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Trade Wars
Three Initiatives Causing Industry New Concerns About Dod Acquisition Reforms
The Defense Department’s third message to industry since early May is prompting many contractors to strongly doubt whether Secretary Pete Hegseth’s goal of revitalizing the defense industrial base still is a priority. Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg’s Aug. 18 memo on cost and pricing is the latest example in the last three months of the Pentagon adding more compliance and complexity to contractors working for the DoD. Taken together, industry and acquisition experts say DoD is sending a mixed message at best, and at worst, creating disincentives for companies to join or even stay in the defense industrial base over the long term.
Feinberg’s latest memo says DoD wants to bring more transparency throughout the supply chain around cost and pricing. The focus is around two specific areas. First, DoD says concerning any commercial item product or service contract worth at least $10 million, contracting officers should obtain “full transparency throughout all tiers of the supply chain [which] applies to all contractors and subcontractors.” DoD wants to achieve this transparency by using application programming interfaces (APIs) to pull cost information directly from contractors’ enterprise resource planning or other financial systems.
Read more at Reuters
Russian-Speaking Cybercriminals Used SpaceX’s Cursor AI Tool To Hack Seven Companies
Russian-speaking hackers used SpaceX’s (SPCX.O), opens new tab AI coding assistant, Cursor, to help break in to a Belgian chemical company and at least six other firms earlier this year, according to data reviewed by Reuters and a report issued on Thursday by the startup Gambit Security. The cybercriminals’ AI-boosted hacking spree is the latest example of how rogue actors are using commercial AI tools to carry out intrusions. Gambit’s chief strategy officer, Curtis Simpson, said it also showed how AI providers were locked in to a never-ending arms race with malicious users trying to circumvent their guardrails.
Gambit said it discovered the hacking campaign after finding a server that a new ransomware gang called Aur0ra had inadvertently exposed to the internet. That allowed the Tel Aviv-based company to review 28 chat sessions between one or more of Aur0ra’s hackers and one of Cursor’s AI agents, which are programs that can operate with various degrees of autonomy. In its report, Gambit said Aur0ra persuaded the AI agent to carry out hundreds of malicious operations — such as credential theft or high-value account takeover — by falsely claiming that the hacking was part of a simulation.
Read more at Wards Auto
California Manufacturing Giant Haas To Relocate Workers After Expansion To Nevada
Haas Automation, the manufacturing giant that makes large-scale machines and tools, is planning to relocate 73 jobs out of Southern California, per a WARN notice filed this month. The jobs are being sent to neighboring Nevada, where the company is nearing completion of a massive 2.5 million-square-foot facility in Henderson in the Las Vegas area. In recent years, Nevada has become a popular option for California residents and businesses looking to move to what Silver State officials say is a more business- and tax-friendly environment.
Haas is among Ventura County's largest private-sector employers, with about 1,700 total employees at its Oxnard headquarters. Founder Gene Haas started the company in 1983 after previously running a small machine shop in greater Los Angeles and has grown the brand into America's leading machine tools manufacturer. Haas also oversees a global F1 racing team under the same name, based in North Carolina. "Haas is taking this action to enable future growth," the company stated in its WARN notice, which was obtained by SFGATE. "We built a new, state-of-the-art 2.5 million- square-foot manufacturing facility in Henderson, Nevada, and we hope employees who move there will enjoy everything the Henderson community offers."
Read more at Yahoo Finance
Pentagon Projects 10% Rise in F-35 Program Cost
The projected costs for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets has by nearly 10% in the past three years, or about $51 billion, according to a declassified report by the U.S. Dept of War. The reasons for the increase are more than rising costs for the aircraft, and include more expensive engines, software and technology updates, spare parts acquisition, and general upkeep costs to maintain fleet readiness.
Currently, the Pentagon estimates the total cost of the F-35 program at $536 billion, up from its previous projection of $485 billion. The new total is not a near-term spending estimate, but rather a projection of the total acquisition cost of the U.S. F-35 program over the Department’s planned procurement period, through 2049.
Read more at American Machinist
Pratt Proceeding with F135 Engine Update
The U.S. Navy assigned $240.7 million to Pratt & Whitney to provide “engineering to mature the F135 engine,” the propulsion system for all three variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The award is a modification to a contract originally issued in 2024, which initiated the design and testing for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade. That initial contract had a maximum value of $1.3 billion, which has been raised according to succeeding modifications.
