Aerospace & Defense Roundup: Aug. 10

Bell Textron Inc. unveiled plans for a new 140,000-ft.² manufacturing technology center Aug. 10 to support the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift effort. Aircraft will not be produced at rate in the facility, which will function more like a test bed and proving ground, a company spokesman told Aerospace DAILY.

A future hypersonic cruise missile will be competed between Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the U.S. Air Force has announced. The Aug. 5 selection revives Boeing’s role as a competitor for the Air Force’s offensive hypersonic weapons. The company had lost previous bids for the Air Force’s rocket-boosted, hypersonic glider contracts, but was previously a pioneer in hypersonic flight experiments with the scramjet-powered X-43 and X-51 demonstrator programs.

Russian Helicopters announced Aug. 10 that the modernized Kamov Ka-52M attack helicopter made its first flight, taking off from Russian Helicopters’ subsidiary Progress in Arseniev in Russia’s Far East.

A U.S. Navy EA-18G test aircraft flew on Aug. 7 with the first flight-worthy Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) pod to launch a flight test program. The Raytheon-built radar jammer confirmed safety-of-flight characteristics during the sortie by the VX-23 flight test squadron at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, according to Naval Air Systems Command.

The Netherlands has restarted flights of its NHIndustries NH90 naval helicopters after a three-week hiatus prompted by a crash in the Caribbean. Two of the four crewmembers onboard the helicopter died when it crashed into the Caribbean Sea off Aruba on July 19. The aircraft had been on a coastguard patrol flight.

U.S. Space Force logo.

Wireless charging system developer WiBotic on Aug. 6 announced Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorization of its line of transmitters and receivers for charging drones, mobile robots and industrial automation devices.

F-35B

NATO’s Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport Unit (MMU) has taken delivery of its second Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT).

A short item tucked into the version of the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Senate on July 23 quietly calls on the U.S. Defense Department to come up with a plan that some experts say will cost more than $10 billion to implement.