🔷 Saved Rounds 9.10.24

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

Hey. Stop keeping us a secret. Spread the word using your referral link at the bottom and earn swag along the way. That’s a win-win.

💣 Clarification: On Sunday, we said that the Navy didn’t have cockpit-selectable fuzing for the JDAMs they employ. In fact, the Navy Hornet/Super Hornet community uniquely uses the Mk 122 safety switch with the FMU-139, giving it a poor man’s form of cockpit selectability. Debrief complete; thanks to those who reached out to set the record straight!

They Said It
“What worked since 1945 is not necessarily going to work now.”

— Michael Stewart, executive director of the Navy’s newly-created Disruptive Capabilities Office, on embracing unmanned systems and new concepts to rapidly integrate them with legacy systems to keep an adversary off-balance

Zoom in

Why do defense companies even do marketing? After all, they operate in a monopsonistic industry (aka 1 main buyer of their kit).

Zoom in here to learn more about the rationale and its importance.

Then….if you’re a business interested in advertising, hit us up.

Meme of the Week

The story of Texas Instruments and the laser-guided bomb is one we told a few years ago. This meme came across our feed a few days ago and reminded us that we need to dust off that story for our growing audience. Coming soon…

Saved Rounds

• General Dynamics was awarded $491m develop the ground systems to operate SDA’s “tranche 2” 250-satellite proliferated low-Earth orbit constellation (they apparently did well supporting “tranche 1”)

• Aerospacelab opened its first US-based satellite manufacturing facility

• The Space Force plans to track moving air & ground targets via space by 2030, but aircraft will still play an important role

• Austria is considering jointly buying M-346 jet trainers with Italy (Boeing’s T-7 and Aero’s L-39NG still being explored)

• Evolution Space tested a solid-propulsion rocket on Spaceport Company’s sea-based launch platform

• Ukraine may reportedly get JASSM stealth cruise missiles for its F-16 fleet to use

• The Air Force may add back 14 MH-139 helos in next year’s budget (if that happens, we’ll update this infographic)

• Japan announced a $59B defense budget for next year—its largest ever

• Sikorsky released a video of its Armed Black Hawk kit (Gatling guns, rockets, and Hellfire missiles)

• The NGA is planning the largest data labeling project in US government history

• RTX was awarded a $1B F-22 sensor enhancement contract

• China’s GJ-11 Sharp Sword stealthy combat drones appear to be in accelerated test

• China’s secretive space plane returned from its 3^rd orbital mission

• Viasat secured a $153m Army contract to modernize ‘Blue Force Tracker’

• Honeywell completed its $1.9B acquisition of CAES

• Maxar is providing commercial satellite imagery to the NGA (new $359m contract)

• SpaceX satellites achieved their first laser data exchange with US military-compliant Tesat terminals

• JF Taylor was awarded a $563m Navy contract to support aviation simulation systems

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