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Joby demonstrates potential for emissions-free regional journeys with landmark 523-mile hydrogen-electric flight – July 11

Joby’s hydrogen-electric technology demonstrator aircraft completed a 523-mile flight on June 24, 2024 above Marina, California, with no in-flight emissions except water. (Photo: Joby Aviation)

Santa Cruz, CA, Jul 11, 2024 — Joby Aviation, Inc. (NYSE:JOBY), a next generation aviation company, today announced it has successfully flown a first-of-its-kind hydrogen-electric air taxi demonstrator 523 miles, with water as the only by-product. The aircraft, which takes off and lands vertically, builds on Joby’s successful battery-electric air taxi development program, and demonstrates the potential for hydrogen to unlock emissions-free, regional journeys that don’t require a runway.

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO, Joby, said: “Traveling by air is central to human progress, but we need to find ways to make it cleaner. With our battery-electric air taxi set to fundamentally change the way we move around cities, we’re excited to now be building a technology stack that could redefine regional travel using hydrogen-electric aircraft.

“Imagine being able to fly from San Francisco to San Diego, Boston to Baltimore, or Nashville to New Orleans without the need to go to an airport and with no emissions except water. That world is closer than ever, and the progress we’ve made towards certifying the battery-electric version of our aircraft gives us a great head start as we look ahead to making hydrogen-electric flight a reality.

“The vast majority of the design, testing and certification work we’ve completed on our battery-electric aircraft carries over to commercializing hydrogen-electric flight. In service, we also expect to be able to use the same landing pads, the same operations team, and Joby’s ElevateOS software that will support the commercial operation of our battery-electric aircraft.”

The landmark test flight, believed to be the first forward flight of a vertical take off and landing aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen, was completed last month using a converted Joby pre-production prototype battery-electric aircraft fitted with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank and fuel cell system. It landed with 10% of its hydrogen fuel load remaining.

Jacob Wilson, (Acting) Branch Chief, AFWERX Agility Prime, said: “Agility Prime has been very supportive of hydrogen-powered aircraft development and testing as it aligns with the program’s goals to advance transformative vertical lift technologies and broader Department of Defense operational energy goals of energy substitution and diversification, and energy demand reduction.”

“Clean hydrogen has the potential to help decarbonize our aviation system for decades to come,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Jeff Marootian. “Regional air mobility innovation provides a clear opportunity to incorporate clean hydrogen into the future of transportation.”

“Joby is a stellar example of why California continues to lead the world in clean technology and high-tech manufacturing,” said Dee Dee Myers, Senior Advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. “Their pioneering work to decarbonize aviation, by advancing battery and now hydrogen fuel cell technology, is helping to fight climate change and create a clean energy future that will improve the lives of all Californians.”

Joby’s hydrogen-electric demonstrator is part of the Company’s future technology program and is the result of several years of collaboration between a small team at Joby and H2FLY, Joby’s wholly-owned subsidiary based in Stuttgart, Germany. The converted aircraft previously completed more than 25,000 miles of testing as a battery-electric aircraft at Joby’s base in Marina, CA.

Using the same airframe and overall architecture as Joby’s core, battery-electric aircraft, this demonstrator features a liquid hydrogen fuel tank, designed and built by Joby, which stores up to 40 kilograms of liquid hydrogen, alongside a reduced mass of batteries. Hydrogen is fed into a fuel cell system, designed and built by H2FLY, to produce electricity, water, and heat. The electricity produced by the hydrogen fuel cell powers the six electric motors on the Joby aircraft, with the batteries providing additional power primarily during take-off and landing.

Joby’s H2FLY team used similar technology to complete another record-breaking flight in September 2023, when they flew the world’s first piloted flight of a conventional liquid hydrogen-electric aircraft using their fuel cell technology.

As part of Joby’s wider commitment to leading the way on the development of new aviation technologies, it recently acquired Xwing Inc., an industry leader in the development of autonomous technology for aviation. Xwing has been flying autonomous aircraft since 2020, with 250 fully autonomous flights and more than 500 auto-landings completed to date, using the Superpilot software it developed in-house.

