The next round of US military launch contracts under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 program will be awarded next year. The NSSL Phase 2 contract in 2020 went to United Launch Alliance (ULA) and SpaceX for their Vulcan and Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles. Phase 3 contracts (for up to 40 missions) will probably also be awarded to ULA and SpaceX for these same rockets, although there are some lawmakers in Congress who would prefer there to be more launch service providers competing for medium and heavy US military payloads.

Teal Group’s Market Overview to be published in its Military Electronics Briefing forecasts the 10-year market for Directed Infrared Counter Measures (DIRCM) systems and Missile Warning Systems (MWS) for helicopters and slow-flying fixed-wing (non-combat jet) aircraft to be worth about $10 billion over the next decade.

The market has settled out somewhat in the past few years, with two major new programs finally entering production – CIRCM for the US Army and DAIRCM for the US Navy – while the US Air Force soldiers on with upgrading its thousands of legacy LAIRCM systems for large aircraft (up to C-17s).

Chinese aircraft are a mixed story. Historically, the country has operated and sold a variety of legacy aircraft that can be charitably termed “inadequate”. But in recent years, this has been changing, with considerable resources provided to create a series of fourth and fifth generation aircraft.

The most obvious manifestation of this change was the recent unveiling of the J-20, touted as a stealth, fifth-generation design with almost no rationale for either claim. Previously referred to by the US military as the J-XX, the J-20 entered service in early 2018, if only in theory. Its appearance also offers no evidence that China has developed the key enabling technologies for modern fighters. The only thing we know is that its airframe looks modern, compared with other Chinese designs. But it’s very difficult to reconcile large moving canards with low observability.

Europe currently represents the third largest UAV market. While quite a bit of research has been funded in Europe over the past dec­ade, procurement has been very mod­est and mostly confined to modest numbers of tactical UAV systems. More ambitious programs are now underway, with most of the major armed forces acquiring more modern tactical UAV systems and beginning to acquire endurance systems compa­rable to the US Air Force Predator.