Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

The UK defense ministry is reportedly considering reducing the number of Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning aircraft it plans to purchase.

Finland-based Iceye has closed an $87 million series C financing round to complete its planned 18-satellite constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites and to build a U.S. manufacturing and engineering hub.

Brief news items of interest to aerospace & defense professionals.

Key to the effort is Congressional appropriation of $3.2 billion in fiscal 2021 for commercially developed Human Landing Systems, NASA says.

House Democrats have filed a bill that would fund the federal government through Dec. 11 to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1.

Textron Aviation avoided a strike by its hourly workforce when members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accepted the company’s final offer of a new four-year labor contract on Sept. 19.

Cubic, a military training and command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) services provider, has adopted a so-called poison pill to ward off a potentially hostile takeover attempt by activist hedge fund Elliott Management.

The FAA has announced its policy for approving drone designs as a special class of aircraft.

Dutch industry has benefited from an additional $19 million in contracts since Turkey’s suspension from the F-35 program, a national report has confirmed.

One of the few big storylines on the military aviation beat to emerge this year with no links at all to the COVID-19 pandemic is the U.S. Air Force’s

The U.S. Space Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a $298 million contract to rapidly prototype the payload for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications program that will ultimately replace the Advanced Extremely High Frequency system.

Much of the growing global enthusiasm for a post-Apollo return to the Moon with human explorers is focused on the lunar south pole.

Over more than three decades, the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Houston Airshow has allowed patrons to stroll among exhibits of vintage World War II aircraft as well as the military’s latest fighters.

OneWeb has renegotiated its contract with Arianespace and plans to resume launching its broadband satellite network in December, pending court approval of its Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

Development of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H3 has slipped at least three months following the discovery of faults during testing of the

Austria has selected the military version of Leonardo’s AW169 twin-engine intermediate light helicopter to replace its fleet of 1960s-era Aerospatiale Alouette III.

Selected U.S. military contracts from the past week.

News in brief

Brief news items of interest to aerospace & defense professionals.

The HH-60W Jolly Green II combat search-and-rescue helicopter has begun live-fire testing of its three primary weapons–the GAU-2, GAU-18 and GAU-21.

A standard timeline for awarding an MQ-9 contract after an acquisition decision was 380 days, or 12.5 months, but now the terms have been pre-negotiated.

Boeing has a successor supplier program to its infamous Partnering for Success (PFS), but it is not picking up much traction yet, according to one new industry survey.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems debuted its MQ-9 Block 5 Ghost Reaper concept at the U.S. Air Force’s largest trade show, rebranding the counterinsurgency platform to fit the service’s vision for the Advanced Battle Management System.

Diamond Aircraft has relaunched the Diamond DA20-C1 equipped with new G500TXi avionics.

Romania has accepted the first of seven planned Raytheon Patriot ground-based air defense systems.