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)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.