Air Force Research Lab’s Phillips Technology Institute at Kirtland AFB, N.M., is working with the University of New Mexico and other federal government and industry organizations to create a center of excellence that would focus on the use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays for space and defense applications. According to a July 29 AFRL release, FPGAs are “state-of-the-art electronic chips that can be programmed after manufacture to perform a variety of tasks” with application in almost anything from cell phones to satellites. Congress already has provided $1.6 million for the FPGA Mission Assurance Center, where students are being trained to adapt the commercial chips to use in space and military environments. (AFRL report by Eva Blaylock)
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.