In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Nov. 01 2022

Even excluding the air power component of the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Navy operates more aircraft than the vast majority of global air forces.

Credit: Beta Technologies. UPS Flight Forward, the package carrier’s uncrewed aircraft division, is looking ahead to a vertical takeoff and landing demonstration flight direct to a UPS center using Beta Technologies’ Alia-250.

Credit: USAF. The U.S. Air Force is ready to make a commitment to fielding a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)—a loyal wingman-type drone to fly alongside future fighters—after reviews found the service could field a “meaningful capability” over the next several years, the service’s top official says.

Credit: NASA. As NASA presses ahead to transition International Space Station (ISS) operations to multiple commercial free-flying platforms, the agency is also working to retain its international and U.S. National Laboratory partners, according to two days of testimony provided to the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee.

Credit: DARPA. Spire Global has won a contract from DARPA to design a satellite that would carry sensors to very low Earth orbit to study the ionosphere.

Credit: SpaceX. A triple-core Falcon Heavy, currently the most powerful rocket operating today, lifted off from a fog-shrouded Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 1 on a challenging and classified mission for the U.S. Space Force. 

Credit: Saab. Sweden should make decisions on the development of future combat aircraft no later than 2030, proposals for development of the country’s armed forces have suggested.

Credit: Airbus. JAKARTA, Indonesia–Airbus is expecting a contract for two Indonesian A400Ms to go into full effect in November and has already secured production slots for the aircraft, a company official says.

Credit: UMS Skeldar. Flights of UMS Skeldar’s V-200 rotary-wing uncrewed aircraft have demonstrated a detect-and-avoid (DAA) system capable of automatically maneuvering a UAV around intruder aircraft.

Credit: Australia defense department. Australia’s department of defense is sticking with the Lockheed Martin C-130J to replace and expand the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) fleet of 12 C-130Js under its medium air mobility replacement program.

Credit: Volocopter. German urban air mobility (UAM) startup Volocopter has secured an additional $182 million in funding, with Saudi Arabian smart city Neom and Hong Kong-based GLy Capital Management as new investors.

Credit: NHIndustries. Sweden is proposing to follow Australia and Norway and decommission its NH90 fleet earlier than planned after struggling with availability issues.

Capstone

Credit: RAF. The UK Royal Air Force (RAF) is emphasizing low-cost capability as it begins to re-explore its Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA) work.

Credit: PJF Military Collection/Alamy Stock Photo. Switzerland will have 24 of its 36 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters built in Italy, the Swiss Defense Ministry has confirmed.

Credit: Orbex. British satellite launcher start-up Orbex is to take the lead in the development and construction of the Sutherland Space Hub in Scotland.

Credit: Polish Defense Ministry. Poland has taken delivery of its first batch of Baykar Bayraktar TB2 armed uncrewed aircraft systems, becoming the first NATO export customer for the Turkish-developed system.

Credit: U.S. Air Force. A U.S.-based analyst has identified a severalfold increase since 2020 in the Chinese military’s ground-based jammers potentially being aimed at the most distant and powerful communications satellites. It is a development that poses an expanded threat to a critical enabler of modern military operations.

Credit: NASA. The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory is exploring modular propulsion for small satellites, with the aim of demonstrating the concept on orbit within a few years.