Air Force Chief of Staff CQ Brown, Jr. speaks with members of the Air Force Research Lab during the Air and Space Forces Association’s (AFA) Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Adam R. Shanks)
AFA 2023 — Another day is in the books for the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual conference in National Harbor, Md. Breaking Defense is at the show, gathering stories and photos alike. Below, see some of the items on display on the conference floor.
The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie is not necessarily new but what it did recently was news. As part of a three-hour sortie in July, the Air Force Research Laboratory demonstrated for the first time a machine-learning trained, AI algorithms on an XQ-58A Valkyrie. (Brendon Smith/Breaking Defense)
You can never have too many transport aircraft and Embraer is showing off its C-390 Millennium multi-mission transport to any US Air Force procurement execs walking the show flow. To the left are some of the C-390’s cockpit controls. Embraer recently delivered the sixth C-390 multi-mission transport to the Brazilian Air Force.
(Brendon Smith/Breaking Defense)
Taking its visual cues from the Star Wars X-wing starfighter, the dart-like ROC-X VTOL precision strike missile from IAI is a version of the company’s POINT BLANK electro-optically guided missile that is backpack carriable. Earlier this year, the DoD awarded IAI a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract for the system. (Brendon Smith/Breaking Defense)
What do we want? We want uninterrupted position, navigation and timing, or so says every military service. That’s the purpose of the Navigation Technology Satellite – 3 Vanguard from L3 Harris. The NTS-3 is the first US integrated satellite PNT experiment in almost 50 years, says the company. (Brendon Smith/Breaking Defense)
You know what would supercharge development and production of unmanned aircraft systems? That would be 3D printing. Earlier this year, General Atomics teamed with Divergent Technologies to support its additive manufacturing applications development efforts and implement a full digital manufacturing process for GA-ASI’s products. You can see one of their early efforts here on the show floor. (Brendon Smith/Breaking Defense)
Red 6 envisions a future where warfighters across all domains are connected in a joint, augmented battlespace. The company is working to make that happen through its augmented-reality training helmet. (Brendon Smith/Breaking Defense)