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The Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in January selected Anduril Industries and Zone 5 Technologies to move into the second phase of the Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) prototype project that will provide affordable air vehicles that feature modularity…
Following up on a partnership announced last December between Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Sintavia, the two companies said on Wednesday that Lockheed Martin has made an investment in the additive manufacturer that will expand their collaboration.
Terms of the equity investment were not disclosed.
Sintavia designs and manufactures 3D printed mechanical systems such as multi-circuit heat exchangers, complex thermodynamic chassis, and monolithic colling pumps for aerospace, defense, and space contractors. The Florida-based company has been supplying additive manufactured parts to Lockheed Martin since 2019 and in late 2022 the companies partnered to expand research of metal additive manufacturing opportunities as an alternative to castings and forgings.
“The investment will directly strengthen our development and testing capabilities with the thermodynamic components that we supply Lockheed Martin, specifically next-generation heat exchangers enabled by additive manufacturing technology,” a Sintavia spokeswoman told Defense Daily. The investment will allow us to greatly expand this internal capability, so that we can broaden the already successful supplier relationship that we have with Lockheed Martin across other Lockheed Martin platforms.”
Brian Neff, CEO and founder of Sintavia, said in a statement that “This investment not only cements the relationship between Lockheed Martin and Sintavia, but also demonstrates the fact that Sintavia’s thermodynamic components—optimized through additive technology—are sought after by the largest and most substantial prime integrators within the aerospace and defense industry.”
Sintavia’s financial adviser on the deal was RBC Capital Markets.
Pentagon, intelligence, and White House officials’ classified, artificial intelligence (AI) briefing to about 70 senators on July 11th was a “candid, wake up call,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on July 12.
The presentation was the second of three planned AI briefings to senators.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks; Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines; Vice Adm. Frank “Trey” Whitworth, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; White House Office of Science Technology and Policy Director Arati Prabhakar; and DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Craig Martell gave senators insights on the national security implications of AI and answered questions, Schumer said.
The briefing “was a candid, wake up call on how truly complicated AI is and how much work–hard work–we have before us ,” Schumer said in a July 12 Senate floor speech. “We want to move quickly, but not too quickly. We need to move quickly so bad countries–authoritarian countries–and bad actors do not get ahead of us, but we can’t move too quickly because we have to get this right, and it’s very complicated.”
Congressional action to regulate AI and promote AI innovation “will not be a matter of weeks nor of years, but rather of months,” he said.
Last month, Schumer laid out a SAFE (Security, Accountability, protecting our Foundations, and Explainability) Innovation Framework for AI.
“We have to address some of the risks of this technology,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told reporters before the July 11 briefing. “There are a lot of pitfalls here where bias and bad data can really impact people’s lives.”
Heinrich formed the Senate AI Caucus in 2019 with former Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
The Pentagon is pursuing AI development in a number of areas.
The Air Force, for example, is mulling a Fight Tonight Vanguard program to demonstrate AI-based theater-level, adaptive planning against technologically advanced adversaries.
In fiscal 2024, the Air Force requests nearly $50 million for the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Mode (VENOM).
Under VENOM, the Air Force is to test six autonomous F-16s with rapidly upgradable software and evaluate the performance of the AI-enabled autonomy (Defense Daily, March 27).
