Aerospace & Defense Technology

The aerospace and defense industry has adopted the use of the digital twin as a revolutionary design tool for several decades. Digital twins effectively provide a virtual representation of a product, system or technology that allows companies other than design and test new products before building them physically.   Will the A&D industry ever get to a point where virtual prototypes completely...

Art Sellers, SparkCognition Government Systems President and General Manager joins the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast to explain their new partnership using AI to improve supply chain efficiency for the U.S. Air Force.

In February, Cadence launched a new generation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with the introduction of the Millennium M1 CFDSupercomputer . Millennium M1 is a graphics processor unit (GPU)-based hardware system that is also available with no hardware completely in the cloud . What is a CFD supercomputer, how does it work and what could it provide for engineers and designers of complex aeros...

The U.S. Army recently provided the following definition for "digital engineering," in the article "A Matter of Course," that explains how the Army is developing a new digital engineering course. Here's how the Army describes digital engineering: "Digital engineering is the process of digitally designing military equipment, such as future combat vehicles or other milit...

This is the first episode of the fourth season of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast, where the topical focus is the impact of digital engineering and how the use of new digital tools are re-defining aerospace and defense systems design. This 4-episode season will be published weekly in August.   The first episode features Tyler Saltsman, CEO of EdgeRunner AI , a new startup that is fo...

Established in 2018 by four ex-Airbus engineers who led the development of an all-electric plane but believed that batteries alone would not be enough to decarbonize aviation, Ascendance is one of France's fastest growing startups. Ascendance is currently developing both a hybrid electric propulsion system, STERNA, and a winged hybrid electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft call...

Helios Horizon, an initiative to develop a stratospheric electric airplane, recently concluded its latest flight test campaign having surpassed the altitude record for multi-seat electric aircraft. Over a series of flights in April and May near Bishop, Calif., Helios Horizon progressed from 17,500 to 24,000 feet, all while using less than 60% of the aircraft’s total battery capacity. On this episo...

Archer Aviation , Lilium and Joby are three of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft manufacturers that have been making major progress in this growing new are of aviation over the last year. In this episode, we highlight some of the latest flight testing advancement, international expansion and regulatory progress being made by these three eVTOL companies right now and why they&#...

As several major electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) development programs — Archer, Joby and Lilium to name a few — are approaching the final stages of certification and eventual entry into service, the performance of the batteries that power those aircraft remain the key enabling this burgeoning new segment of aviation to takeoff in the near future.   Amprius Technologies continues to b...

The U.S. Army has shown increased interest in the use of different technologies for hybrid and electric-powered non-tactical and tactical vehicles in recent years. The most prominent example being their 2022 sustainability strategy that outlined ambitious goals for developing an all-electric, light-duty, non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027 and an all-electric, non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035. Ri...

In December, Neya Systems was one of three companies selected to participate in the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Ground Expeditionary Autonomous Retrofit System (GEARS) project. Under the GEARS project, the three companies are developing autonomous navigation kits for the Army's Palletized Load System (PLS) vehicles. Kurt Bruck, Division Manager, Neya Systems, is the guest on this episode of Se...

Are there opportunities for UGVs to leverage AI for autonomous navigation in environments where manned military ground vehicles operate today? In a recent white paper , "Leveraging AI to Enable Decision Superiority," California-based embedded computing supplier Aitech provided an in-depth answer to that question, along with other insights on how UGVs can leverage AI.   Tim Stewart, Direc...

Bogdan Epureanu, Director of the Automotive Research Center and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is the guest on this episode of the podcast to discuss how his team is working on high-fidelity synthetic environments, virtual vehicle prototypes and virtual reality tools for human-autonomy teaming — all in the pursuit of enabling future off-road autonomous vehicles for the U...

The wide availability and proliferation of advanced inexpensive small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has enabled a wide variety of beneficial new commercial and civilian use cases such as medical delivery to remote areas, border surveillance and even commercial aircraft maintenance among others. However, as shown in several high profile incidents over the last year where airport operations were c...

What is metamaterials electronically scanned array (MESA) technology and how is it providing a new approach to surveillance within counter unmanned aerial system (UAS) radar applications? Tom Driscoll, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Echodyne, is the guest on this episode of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast to answer these questions and more. www.saemediagroup.com/magazines/a...

This is the second part of our interview with Michael O'Hara, CUAS Mission Solutions and Strategy Manager for Northrop Grumman. In the second part of the interview, O’Hara provides more perspective on how the use of directed energy, high-powered lasers and microwaves can be improved to become more effective in countering the proliferation of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in warfare. O’...

On this episode of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast, the guest is Michael O'Hara, CUAS Mission Solutions and Strategy Manager for Northrop Grumman. O'Hara provides unique insight into how the use of small inexpensive drones on the battlefield in Ukraine and other modern conflicts is changing the way the U.S. military deploys and operates counter unmanned aerial system (UAS) t...

Welcome to the first season of the new Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast. The guest on this episode is Shaan Shaikh, a fellow with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In November, Shaikh co-authored a 64-page report , "Countering Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems," which outlines the military threats posed by small uncrewed aeria...