Officials at Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., say they have replaced almost all 111 fixed-base weather sensing systems—the FMQ-19—at USAF installations around the world under a $60 million contract. These sensors, which reside at the end of runways, provide critical takeoff and landing weather data. The legacy systems being replaced required manual integration of data, but the new technology, says ESC’s Lt. Col. Andrew Terzakis, not only will provide “more accurate and reliable” data but have the potential to automatically integrate with other weather systems.
Facing competition from fast-growing startups, Lockheed Martin is speeding up production of an “affordable, scalable” hypersonic glide body, dubbed the Next Generation Glide Body, the firm said in a June 24 release.