Joby plans to start commercial operations as soon as 2025, using its battery-electric air taxi. The Company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has raised more than $2 billion of funding to date, including investments from Toyota, Delta Air Lines, SK Telecom, Uber and Baillie Gifford.

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Army Details Hybrid-Electric VTOL Interest, Aims For Tech Demos In FY ‘26-’30

The Army has detailed an extensive plan for evaluating hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) platforms and enabling technologies, with an aim to hold capability demonstrations between fiscal years 2026 and 2030.

A Request for Information notice published on July 16 notes the Army’s intent with hybrid-electric VTOL exploration effort is to bolster the service’s knowledge of the capability space, reduce risk associated with hybrid-electric technology, demonstrate advancements in aviation platform capability and inform its science and technology strategy for aviation, future requirements and “program of record roadmaps.”

“Electric, more-electric, and hybrid propulsion technologies for aircraft are being investigated and developed by many segments of industry, including large and small, new and established, non-DoD-affiliated and traditional defense contractor companies. Tremendous gains in individual components and system designs have brought the advanced air mobility industry to the cusp of success,” the Army writes in the RFI.

The Army states its interest in exploring hybrid-electric VTOL is focused on potential attributes including reduced fuel consumption, affordability and operational advantages such as silent approach and high speed cruise with low-speed loiter.

The RFI opens with the Army noting it hopes to answer “many questions” on hybrid-electric VTOL with this demonstration effort, to include whether fully electric systems “limit mission flexibility” and if hybrid systems require a high level of expertise for optimization “due to the number of variables and large design space.”

“For the Army, many questions remain about the viability of these systems for military missions. Internal analysis based on best available knowledge has shown specific power and energy limitations may present mission performance challenges,” the Army writes.

The Army adds it plans to spend approximately $5 million to $7 million a year between FY ‘26-’30 on hybrid-electric VTOL demonstrations.

“While available funding is significant, it may be insufficient to solely fund the design, fabrication and test of a new-build aircraft. The government is open to cost sharing/teaming opportunities with industry for technology demonstrations provided goals and schedules align, and data rights arrangements are suitable,” the RFI notes.

The eventual Request for Proposals is expected to open “the aperture to a wide range of technical solutions,” to include an “objective aircraft design” to “critical enabling technologies,” with the Army leaving open the possibility of funding one or more proposed efforts

“An objective aircraft design provides a target for technology development and indicates a capability that could potentially be adapted to satisfy a future requirement. While demonstration of the full objective aircraft may be cost prohibitive and unnecessary, critical enabling technologies integrated into practical systems can be demonstrated. A future RFP would ask for information about both the objective aircraft design and how the integrated, enabling technology demonstrations would be executed,” the Army writes. “However, top level funding is fixed, therefore these decisions will be guided by the proposals received, balancing S&T value and available resources. Non-selection will not necessarily imply any deficiency in the proposal.”

For full hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft designs, the Army provides a broad list of general “mission descriptions in the RFI to include an interest in: militarized, autonomous hybrid-electric VTOL platforms “capable of frequent and routine logistics movement of supplies” with a payload capacity of 1,200-2,000 pounds and an un-refueled/recharged combat radius of 130 nautical miles, small helicopters capable of “extended, precision” hover and medium-lift rotorcraft that showcase improvements in “range/payload capacity, operating and sustainment cost, fuel quantity use, or safety.”

The RFI also notes the Army’s interest in Group 3 or 4 drones “using hybrid-electric technology to extend range and endurance, or to provide good flight performance characteristics in multiple flight regimes,” including high and low-speed loiter operations.

