In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Mar. 27 2023

Credit: NSIL/OneWeb. Once deployed, the satellites will boost the OneWeb Gen-1 constellation well past the 588 spacecraft needed for global coverage.

Credit: Netherlands Defense Ministry. The MMU was originally formed to create a fleet of pooled and shared tankers to boost the number of tanker aircraft available to European air forces.

Credit: Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin will start designing a rocket-ramjet missile under contract from the U.S. Army, the company said March 27. 

Credit: Ascendance Flight Technologies. French startup Ascendance Flight Technologies has secured €21 million ($6.6 million) in funding to build a full-scale prototype of its Atea hybrid-electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) air taxi.

Credit: Responsive Electronic Attack for Cooperative Task. A European research program into the potential development of an airborne jamming capability has advanced with the signing of an agreement by European defense materiel agency OCCAR.

Credit: EHang. EHang said it is now more than 90% through the type certification process for its EH216-S autonomous air taxi, putting it on a likely track to achieve the first certification of an electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) vehicle in the world.

Credit: Kite Magnetics. Australian aviation electric motor startup Kite Magnetics has unveiled its first product, the KM-120, a 120-kW electric propulsion unit designed to replace the piston engines in 2-4-seat light aircraft.

Credit: USAF. The U.S. Air Force’s publicized research and development spending on Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) technologies is now projected to total more than $30 billion by the end of fiscal 2028, with about 21% spent so far since the program launched in 2016.

Credit: Deep Strike: Raytheon. Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have received a $94 million contract from the U.S. Army to build and test a candidate to become the Precision Strike Missile (PRSM) Increment (Inc.) 4, the company said March 27. 

Credit: Red Rock Biofuels. The Pentagon in 2014 wanted to seed the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry inside the U.S. and used the Defense Production Act to award $210 million to three companies to build biofuel production facilities.