Defense

The SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon autonomously undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) Nov. 8 and prepared for a parachute-assisted, late-night splashdown and recovery in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

U.S.-based satellite communications provider Viasat on Nov. 8 announced a definitive agreement to acquire UK-based Inmarsat in a transaction valued at $7.3 billion that would create an unrivaled, multiband space and terrestrial network serving aviation, maritime and other markets.

Will a new acquisition strategy win the next war for the U.S. military?

Germany’s Navy has received six Skeldar V-200 rotary-wing unmanned air systems to support the operations of its K130 corvettes.

Airbus has teamed with Northrop Grumman as part of a seven-strong industrial team to answer NATO’s call for its Alliance Future Surveillance and Control program.

The Affinity Flying Training Services consortium has been awarded a £65 million ($88 million) contract to operate an additional four Beechcraft T-6 Texan II turboprop training aircraft for the UK’s Military Flying Training System.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s latest survey of scientific priorities in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics over the coming decade recommends that NASA reassess how its most costly and ambitious “flagship” missions are pursued, from planning through implementation.

If all options are exercised, work on the contract will last until Oct. 31, 2031.

North Korea’s cruise missile advancement, shown in the September test of a natively developed missile that can reach Japan, should concern the U.S. and is a sign that deterrence needs to be strengthened on the Korean Peninsula, the head of the U.S. Marine Corps said.

Direct talks between the U.S. Air Force and China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force have “dried up” over recent years and need to be restarted on Beijing’s end to avoid unsafe and unprofessional interactions in flight, a senior USAF leader said.

The program now could enter a new phase of demonstrations with a single human controller assigned to launch and recover multiple X-61s from a C-130.

NASA and SpaceX on Nov. 5 continued to assess how best to schedule a planned crew rotation aboard the International Space Station in response to a challenging weather outlook affecting a Falcon 9 Crew-3 Dragon launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

ANA Holdings has an agreement that sets the stage for the purchase of 20 Virgin One LauncherOne rocket flights that would take off from Japan.

Jon Lake, Jay Menon and Angie Bee take you through a host of activities in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region’s defence sector.

The Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, French national space center CNES and Airbus have inked a letter of intent to cooperate on Earth-observation satellites, including development of VNREDSat-2.

A discussion with Lux Capital Co-Founder Josh Wolfe and Partner Bilal Zuberi about where the venture capital investment company is placing its bets and how it pinpoints successful new aerospace and defense technologies.

With an eye on Iran, the Middle East’s air forces are expanding and broadening the capabilities of their fighter fleets.

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

A year after the Abraham Accords, the Dubai Airshow offers the next venue to measure the strength of a new diplomatic partnership.

Skyborg is the tip of the iceberg in a multiservice push to bring autonomous control systems from laboratories to the battlefield.

U.S. Special Operations Command recently released a request for proposals for Armed Overwatch, with a production award expected in spring 2022.

Additional centralized authority over the Pentagon’s broad Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept could slow development and make the process more risk averse, the Pentagon’s lead for the effort said in response to a new think-tank report that argued a central authority is needed.

Equipped with emerging propulsion and navigation technologies, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test is intended to demonstrate for the first time the potential effectiveness of a kinetic impact strategy in deflecting an asteroid on a destructive collision course with Earth.

The U.S. Army will reactive the 56th Artillery Command in Europe on Nov. 8 for the first time in 30 years as the military prepares to deploy new long-range missiles that become operational in 2023.