“Ideally, demonstrations will be conducted at an aircraft system-level to show integration, interfaces, dependencies, synergies and constraints of constituent component technologies in a realistic, workable system. Ground and/or flight demonstrations are desired as project cost and outcomes are balanced. Surrogates such as iron/copper birds or alternative aircraft (including piloted) may be used to demonstrate critical enabling technologies as necessary to provide evidence that the objective design is credible,” the Army writes in the RFI.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Sikorsky Nears Testbed For HEX VTOL Demonstrator, Pursuing Several Hybrid Electric Concepts

Sikorsky plans to have the power systems tested for its hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (HEX VTOL) demonstrator aircraft ready by year’s end to begin ground runs in 2025, citing it as a key marker in its pursuit to develop a family of hybrid-electric platforms.

Igor Cherepinsky, director of Sikorsky Innovations, told reporters the company is working on a preliminary design review for the actual HEX VTOL follow-on demonstrator, with plans to eventually build two airframes.

“[The testbed] also serves as our lab, so we’ll certainly power it on. What happens after we power it on depends on our findings as we’re going pretty fast,” Cherepinsky said. “This is our first foray into a really high-powered hybrid [electric] system, so we’re going to take it as fast as possible without doing anything silly.”

In February, Sikorsky detailed its HEX VTOL demonstrator, which includes a tilt-wing configuration for potential commercial and military applications, and that it had partnered with GE Aerospace to integrate a 1.2 megawatt-class turbogenerator into the platform.

Sikorsky said at the time that the HEX VTOL demonstrator is intended to have an operating range of at least 500 nautical miles and 9,000-pound maximum gross weight, and would utilize the company’s MATRIX autonomy software.

Work with the HEX VTOL power systems testbed will begin at Sikorsky’s headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut before transitioning to the company’s facility in West Palm Beach, Florida, Cherepinsky noted, with plans to conduct ground runs and eventual hover testing on the testbed by mid to late 2025.

Cherepinsky told reporters work to build the two HEX VTOL airframes is following the testbed by “about to six to eight months,” and that timing of when first flights could occur will be informed by findings with the power systems testbed.

“Design on the actual air vehicle is proceeding. We are approaching the [preliminary design review] for the vehicle. And because we are Sikorsky Innovations we have started making some parts for the air vehicle,” Cherepinsky said. “So this becomes essentially a game of when have I demonstrated the powertrain that I’m comfortable to put in in a not inexpensive 9,000-pound air vehicle and go fly that.”

In a media briefing ahead of this week’s Farnborough International Airshow in England, Cherepinsky detailed Sikorsky Innovations exploration of multiple efforts in pursuit of a hybrid-electric VTOL family of systems.

“How do we deliver these products to our customers faster and cheaper? Part of the way of doing that really is to make sure that we have a common set of subsystems, and really subsystems, that we can develop and use in these different looking aircraft,” Cherepinsky said.

The HEX VTOL tilt-wing demonstrator is one of four hybrid-electric concepts Sikorsky is pursuing, which also includes a larger version of the HEX VTOL platform that has gone through a conceptual design and a new rotor blown wing unmanned aircraft system.

“[The rotor blown wing] simply implies that we’re using a blowing effect from the rotors to do interesting things with wing interaction. It’s a tail-sitter. It’s designed for a variety of missions. It’s really meant to be a cost-effective way of providing VTOL UAS to a wide range of customers,” Cherepinsky said.

Sikorsky is developing a version of its rotor blown wing UAS concept for DARPA’s Advanced Aircraft Infrastructure-Less Launch and Recovery program, also known as Ancillary, with the DoD agency having recently selected it as one of six companies to continue onto the risk reduction and component testing phase.

The fourth concept is a hybrid-electric, single main rotor helicopter, which Cherepinsky said is currently in a conceptual design stage.

“It’s ultra efficient, ultra cost efficient and also hybrid electric. It has a very nice blend between batteries, conventional turbine [engines] and other means of producing power to generate a very low cost per flight hour machine that is also eco-friendly,” Cherepinsky said. “Stay tuned for when and how we intend to proceed with it.”

Cherepinsky did add that Sikorsky is thinking about both a clean-sheet design for a hybrid-electric helicopter and potentially pursuing retrofit kits “further out in the future.”

