Bots & Bullets

Turkey’s drone company Baykar has announced a new phase in its unmanned combat aircraft project, unveiling that the first prototype has entered the production line.The company is in the news daily now, as Ukraine succesfully employs Bayraktar BT2 drones to fight the much bigger Russian invasion army.

Robotics integrator Aerobotix has partnered with Minteq International to help speed up the production of hypersonic missiles and aircraft for U.S. Government projects. Under the agreement, Aerobotix will distribute Minteq’s FIREX RX-2390 Thermal Protection System (TPS) coating for hypersonic flight hardware.

The Ukraine armed forces claim they have used the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to destroy Russian armored vehicles. In a video posted on scial media a strike on a military convoy is shown, apparantly by a drone. This would be the first time drones are used to kill in a major conflict, although the Bayraktar has been employed in other engagements as well.

Anduril joined nearly 9,000 personnel from more than 60 countries and international organizations last week in Bahrain to participate in International Maritime Exercise/Cutlass Express (IMX/CE) 2022, the largest maritime exercise in the Middle East. Anduril’s Lattice operating system was used in several training scenarios, including those related to surface warfare and search and rescue.

Silent Arrow announced that the company’s GD-2000 UAS platform was selected for a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Warfighter Lab Incentive Fund (WLIF) contract with a 12-month period of performance beginning in Q1 2022.

Compass Technology Group (CTG) has won the Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award (DMTAA) at the recent Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC). Atlanta-based CTG, an Aerobotix partner and provider of radio frequency (RF) materials measurement equipment, engaged Aerobotix in building its award-winning project – an adaptive radome diagnostic system, which is also the first use of a collaborative mobile robot in Air Force maintenance depots.

Elbit Systems will present the Skylark 3 Hybrid Small Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems (STUAS) for the first time at the Singapore Airshow 2022. The Skylark3 Hybrid is equipped with a hybrid propulsion system, both an electric and an internal combustion engine, tripling endurance and offering up to 18 hours of operations, with no change to size or weight.

Lethal autonomous weapons systems demand careful consideration but nightmare scenarios of the future won’t become reality anytime soon, says a UNSW Canberra military ethicist.

For the first time, the Civil Aviation Authority of the State of Israel (CAAI), that operates under the Israeli Ministry of Transport and Road Safety, has certified an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) for civil aviation, approving it to fly in civilian airspace as any other civilian airplane and not restricting its flight to segregated airspace. 

The DARPA Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program completed a first ever flight of a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter without anyone onboard. Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, completed 30-minutes of uninhabited flight with the optionally piloted vehicle (OPV) over the U.S. Army installation at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Later a second uninhabited flight was conducted.