A Chicago-based company has been awarded an initial $23.67 million acquisition contract under the U.S. Department of War’s Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT).

With this Numat Technologies will accelerate the deployment of next-generation chemical and biological protection suits for U.S. Special Operations Forces.

The award is being executed in partnership with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and is intended to speed the transition of the company’s technology from development into operational use.

Numat will deliver field-ready protective suits at scale

The APFIT program was established to bridge the gap between promising defense technologies and field deployment by providing procurement funding for mature innovations that are ready for operational use. Since its launch, the program has supported the rapid acquisition of advanced capabilities for the U.S. military, with total awards now exceeding $2 billion, according to a press release.

“Over the past 10 years, Numat built the MOF industrial base for this moment, where we can activate an entire supply chain, from material design through high-volume system manufacturing, to protect the Warfighter,” said Ben Hernandez, CEO of Numat Technologies.

“This contract award reflects our long-term investment in American innovation. Numat will deliver finished, field-ready protective suits at scale, made completely in the United States.”

Numat’s protection suits incorporate metal-organic frameworks

Numat’s protection suits incorporate metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)—highly porous engineered materials designed to capture and neutralize hazardous chemical and biological agents. Unlike conventional protective garments that primarily act as barriers, the company’s MOF-enabled suits are engineered to self-detoxify by neutralizing harmful substances upon contact, while also improving breathability and wearer mobility.

Under the APFIT contract, Numat will supply the MOF-enabled chemical and biological (CB) suits directly to U.S. Special Operations Forces, whose personnel often operate in environments where exposure to chemical and biological threats is a significant concern. According to the company, the suits are designed to offer enhanced protection without compromising comfort or operational effectiveness.

The contract also represents a milestone for the domestic manufacturing of metal-organic frameworks, a technology that has gained increasing attention for applications ranging from defense and industrial filtration to energy storage and environmental protection. Numat said it has spent more than a decade building a U.S.-based supply chain capable of designing, producing and integrating MOFs into mission-critical systems.

Company Chief Executive Officer Ben Hernandez said the award reflects years of investment in establishing a domestic industrial base for MOF technology and positions the company to deliver field-ready protective equipment manufactured entirely in the United States.

The latest award builds on Numat’s long-standing collaboration with several U.S. defense organizations, including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, the Capability Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense, U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. These partnerships have helped advance MOF technology from laboratory research to scalable manufacturing, according to the company.

Beyond military applications, Numat said its MOF platform has potential uses across industrial, semiconductor and energy sectors, where advanced materials are increasingly being deployed for gas storage, chemical separation and hazardous material filtration.

The APFIT award underscores the U.S. government’s broader efforts to accelerate the procurement of innovative defense technologies while strengthening the domestic industrial base and reducing the time required to transition emerging capabilities into operational service.

Albany Engineered Composites and A&P Technology are combining advanced braiding and resin transfer molding technologies to accelerate the development of scalable composite solutions for future aerospace and defense applications.

Albany Engineered Composites (AEC), a segment of Albany International Corp., and A&P Technology, a global leader in precision braided composite reinforcement technologies, announced a strategic collaboration to explore and develop advanced braided composite manufacturing solutions for current and next-generation aerospace and defense applications.

The collaboration will capitalize on A&P Technology’s expertise in braided composite architectures and Albany Engineered Composites’ advanced Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) manufacturing capabilities. The companies said the partnership is focused on accelerating the industrialization of lightweight, highly integrated composite structures designed to support future commercial and defense aircraft production requirements.

“Future aerospace platforms demand manufacturing technologies capable of simultaneously improving performance, reducing recurring cost and scaling to production rates the industry has not previously achieved,” said Chris Stone, president of Albany Engineered Composites in a press release.

“By combining A&P Technology’s deep expertise in advanced braiding with Albany’s industry-leading RTM capabilities, we are creating a force multiplier for our customers, accelerating the transition from innovative textile architectures to repeatable, production-ready composite solutions.”

The companies will work together on research, technology development, manufacturing process maturation, and commercialization opportunities focused on purpose-designed braided composite structures. These efforts will target current and next-generation aeroengine platforms, commercial aircraft, Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) blades and structures, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and solid rocket motor nozzles.

Expanding advanced aerospace capabilities

Albany Engineered Composites is a rapidly growing division of Albany International Corp. that designs and manufactures advanced composite components for aerospace and defense industries. Headquartered alongside its parent company in Rochester, New Hampshire, AEC operates advanced research, development and manufacturing facilities across the globe, including major composite production sites in Salt Lake City, Utah; Boerne, Texas; and Commercy, France.