“We are actively studying all of that. I’m obviously being careful not to reveal things we are not ready to talk about yet,” Cherepinsky told reporters. “This is what we’re aiming for with our next product cycle. I can say that. So don’t expect us to talk about this for decades. Expect to hear from us in the year [with] a more concrete commitment to something or the other.”

The Army last week published a Request for Information detailing extensive plans for evaluating hybrid-electric VTOL platforms and enabling technologies, with an aim to hold capability demonstrations between fiscal years 2026 and 2030.

Cherepinsky detailed Sikorsky’s decision to focus on hybrid-electric over pursuing fully-electric platforms, noting the HEX design allows it to be “very upgradeable” to “whatever might come next” in battery technology.

“If you look at the vehicles that interest us, they are north of 10,000 pounds. Being purely electric for that size isn’t practical yet. I will never say that it will never be practical, right, because never say never. In this kind of tech [space] with batteries there are things that are coming out that might make it possible,” Cherepinsky said. “But to be pragmatic and to be able to develop electrified aircraft architectures we said we’re going to be agnostic to the source of the electric power, which today implies that the best thing to do is to take a turbine [engine] and convert all the power to electricity.”

Cherepinsky added that hybrid-electric platforms are likely to burn sustainable aviation fuels “much more efficiently” than conventionally-powered aircraft.

“We are very [aware] of the fact that aviation does produce carbon emissions and we are certainly looking at how do we offset that while still continuing to provide a valuable service,” Cherepinsky said. “The neat part about that is being environmentally conscious is actually good for business. As we produce vehicles that consume less fuel to start with and eventually are eventually convertible to zero emission vehicles, it’s all good news because the cost per mile drops.”

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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GE Aerospace, Kratos Developing Low-Cost Engines With Plans For Production To Meet CCA, UAS Needs

GE Aerospace and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions on Monday said they have been jointly developing small affordable engines to power unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), unmanned collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), and similar aircraft.

The two companies for the past year have been jointly developing a small affordable engine and on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding committing them to sign a new agreement to continue development and partner on full-scale engine production. A new agreement is expected in the coming months.

The thrust range for the UAS and CCA’s is between 600 and 1,250-pounds of thrust, the companies said. Production could begin by the end of the decade, they said.

“Our defense customers have a growing interest in small affordable engines to meet their evolving mission requirements,” Amy Gowder, president and CEO of the Defense & Systems business at GE Aerospace, said in a statement. “Our initial collaboration has been very successful, and this agreement furthers our efforts in this new dynamic military segment.”

Kratos, which has a jet engine business and develops and manufactures unmanned aerial target vehicles and an unmanned stealthy combat aircraft, first developed and ground tested the engine. After GE Aerospace and Kratos signed the existing agreement, the companies completed additional development work and are now testing the engine. Development efforts will continue and lead into altitude testing in 2025 at GE Aerospace’s test cell in Evendale, Ohio.

GE Aerospace is a legacy developer and manufacturer of engines used in fighter aircraft, commercial planes, and helicopters.

“Kratos has made significant investments in the development of our family of small, low-cost jet engines for jet-powered drones, missiles, and powered munitions that lead in technology and capability,” Eric DeMarco, president and CEO of Kratos, said in a statement. “We consider our relationship with GE Aerospace as invaluable based on our expectation and forecast for the potential future production of thousands of turbofan engines for multiple customers.”

The Air Force is managing a CCA program for unmanned jet aircraft that will include autonomous capabilities and team with manned fighters. Currently, Anduril Industries and General Atomics are conducting detailed design work for their respective CCAs with plans to build and test the aircraft.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Columbia and Piasecki To Upgrade Model 107 Helicopters – AIN – July 2

Columbia Helicopters announced a partnership with Piasecki Aircraft to upgrade current Model 107-II tandem-rotor helicopters for better fuel efficiency, power and reliability like the new Columbia CHI-107-III model, AIN reported. Modifications cover installing an upgraded General Electric CT-58 turboshafts with 25 percent more power over the current T-58 engines, adding a new glass cockpit with improved autopilot, a new fuel system for longer ranges and a new rotor system with lower maintenance requirements. Modifications will be made and tested at Piasecki’s facility in Coatesville, Penn, which used to be Sikorsky’s production line for S-76 and S-92 single-rotor helicopters. The Model 107-II is the civilian version of the CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter that served with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

