Items tagged with lockheed martin
When we think of the armament load outs for modern fighter jets, the aircraft usually carry an internal cannon and air-to-air missiles to blast enemy aircraft out of the sky. However, Lockheed Martin has plans to outfit future fighter jets with a more modern weapon: a high-energy laser. The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) has given Lockheed Martin a $26.3 million contract to develop a high-energy laser system that will be compact enough to install on fighter aircraft. The Air Force has tested a similar airborne laser system in the past, but it was installed on a modified Boeing 747 test aircraft (YAL-1). The laser system is part of AFRL's Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) program,...
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Jack of All Trades, Master Of None: Lockheed F-35 Lightning II Clobbered By 70s Era F-16 In Dogfight
Jack of all trades, master of none. That phrase could be easily applied to the the most expensive weapons project in the Department of Defense’s history with total costs of over over one trillion dollars. The F-35 Lightning II, which is the result of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program that originated in the early 1990s (the program pitted Lockheed Martin’s X-35 against Boeing’s X-32), has become a boondoggle with escalating programs costs, numerous glitches, and delays. Nearly 14 years after Lockheed Martin was awarded the JSF contract over Boeing, the F-35 has yet to reach Initial Operational Capability (IOC), let alone Full Operational Capability (FOC). With so much negativity surrounding...
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As if our name didn’t already express this, we absolutely love HOT hardware. And mixing hot hardware with frickin’ lasers is almost too much to handle. So imagine our delight we came across this news from defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which is working on ground-based weapon that can disable enemy equipment and vehicles from long-range distances. How far you might ask? How does one-mile sound to you? The Advanced Test High Energy Asset, better known as ATHENA, is currently in the prototype phase, but the 30-kilowatt laser weapon system demonstrated earlier this week that it is capable of disabling a vehicle from over a mile away. The vehicle in question, which appears to be a 1980s...
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Lockheed Martin Claims Breakthrough In Fusion Reactor But Scant Details Imply More Sizzle Than Steak
Yesterday, Lockheed Martin made major headlines across the Internet with claims that it was developing a new compact fusion reactor that could be deployed within the next decade. This is a bold claim -- researchers have been able to create fusion in a lab for decades, but the problem isn't creating fusion -- it's creating a sustained fusion reactor that generates more power than it consumes. "Our compact fusion concept combines several alternative magnetic confinement approaches, taking the best parts of each, and offers a 90 percent size reduction over previous concepts,” said Tom McGuire, compact fusion lead for the Skunk Works’ Revolutionary Technology Programs. “The smaller...
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The start-up universe has bloomed into something that even the mainstream is paying attention to, and as if Silicon Valley wasn't churning out enough new stuff, Kickstarter and Indiegogo have made it possible for companies all over the world to bring their ideas to life in a major way. But there's also a entity that spells tons of money each year on new technology, oftentimes out of the public eye. That would be the U.S. government, which counts branches such as NASA and the Department of Defense as its own. And evidently, these branches need an injection of fresh ideas from the outside, and Lockheed Martin is stepping up in order to facilitate a new line of communication between outside innovators...
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