon Design won a $100m Army contract to produce back-pack portable EW systems

• Europe aligned to develop a ground-launched long-range strike weapon

• The Navy began planning for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet production shutdown

• Kratos flew the MDA’s first hypersonic testbed mission

• Mistral started production of its Thor medium-range reconnaissance drone

• Italy suspends its $1.2B KC-46 tanker program

• Eve Air Mobility raised $94m to continue eVTOL development

• Kitron received a $47m contract to supply electronics for Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM)

• Sierra Nevada was tapped by the Air Force for MC-130 mission networking systems

• Amazon won a $1.3B deal for a Top Secret cloud server for Australia’s military intelligence

and finally…

• Lockheed Martin was awarded a $520m production contract for Block 70/72 F-16s with L3Harris’ Viper Shield electronic warfare suite for Bahrain, Bulgaria, Morocco, Slovakia, and Taiwan

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