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L3Harris Electronic Warfare System Completes Rigorous Testing

MELBOURNE, Fla., July 10, 2024 — L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX) has completed testing on its latest Viper Shield Electronic Warfare (EW) system, which enhances protection for F-16 pilots, at the U.S. Air Force’s Integrated Defensive Avionics Laboratory.

The hardware and software testing, known as Drop 4, was on the AN/ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield suite, which identified and displayed threats of interest and sorted through them in challenging backgrounds to provide precise situational awareness.

“Viper Shield demonstrated radar warning receiver functionality in dense background radio frequency environments, and successfully detected, identified, sorted and cued multiple threats,” said Air Force Col. Michael Rigoni, EW Program Manager, F-16 System Program Office, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The colonel attended the test and added that “completion of Drop 4 testing provides program risk reduction and marks an important level of system maturity.”

The Viper Shield Drop 4 capability uses production representative hardware and integrates fully with all F-16 systems. Drop 4 also ensures that the pilot has enhanced protection against threats through improved pilot-vehicle interface with the Countermeasures Dispensing System, which can release chaff and flares from the aircraft.

“Viper Shield is a virtual electronic armor that will improve the ability of F-16 fighter pilots to detect threats earlier so they can defend themselves and utilize that data to increase their survivability,” said Ed Zoiss, President, Space and Airborne Systems, L3Harris. “We will continue to refine and advance this system for warfighters globally.”

L3Harris designed Viper Shield as the baseline EW system for the global F-16 Block 70/72 fleet and can enhance both offensive and defensive capabilities. The system has proven its performance with other important milestones, including seamless integration with the onboard APG-83 AESA radar. L3Harris can also install Viper Shield onto legacy F-16 configurations inside the aircraft or in fully integrated pod configurations utilizing the existing Line Replaceable Units mounted externally.

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Sikorsky Receives GE’s New T901 Engines For Integration On Black Hawk – July 28

Sikorsky has received the first two GE Aerospace T901 new Army helicopter engines that will be integrated onto the UH-60M Black Hawk to support modernization efforts, the companies said on Thursday.

The delivery milestone for the T901, developed under the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), arrives as the Army is targeting early 2025 for the first flight of the Black Hawk with the new engine.

“This delivery represents the beginning of a new era and a pivotal moment in our ongoing work with the U.S. Army,” Amy Gowder, GE Aerospace’s president and CEO of defense and systems, said in a statement. “The T901 engine will ensure warfighters will have the performance, power, and reliability necessary to maintain a significant advantage on the battlefield.”

GE Aerospace was awarded a $517 million contract in February 2019 to develop its T901 engine for ITEP, which will eventually power the Army’s AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

The T901 was also intended to power the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft platform before the Army announced in February its plan to cancel development of the program, which had been in a competitive prototype phase with Sikorsky and Bell.

Along with canceling FARA, the Army noted at the time it would also delay moving into production of the T901 engine and invest in further research and development efforts.

In late April, the Army confirmed it had recently conducted a “light off” of the T901 engine on Sikorsky’s Raider X prototype for FARA to reduce risk heading into Black Hawk integration efforts.

“With that effort [on the FARA prototype], we gained a lot of data that will transition into the ITEP program. First into the Black Hawk program and then into the Apache,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, told reporters at the time. “[This summer,] we’ll get those engines integrated into the [Black Hawk] aircraft. We’ll do some power on checks later this year. Throughout the rest of this year, there will be planning in parallel. After we finish the preliminary flight rating testing on the test stands of the other engines that would feed right into the air worthiness release to do the first test flights and ground runs. Those will probably occur next year based on the schedule where we’re at today.”

