Author: Michael

Bell

Bell’s 360 Invictus prototype has been disassembled, trucked from Amarillo to Fort Worth, Texas, and is being put back together in preparation for ground runs and a first flight this year, if all goes to plan.
The company’s pitch for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Recon Aircraft, or FARA, is 95 percent complete and awaiting the GE T901 Improved Turbine Engine so it can begin ground runs ahead of a planned takeoff sometime in 2023. The engine is being developed by another Army office within the Future Vertical Lift effort.
When The War Zone was given a glimpse of Invictus on Jan.

Defense Innovation Board members plan to use generative artificial intelligence — large language models that can generate audio, code, images, text, videos and other media — to inform reports and studies they’re conducting for Pentagon leaders in the near-term associated with strategic investment capital and other priority research topics.

The SCAR Mk16 is a modern and outstanding rifle even though it wasn’t what SOCOM needed at the time.
The post This is why the SCAR Mk16 rifle never became a special operations weapon appeared first on Sandboxx.

Lockheed Martin

The U.S. Air Force says it would like to have a fleet of next-generation aerial refueling tankers in service by 2040. At least for the time being, the service says that it is willing to consider a wide range of options for what the tankers might actually look like, but says they will need to be able to provide support in “contested scenarios.” Lockheed Martin and Boeing have already been exploring relevant design concepts with blended wing-body planforms and that are at least somewhat stealthy.

A mural depicting mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group that reads: “Wagner Group – Russian knights” on a wall in Belgrade, Serbia, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic).

The Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious private military company accused of war crimes and identified as a “significant transnational criminal organization” by the U.S. Treasury Department, may be trying to recruit American veterans as mercenaries.
A video being shared on social media is purportedly a Wagner recruiting commercial that targets U.S. military veterans.

GA-ASI

The Eaglet air-launched drone developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has flown for the first time. The company hopes that the Eaglet concept will be able to bolster and extend the capabilities of the drone’s launching platforms, with the goal of ultimately having multiple Eaglets operating in networked swarms.
A GA-ASI press release says that the Eaglet took its inaugural flight as part of a demonstration held at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah on Dec. 8, 2022. The Eaglet was launched from an Army-owned MQ-1C Gray Eagle Extended Range (ER) drone.

The U.S. famously recruited Nazi scientists in Operation Paperclip, but were they really responsible for America winning the Cold War?
The post The Soviet version of Operation Paperclip was way bigger (but less successful) appeared first on Sandboxx.

This will turn some heads. (U.S. Army WTF! Moments/Instagram).

There’s not necessarily a wrong way to name a tank, at least from the crew’s perspective. This one, though, might have the heads of a few officers and sergeants major spinning.
Seen on the popular “U.S. Army WTF! Moments” page, it appears that an Army tank crew named their M1 Abrams main battle tank “Dahmer’s Fridge.”

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Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists are slowly being neutralized in Yemen.
The post US uses ‘Flying Ginsu’ missile to kill three al-Qaeda militants in Yemen appeared first on Sandboxx.

Leveraging contractor-owned maritime drones to augment the Navy’s fleet could be a good long-term option for deploying robotic platforms, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told DefenseScoop.
The Navy’s 5th Fleet has been experimenting with this concept for Task Force 59, which is using unmanned surface vessels equipped with cameras to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in the waters near the Middle East. The commander of 5th Fleet, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, has referred to this deployment model as CONOCO — contractor-owned, contractor-operated, with Navy oversight.