As aerospace manufacturers seek larger, more integrated composite structures, the companies said that combining braided composite preforms with automated RTM processing provides a pathway to scalable manufacturing by reducing assembly complexity and supporting higher production rates.

“It’s a privilege to collaborate with Albany given their broad and deep design and manufacturing skill and know-how built on decades of success making parts for the most demanding applications,” said Andy Head, president of A&P Technology.

“Together, we can offer composite solutions not only at an enabling rate but also with enabling cost and performance benefits. We look forward to meeting customer challenges together.”

Brent Stevenson, vice president of emerging markets and technology at Albany Engineered Composites, said that customers are seeking integrated solutions that combine multiple manufacturing processes.

“Our customers are looking beyond individual manufacturing processes; they’re looking for integrated solutions,” said Stevenson.

“Braiding and RTM are naturally complementary technologies. Together, they enable highly engineered composite architectures supporting complex geometries, efficient manufacturing and production scalability for both current and next-generation aerospace and defense platforms.”

Supporting future aerospace platforms

Through the collaboration, Albany Engineered Composites and A&P Technology aim to advance composite manufacturing solutions that combine precision braided reinforcement technologies with advanced RTM processing. The companies’ work will focus on production-ready composite structures for a range of aerospace and defense applications, including commercial aircraft, military platforms and emerging aviation technologies.

The partnership brings together two specialized manufacturing approaches as the companies pursue opportunities in research, development, process advancement and commercialization of advanced composite solutions, the press release concludes.

💾

As AI models continue to grow in size and complexity, chipmakers are shifting their focus from individual processor performance to the ability to efficiently connect thousands of accelerators into a single computing system. 

These highly interconnected server architectures have become a key competitive area for AI infrastructure companies, which are racing to deliver the computing scale needed for models with trillions of parameters and the growing adoption of AI agents.

According to Ding Yunfan, vice president of AI framework architecture at Biren, improvements in the performance of a single graphics processing unit (GPU) are no longer enough to meet these demands. Instead, the industry’s biggest challenge is turning vast GPU clusters into unified, seamless computing platforms capable of operating as a single system.

Architecture designed to break GPU cluster limits

Biren believes the future of large-scale AI computing depends on replacing conventional electrical interconnects with optical technology. According to Ding, traditional copper-based connections are approaching their physical limits, effectively capping today’s server architectures at around 128 GPUs, the South China Morning Post reports.

To overcome that bottleneck, the company has developed a distributed, decoupled supernode architecture built around near-packaged optics (NPO), which positions optical fibres closer to the chips to increase bandwidth and improve data transmission. Biren said the approach could enable clusters with up to 1,024 AI accelerator cards, significantly expanding the scale of computing systems needed to support increasingly demanding AI workloads.

Ding said optical interconnects are becoming essential for overcoming the scalability limits of conventional server architectures. Shanghai-based Biren is among a growing number of Chinese companies tackling these infrastructure challenges. Rivals including MetaX, Enflame and Alibaba are also developing supernode architectures to compete with Nvidia’s NVL72 and next-generation NVL144 AI platforms.

Biren’s Shanghai-based rival MetaX has introduced its Xijing S600 AI supernode, featuring a single rack that connects 64 GPUs. The company said its design reduces signal loss by removing external cabling between compute nodes, switch nodes and interconnect systems, improving efficiency for large-scale AI workloads.

Looking beyond electrical links to build larger AI supernodes

Biren is also working on new approaches to expand the scale of its AI computing systems. The company’s orthogonal hardware architecture, co-developed with telecommunications giant ZTE, uses traditional electrical connections, while Biren is simultaneously testing a prototype near-packaged optics (NPO) interconnect system. 

The chipmaker said the optical approach could eventually support supernodes with more than 512 accelerator cards, helping address the growing demand for larger and more efficient AI infrastructure.

Despite growing interest in optical networking for AI infrastructure, Ding said the semiconductor industry is still in the early stages of developing and testing optical interconnect technologies. He noted that widespread adoption will require further advances before these systems can be deployed at scale.

Furthermore, Ding emphasized that the technology still requires real-world validation before it can be widely adopted. He projected that NPO optical systems could reach mass commercial deployment around 2028, as the industry continues refining the technology and addressing remaining engineering challenges.

💾

Austin-based SuperCritical Materials Corp. has secured a license from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to commercialize a patented uranium and critical materials extraction technology developed by DOE laboratories.

The development is a significant step toward expanding future nuclear fuel supply through unconventional uranium resources.