Sikorsky said in April it had received authorization from the Army to now run the T901 engine up to full speed on the ground, while confirming there were no plans to actually fly the company’s Raider X prototype with the new engine.

“We view this [Black Hawk effort] as an extension of the work we’ve completed on ITE[P] with our Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft prototype and are even better positioned for a timely and simplified integration of the engine into the H-60M, due to data and insights we’ve retrieved from successful ITE[P] tests completed to date,” Hamid Salim, Sikorsky’s vice president of Army and Air Force systems, said in a statement on Thursday.

Sikorsky noted the T901 engine is designed to increase the UH-60M Black Hawk’s performance to include improving fuel efficiency, adding 50 percent more power and extending “lift capability and range, providing Army commanders more options for planning and executing missions.”

The first two T901 engines delivered to Sikorsky’s West Palm Beach, Florida facility will be installed in one Black Hawk for ground runs and future flight testing, the company noted, with delivery of two additional engines expected for testing on a second helicopter.

The House this week adopted an amendment to its fiscal year 2025 defense appropriations bill, passed on Friday, that shifts $63 million to the Army’s research and development account for the ITEP engine program.

“We applaud the House for passing the Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Appropriations bill and appreciate the bipartisan support for funding that will equip the U.S. Army with cutting-edge T901 engines to power its Black Hawk and Apache helicopters. We encourage the Senate to act to ensure the U.S. Army can fly higher and carry more payload sooner to meet the missions abroad and at home,” a GE Aerospace spokesperson said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the Army awarded GE Aerospace a new contract for T700 helicopter engines worth more than $1.1 billion.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Boeing Expanding Effort To Autonomously Inspect Aircraft – July 28

X10D small drone. (Photo: Skydio)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Using small third-party drones for high-resolution imaging and its own artificial intelligence-based software algorithms, Boeing is expanding an effort to speed the inspection of military aircraft exteriors and increase readiness while reducing costs and enhancing safety, a company official said.

Boeing has developed what it calls “automated damage detection software” that quickly analyzes video taken by a small drone hovering above and around an aircraft to automatically detect everything from chipped paint and exposed screws and rivets to missing seals and exposed composite fibers, Scott Belanger, who works contested logistics solutions for Boeing’s Global Services segment, told reporters.

The current manual inspections of large aircraft like a KC-46 tanker and C-5 transport, which have tails that stand 51-feet and 72-feet high respectively, are difficult to conduct and dangerous and “not accurate even when you try your best with the human eyeball,” Belanger said during a June 27 briefing in a hangar where the company does maintenance, repair, and overhaul work on military aircraft.

Officials from Boeing and its partner Skydio, a developer and manufacturer of small quadcopter drones, demonstrated the autonomous aircraft general visual inspection capability on a moveable step platform standing about 10-feet high representing a small aircraft. For the demonstration, a Skydio official remotely flew his company’s X10D drone out a few dozen yards and marked off a zone around platform, then touched the display screen on his controller to enable the small unmanned aircraft to autonomously fly above and around the platform at until it finished imaging with an onboard 64-megapixel Teledyne FLIR camera.

The corrosion problem facing legacy Defense Department aircraft is tens of millions of dollars monthly and Boeing wants to help cut into those costs, said Belanger, who served in the Air Force and was a maintenance commander. A typical “home station” inspection by the Air Force of a large aircraft like a KC-46 or C-17 transport takes about six hours and Boeing and its partners are halving that time with the combination of the small drones and anomaly detection software, he said.

In 2023, Boeing’s autonomous aircraft inspection program collected over 4,000 images of different aircraft and achieved “a 93 percent true positive detection rate,” which means a human technician validated that the software correctly identified a corrosion issue in those instances, Belanger said. Depending on the experience of the personnel, an inspection team will miss about 50 percent of the damage, he said.

Moreover, the drones provide inspection angles that inspection teams cannot obtain manually and allow a customer to build a consistent and accurate digital record of the aircraft that they are not currently getting, Belanger said. And every time Boeing runs its software against the data, the company’s algorithm learns and gets better, he added.

