U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

DARPA selected GA-ASI in March 2022 to advance to the next phase of the project in March 2022, but a year passed before the manufacturer announced the news.

U.S. startup PteroDynamics has closed a $7.5 million seed funding round and teamed with Leidos to bid for a DARPA X-plane project.

Honda pursues SAF; Lithium-air battery; Fly-by-wire for GA; SAF from camelina.

The satellites are to be part of the U.S. Space Force’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

DARPA will start a new program aimed at high-speed, runway-independent aircraft.

A decades-old concept for a ubiquitous battlefield network concept is starting to become reality.

The program should be considered the “most successful hypersonic air breathing flight test program in U.S. history,” DARPA says.

The technology is intended to reduce the transit time for human expeditions and science missions to Mars and other deep space destinations.

Aurora plans to fly an X-plane for DARPA in 2025 that will fly solely by using active flow control instead of mechanical control surfaces.

The award begins a two-track Phase 1 for the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Opeations (Draco) demonstration program.

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is to use artificial intelligence in the design of an air taxi under a four-year, $7.2 million DARPA contract.

As NASA continues feasibility studies into nuclear propulsion for deep space missions, DARPA has awarded an initial contract to help pave the way toward possible orbital tests of a nuclear-powered rocket for U.S. military use in and around cislunar space.

The Lockheed Martin and Raytheon variants of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept have completed captive carry tests, a military official said.

DARPA plans to launch a program to fly an X-plane designed around active flow control.

A scramjet-powered missile developed under the joint DARPA/U.S. Air Force Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program was destroyed in a recent test accident, Aviation Week has learned.

A nearly year-long setback for the Tactical Boost Glide program will cause a similar delay for the U.S. Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says.

DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program aims to use dogfight automation as a crucible to give pilots confidence that AI “can handle a high-end fight.”

With no winner in its Launch Challenge, DARPA is now looking at the possibly of staging the demonstration of a flexible, responsive launch of a small satellite during a major military exercise.

The U.S. defense research agency awarded Northrop a $13 million, one-year contract under the Glide Breaker program.

The air vehicle was lost during the ground-recovery sequence, but Dynetics noted it has four test vehicles remaining.

Lockheed Martin has won a sixth prime contractor role in a U.S. hypersonic missile program.

A year of change is in store for the military organizations tasked with intercepting missiles launched from another continent. In the U.S., the $160