The F135 ECU is the Pratt & Whitney-led modernization of the propulsion system, to restore engine life and durability while increasing thrust and thermal management of the engines. The overall goal is provide additional power and cooling needed for the F-35’s Block 4 and future capabilities, including more advanced weapons and sensors. The F-35 Block 4 update will expand the aircraft’s weapons, sensors, electronic warfare, data-processing, and networking capabilities. It has been delayed and scaled down from the Pentagon’s initial plans, but now is expected to begin in 2031.
Read at Manufacturing Dive
Power Equipment Manufacturer IEM To Bring 3K Jobs To San Antonio With New Facility
Industrial Electric Mfg. announced plans to build a $200 million advanced manufacturing facility in San Antonio, a project expected to create up to 3,000 jobs by 2030. Industrial Electric Mfg., commonly known as IEM, manufactures custom power distribution and control equipment used by data centers, hospitals, energy companies, manufacturers, and other operations with substantial electrical needs. The new facility will manufacture products including power distribution systems, remote power panels, switchgear, and switchboards. It will be developed in phases, with construction and hiring schedules expected to be announced in the coming months.
IEM operates existing North American manufacturing facilities in Fremont, California; Jacksonville, Florida; and Surrey, British Columbia. Including the San Antonio project, the company said it has invested $300 million and added more than 3 million square feet of product-development and manufacturing space during the past five years. The company describes itself as North America’s largest independent full-line manufacturer of electrical distribution and integrated control systems.
Read more at The Dallas Express
Chip Equipment Maker Lam Research commits $1.5B to Ore. R&D labs
Lam Research, a company vital in designing and building equipment for the world’s largest computer chip firms broke ground on a $620 million research and development lab in Tualatin Wednesday. Overall, Lam will spend $1.5 billion on major research and development laboratories in Washington County over the next decade and half. It’s part of a global expansion of the semiconductor equipment firm’s network of labs. Lam Research plans to pump $3 billion into operations in the U.S., as well as in Asia and Europe.
Oregon has lost nearly 8,500 manufacturing jobs over the last year, according to state employment data. Those losses include nearly 2,500 layoffs last summer at major chipmaker Intel, the state’s largest private employer. Lam Research designs and builds tools for Intel and other major semiconductor companies, like Micron. Lam currently employs around 3,000 people, mostly at its campus in Tualatin. Once constructed, the new 120,000-square-foot facility is expected to add another 400 jobs to the company’s headcount.
Read more at Oregon Public Broadcasting
Rolls-Royce Runs Hydrogen Jet Engine: This Week In Aerospace
Propulsion technology has steadily evolved over the past century, starting from piston engines all the way to the present era of turbofan jet engines. However, innovation is always taking place behind the scenes, and the industry could be on the cusp of introducing a new form of propulsion that uses hydrogen as its primary fuel source. While hydrogen engines have already been in development for years, they are still a long way off from being ready for widespread commercial use. Hydrogen fuel is one of the most difficult to implement on an aircraft. This is because it requires a larger volume of storage compared to traditional jet fuel, posing major problems for aircraft design and airport infrastructure. Liquid hydrogen also needs to be stored at ultra-low temperatures and has a more volatile combustion process.
Leading engine maker Rolls-Royce is pursuing its own hydrogen engine designs and recently patented a fuel system for a gas turbine engine configured to combust hydrogen fuel. This novel approach to hydrogen power could help solve one of the major problems of using liquid hydrogen as a fuel source, namely its extremely cold temperature. Rolls-Royce's idea is to use a fuel turbine to heat the hydrogen fuel before it reaches the engine, creating a more stable combustion process.
Read more at Military & Aerospace Electronics
U.S. Army Mobilizes $2.2B Janus Program to Deploy More Than 20 Commercial Microreactors
The U.S. Army has mobilized up to $2.2 billion for a five-year effort to build and operate more than 20 commercial nuclear microreactors across military installations, selecting five reactor developers and five initial sites for a program designed to push advanced nuclear systems beyond federal test programs and into sustained operation. On Aug. 26, the Army selected Antares Nuclear for Fort Bragg in North Carolina, BWXT Advanced Technologies for Fort Campbell in Kentucky, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems for Fort Hood in Texas, Radiant Industries for Fort Benning in Georgia, and Westinghouse Government Services for Fort Drum in New York.
The five companies will own, build, and operate the reactors under fixed-price, milestone-based Other Transaction Authority agreements negotiated through the Department of War Innovation Unit (DIU), the Pentagon organization charged with accelerating military adoption of commercial technology. The agreements implement directives from a series of presidential executive orders issued in May 2025, which designated the Army as the Pentagon’s executive agent for installation nuclear energy and required it to have at least one Army-regulated reactor operating at a military installation by Sept. 30, 2028.
Read more at Power Magazine
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