Boeing initially partnered with Near Earth Autonomy, which provides small drones equipped with LiDAR sensors, for the autonomous aircraft inspection effort. Recently, Boeing expanded its partners to include Skydio, which has shipped more than 40,000 drones worldwide, including 2,000 to Ukraine.

Aircraft that have been examined with the drones and AI software include Boeing’s KC-46, KC-135 tanker, C-40, and the 737 commercial plane, and the Lockheed Martin-built C-17 and C-5 transports. This year, Boeing plans to use its automated technology to assess damage on the B-1 and B-52 bombers, C-130J transport, and P-8 submarine-hunting aircraft.

Belanger said the tools Boeing are developing will not replace maintainers but will better prepare them to do their jobs better. It only takes about 40 minutes for the drone to inspect an aircraft but if combined with the damage assessment software, it will help a maintenance team fine-tune their inspection plan and bring the right tools to look at a potential problem, he said.

Having the autonomous inspection capability can enhance readiness by helping maintainers quickly figure out whether an issue can be fixed on the spot or require an aircraft to be flown to a rear area for a more involved repair, he said.

Boeing plans to move “aggressively” in the next 12 to 18 months to further develop and demonstrate the automated aircraft damage assessment tools, he said.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Marine Corps Commandant Says MQ-9 Has Cloaking Pod

The commandant of the Marine Corps Tuesday said the service’s MQ-9 Reaper drones have an electronic warfare pod that makes it “mostly undetectable” to opponent radars.

“What they bring with them is a sensing and making sense capability…some of the programs are classified. Some of the pods that go on our MQ-9s are classified, it’s called a T-SOAR pod. And what it does is it, I guess in the unclassed world…it can mimic things that are sent to it that it detects, turn it around and send it back so it becomes a black hole. It becomes mostly undetectable,” Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said during an event at the Brooking Institution on July 2.

Smith was speaking in terms of how the MQ-9s aid the new Marine Littoral Regiments.

When pressed on what this means, Smith later said, “without crossing classification levels, it has the ability to somewhat disappear off of an enemy radar. I’ll just leave it at that.”

Smith declined to provide further details.

This system is seemingly related to the MQ-9’s Scalable Open Architecture Reconnaissance (SOAR) pod payload. MQ-9 builder General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) describes the SOAR pod as providing long-range detection, identification, and location of radar and communications signals of interest.

“SOAR enables MQ-9 or other aircraft operators to provide standoff surveillance—seeing threats before threats can see the aircraft—and communicate actionable intelligence,” the company said on its website on the payload option.

An L3Harris Technologies fact sheet said it and GA-ASI jointly developed SOAR for use in Predator drones to provide long-range surveillance from persistent and low-cost unmanned aircraft systems.

A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.

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Vice President of Kansas Company Pleads Guilty to Crimes Related to Scheme to Illegally Export U.S. Avionics Equipment to Russia and Russian End Users – July 11, U.S. Justice Department

Douglas Edward Robertson, 56, of Olathe, Kansas, the former vice president of KanRus Trading Company Inc., pleaded guilty today for his role in a years-long conspiracy to circumvent U.S. export laws by filing false export forms with the U.S. government and, after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, continuing to sell and export sophisticated and controlled avionics equipment to customers in Russia without the required licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“Robertson, by his own admission, conspired to sell advanced U.S. avionics equipment to Russian customers in violation of U.S. law,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. “The Justice Department will not tolerate those who seek to undermine the effectiveness of export controls that protect critical U.S. technology and deter Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

“Robertson’s guilty plea is reflective of the strong evidence gathered against him by federal investigators and the solid case presented by federal prosecutors,” said U.S. Attorney Kate E. Brubacher for the District of Kansas. “Our nation is both proud and grateful to these men and women at the Department of Justice who seek to protect the United States and our national security interests from adversaries both foreign and domestic.”

