Defense

General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) plans to double the production rate of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft through early 2018 as assembly transitions to the more capable Extended Range (ER) version.

In this week’s Washington Outlook, General Atomics is trying to “educate” lawmakers to keep U.S. UAS technology at the forefront; the CBO scores the cost of ATC reform, and GAO sizes up the potential sale of old ICBM motors.

The U.S. is striving to make its electronic warfare systems agile and flexible to offset advances made by potential adversaries.

The U.S. Air Force is eyeing more powerful, fuel-efficient engines for extended range and increased stealth as key requirements for its next air superiority fighter.

The last of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) is poised for liftoff on Aug. 18, as the agency looks ahead to transitioning responsibility for its space communications network to commercial systems in the mid 2020s.

The U.S. Air Force has officially named its new space advocates, as forces within Congress continue their push for a separate Space Corps.

Only specific portions of Boeing’s current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense contract will be extended beyond the expiration date in December 2018, while MDA takes over lead systems integrator responsibilities.

The U.S. Navy is expected to soon award a contract to Raytheon to integrate a seeker into Tomahawk missiles to enable the weapon to strike a moving target at sea.

India is planning to launch its eighth Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System spacecraft in the last week of August, an Indian Space Research Organization official says.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is in the early stages of negotiating the potential sale of as many as 90 Predator C Avenger remotely piloted aircraft to an unidentified international customer.

Newly revealed satellite images of potential aircraft debris have boosted Australian researchers’ confidence about where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed more than three years ago.

India has decided to buy six AH-64E Apache Longbow attack helicopters for its army’s aviation wing to enhance its strike forces.

First used in 2013 by British forces in Afghanistan, ultraportable nano-UAVs are growing in capability and applications.

A new name for Sukhoi’s T-50 fighter; Thailand seeks weapons for new frigate; Bahrain will join the ranks of C-130J-flying nations and Lockheed wins a major special operations logistics contract.

Traditionally France uses expeditionary forces, while Germany stresses a defensive role and interoperability with NATO.

Raytheon wants to defend Hawaii using “full-caliber” Standard Missile-3 Block 2A exoatmospheric interceptors, paired with its scalable Air and Missile Defense Radar.

The U.S. Marine Corps prides itself on being the “tip of the spear,” but in East Asia, the “Green Knights” of Marine Fighter Attack Sqdn.-121 are more like the tip of the iceberg, as the first of dozens of war-ready Lockheed Martin F-35 squadrons being stationed in the region over the next decade.

Australia and the Netherlands are to host spares warehouses that will go on to support international fleets of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

Russia’s Sukhoi T-50 fifth-generation fighter has finally received its official name.

The International Space Station is poised to become quite the clearing house for galactic cosmic ray analysis.

Orbital ATK’s medium-lift booster to put space surveillance satellite into orbit for U.S. Air Force.

Recent Thai acquisitions are evidently part of a 10-year military modernization plan lifting defense spending to 2% of GDP.

The aircrews that help move and sustain troops in battle hope to learn crucial lessons from the U.S. Air Force’s first-ever large-scale mobility exercise.

“We want to understand how to predict and monitor solar eruptions that affect us on Earth,” said astronomer Jay Pasachoff with Williams College in Massachusetts.

The U.S. is the top-ranked nation for aerospace manufacturing, and Georgia is the top state within it, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2017 Aerospace Manufacturing Attractiveness Rankings index.