NASHUA, N.H. – Today’s long-range missiles require long-range defenses. Missile defense is a broad term for a wide variety of technologies and techniques. With some differences in place depending on the altitude of the threat, today’s missile defense is in effect an electronic blanket over ally nations.
Source: The technological challenges of complex missile defense | Military Aerospace
Johnson & Johnson Inc. closed its acquisition of Danvers medical device maker Abiomed Inc. on Thursday. The deal weighed in at $16.6 billion, making it easily one of the largest acquisitions of the year. The acquisition valued Abiomed (Nasdaq: ABMD) at $380 per share — about a 50% premium over where they were trading prior to Nov. 1, when Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE: JNJ) proposal was first announced. Abiomed shareholders will also receive a non-tradeable contingent value right worth $35 a share in cash if Abiomed achieves certain commercial and clinical milestones.
Source: J&J completes $16.6B acquisition of Abiomed – Boston Business Journal
In 1951, the Department of Defense (DoD) needed a homeland air defense system. To develop one, they established with MIT the federally funded research and development center Lincoln Laboratory, where the nation’s first homeland air defense system, SAGE, was successfully prototyped. In the nearly 70 years since then, the Laboratory has continued to innovate technology for the nation — radars, imagers, lasers, and microelectronics that are key to modern defense systems. As technology has progressed, however, some Lincoln Laboratory facilities have not: the original 1950s buildings still make up nearly half the square footage of the Laboratory.
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. – Missile defense experts at Raytheon Technologies Corp. will carry out upgrades and technology insertion to a new radar system to help defeat quickly evolving missile threats such as hypersonic weapons. Officials of the U.S. army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., announced a $122 million three-year contract Tuesday to the Raytheon Missiles & Defense segment in Andover, Mass., for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) pre-planned product improvement Increment III upgrades effort.
Discussions have begun on equipping the Air Self-Defense Force’s PAC-3 surface-to-air antimissile systems with radar better able to counter hypersonic weapons, several government officials said.
Source: Japan to equip PAC-3s with more advanced radar to counter hypersonic weapons – The Japan News
WASHINGTON — For about half the summer, 18 newly completed F-35 fighter jets sat outside Air Force Plant 4, a Lockheed Martin-operated facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Instead of flying to military bases around the world, the F-35s were parked while U.S. Defense Department officials tried to untangle the supply chain mess that had stuck them there.
Source: Fake parts: A Pentagon supply chain problem hiding in plain sight
In 2011, the price of Gold (Au) surged to $1900/oz which had a drastic impact on Wirebonded ICs using Au wires. IC suppliers scrambled to convert from Au to copper (Cu) wire on as many products as they could. However, automotive ICs were reluctant to make the jump due to lack of reliability data and performance track-record. However, today’s automotive ICs are big users of Cu wires driven by cost and reliability considerations.
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. – Missile defense experts at Raytheon Technologies Corp. will carry out upgrades and technology insertion to a new radar system to help defeat quickly evolving missile threats such as hypersonic weapons. Officials of the U.S. army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., announced a $122 million three-year contract Tuesday to the Raytheon Missiles & Defense segment in Andover, Mass., for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) pre-planned product improvement Increment III upgrades effort.
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) announced lackluster results for the most recent quarter. Revenue rose 10% to $39.5 billion. Its market share stayed flat at 4.9%. Perhaps that is what Ford considers progress. Ford’s management, unfortunately, guided toward the low end of previous forecasts. Pretax profits will be between $11.5 billion and $12. 5 billion for the year.
Amidst reports of semiconductor inventories building in the supply chain, the automotive industry remains hampered by the chip shortage. Carmakers’ demand for electronics continues to skyrocket, according to McKinsey & Co., but the auto industry’s reliance on 90 nanometer chips will keep supply and demand out of balance for some time. 
Most future automotive-wafer demand will involve nodes of 90 nm and above because many vehicle controllers and electric powertrains, including electric drive inverters and actuators, rely on these mature chips, McKinsey reported. Such nodes will account for about 67 percent of automotive demand in 2030.
Leonardo has flown a production standard AW609 tiltrotor for the first time, the company announced on 19 November. The milestone took place on 13 October at the company’s Philadelphia production facility in the US, and saw aircraft AC5 perform an initial in-flight evaluation of its systems and general handling. As noted by Leonardo, AC5 will be retained by Leonardo contributing to customer demonstrations, mission capability evaluation, and expansion, and supporting the manufacturer and the operators in the transition from the developmental to the operational phase once on the market.
Source: Update: Leonardo flies first production standard AW609 tiltrotor
Lockheed Martin is under contract to deliver three Orion spacecraft to NASA for its Artemis VI-VIII moon exploration missions. The firm is the prime contractor for the Orion program and completed two Orion vehicles, one of which is Artemis I – currently weeks away from its launch to the moon.
Source: Lockheed Martin to deliver 3 Orion spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis moon missions | Seeking Alpha
