In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Jul. 26 2023

Credit: Tony Osborne/Aviation Week.

Turkey has launched the production phase of an upgrade program for the country’s long-serving F-16s.  

Credit: U.S. Space Force.

China’s emerging capabilities to target U.S. assets in orbit—both directly and through cyber attacks—are U.S. Space Command’s top priority, and the military needs to improve its domain awareness to be ready, the White House’s pick to lead the command says.

Credit: U.S. Air Force.

President Joe Biden has tapped Gen. David Allvin to become the next Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, a move that would elevate him from the service’s No. 2 role.

Credit: DARPA.

DARPA has selected Lockheed Martin to develop a nuclear-powered spacecraft under the agency’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program in collaboration with NASA.

Credit: Heart Aerospace.

Crane Aerospace & Electronics is to collaborate with Heart Aerospace to define the power distribution system for the Swedish startup’s planned ES-30 electric regional airliner.

Credit: Hungarian Defense Ministry.

Hungary has taken delivery of the first two of 16 Airbus Helicopters H225Ms on order, as the Eastern European nation pushes to remove Soviet-era platforms from its inventory. 

Credit: CNES/Arianespace/ArianeGroup/CSG – Martin.

As part of final trials before the inaugural flight of the Ariane 6 medium- to heavy-lift launcher, European Space Agency (ESA) engineers recently performed an extensive assessment with the combined test model at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Credit: Airbus Defense and Space.

Madrid has approved spending on a new fleet of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) for the Spanish Army and Air Force.

Credit: NASA Johnson/Bill Stafford.

No strangers to extraterrestrial materials, the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) are eagerly awaiting the late September arrival of materials gathered from the asteroid Bennu by the agency’s Osiris-Rex mission.