“Those who seek to profit by illegally selling sophisticated U.S. technology to our adversaries are putting the national security of our country at risk and that cannot be tolerated,” said Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells of the FBI’s National Security Branch. “It is appalling that the defendant schemed to smuggle avionics equipment to customers overseas including Russia, a nation engaged in a long-running military conflict with Ukraine. The FBI will work with our partners to stop the illegal flow of sensitive U.S. equipment and technology to foreign adversaries.”

“You might think that smuggling sensitive U.S.-origin technology to Russia, including to their Federal Security Service (FSB), means we’re not in Kansas anymore. Unfortunately, in this case, we were,” said Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew A. Axelrod. “We will continue to hold individuals everywhere, including those at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder, accountable when they violate our laws by lying on forms and transshipping items through third countries.”

According to court documents, as part of his guilty plea, Robertson admitted that between 2020 and when he was arrested in March 2023, he conspired with others – including co-defendants Cyril Gregory Buyanovsky of Lawrence, Kansas, and Oleg Chistyakov, aka Olegs Čitsjakovs, of Riga, Latvia, – to smuggle U.S.-origin avionics equipment to end users in Russia, as well as Russian end users in other foreign countries by, among other actions, knowingly filing false export forms and failing to file required export forms with the U.S. government. In these forms, Robertson and his conspirators lied about the exports’ value, end users, and end destinations.

Robertson further admitted that on at least one occasion in 2021, he, Buyanovsky, and Chistyakov smuggled a repaired Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) to the FSB by removing the FSB sticker from the device before sending the device to a U.S. company to be repaired and then exporting the TCAS back to the FSB in Russia. At the time, the FSB was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for its interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

Robertson further admitted that after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and the U.S. government tightened export controls concerning Russia, he, co-defendants Buyanovsky and Chistyakov, and other conspirators continued to purchase and export U.S.-origin avionics equipment to customers in Russia and took numerous steps to hide their illegal activity from law enforcement, including by lying to U.S. suppliers about the intended end users; shipping goods through intermediary companies in Armenia, Laos, the United Arab Emirates, and Cyprus; continuing to file false export forms with the U.S. government; and using foreign bank accounts in countries other than Russia, such as Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, and the Czech Republic, to promote their illegal export activity.

On Dec. 6, 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce added many of the entities and individuals involved in KanRus and Robertson’s illegal export scheme to the Commerce Department’s Entity List as part of the U.S. government’s interagency efforts to dismantle Russian procurement networks designed to circumvent U.S. export controls and sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Entity List imposes specific license requirements on all listed individuals and entities.

In December 2023, Buyanovsky, the former President and owner of KanRus, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering and consented to the forfeiture of over $450,000 worth of avionics equipment and accessories, and a $50,000 personal forfeiture judgment.

On March 19, Chistyakov, a former KanRus broker, was arrested in Riga, Latvia, for his role in the illegal smuggling scheme. Chistyakov remains detained in Latvia pending extradition proceedings.

As a result of today’s guilty plea, Robertson faces a statutory maximum penalty of five years in prison for the conspiracy count, 20 years in prison for each of the two Export Control Reform Act counts, and 20 years in prison for the money laundering count. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct. 3.

The FBI and the Department of Commerce’s Office of Export Enforcement are investigating the case. The Latvian authorities are assisting the investigation. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection provided substantial assistance.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Rask and Ryan Huschka for the District of Kansas and Trial Attorney Adam Barry of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs is providing valuable assistance.

The investigation was coordinated through the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency law enforcement task force dedicated to enforcing the sweeping sanctions, export controls and economic countermeasures that the United States, along with its foreign allies and partners, has imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. Announced by the Attorney General on March 2, 2022, and under the leadership of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the task force will continue to leverage all of the department’s tools and authorities to combat efforts to evade or undermine the collective actions taken by the U.S. government in response to Russian military aggression.

The post Vice President of Kansas Company Pleads Guilty to Crimes Related to Scheme to Illegally Export U.S. Avionics Equipment to Russia and Russian End Users – July 11, U.S. Justice Department appeared first on Avionics International.

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