Licensed technology is designed to extract uranium from seawater

Developed with support from the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy and led by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the licensed technology is designed to extract uranium from seawater using advanced adsorbent materials. SuperCritical said the agreement grants the company rights to manufacture and deploy the technology at industrial scale in the United States, with plans to expand into allied nations in the future.

The announcement comes as the United States accelerates investment in advanced nuclear energy to meet rising electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries. Industry experts have increasingly highlighted that while reactor development is advancing, expanding the upstream nuclear fuel supply chain—including uranium production, enrichment and fuel fabrication—remains a critical challenge.

According to the company, the world’s oceans contain an estimated 4.5 billion metric tons of dissolved uranium, representing a resource far larger than known terrestrial reserves. While extracting uranium from seawater has long been considered technically feasible, commercial deployment has remained limited due to economic and engineering challenges.

SuperCritical intends to commercialize DOE-developed process

SuperCritical said it intends to commercialize the DOE-developed process using advances in adsorption chemistry and materials science. In addition to uranium, the company believes the technology could also enable the recovery of other strategically important critical materials from seawater.

The company describes its long-term strategy as building infrastructure to support what it calls the “Intelligence Economy,” a period of economic growth expected to be driven by artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced computing, defense technologies and digital infrastructure. It argues that reliable nuclear energy and secure fuel supplies will be essential to sustaining this growth.

“Our objective is straightforward,” said Alexander Canon Bryan, founder and chief executive officer of SuperCritical Materials. “If the Intelligence Economy requires abundant, reliable nuclear energy, then it will also require abundant, reliable nuclear fuel.”

SuperCritical noted that its technical team includes former researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, including Dr. Gary Gill, a co-founder of the company and a scientist who has spent more than two decades researching uranium extraction from seawater.

The company said commercial deployment of the technology could contribute to strengthening domestic nuclear fuel supply chains while supporting broader U.S. efforts to improve energy security, expand critical materials production and reduce dependence on imported strategic resources.

The licensing agreement also aligns with ongoing federal initiatives aimed at strengthening America’s nuclear industrial base and increasing domestic production of critical minerals and materials.

Although seawater uranium extraction has been demonstrated in research settings, analysts note that large-scale commercialization will depend on achieving competitive production costs and successfully scaling the technology for industrial use. Industry observers view the DOE licensing agreement as an important milestone toward evaluating the commercial viability of the process.

MIT researchers have developed a new framework that could help energy planners decide where to build renewable energy projects as climate change puts growing pressure on power grids.

The study combines fine-scale meteorology with detailed simulations of energy infrastructure. Researchers found that where new energy projects are built could significantly affect whether future power systems can meet demand reliably.

The team applied the framework to decarbonized energy systems in New England and Texas. Their analysis found that systems designed around historic climate conditions could experience up to a fivefold increase in energy shortfalls by 2050.

By incorporating future climate conditions into energy planning, however, the researchers found that both regions could improve grid resilience at little or no additional cost.

“As we mitigate climate change with renewables, we can also adapt to climate change by using future weather projections in our power system planning, and the extra costs of that adaptation are, at least in this study, not much,” said senior author Michael Howland, an MIT professor.

Climate change adds new risks to power grids

Electricity systems are already changing rapidly as demand rises from trends such as artificial intelligence and transportation electrification, while falling costs drive greater adoption of wind and solar power.

But renewable generation and electricity demand are both affected by weather, creating new challenges as climate conditions change.

“This study explores the joint, simultaneous impacts on multiple components of the energy system, similar to compound events studied in climate science,” Howland explained.

“An extreme weather event can impact wind and solar generation and electricity demand all at the same time. Our hypothesis is that’s likely to be the biggest impact we’ll see from climate change on energy systems,” he added.

The study found that climate change could increase energy failures by as much as 500% by 2050 if future climate conditions are not considered when siting and designing energy infrastructure.

Where wind and solar are built matters

The researchers found that locations best suited for renewable projects under future climate conditions can differ meaningfully from those identified using historic weather data.

“We are telling people where you put your wind and solar matters a lot for your ability to deliver energy when you need it,” Qiu explained.

“We need to think more about the when and where of adding renewables rather than only focusing on adding overall capacity,” he added.

In New England, climate-related disruptions increased the need for solar capacity and transmission lines close to major demand centers.

In Texas, risks were primarily driven by transmission constraints. Climate-informed designs prioritized wind farms in West Texas to better align renewable generation with future demand patterns.

Researchers seek faster planning tools

The current framework relies on expensive, high-resolution models, making it impractical for grid operators to use routinely today.

The researchers hope to develop faster models that could make climate-informed planning easier to apply.

“This study shows the opportunity and the need,” Howland says. “There are risks to not adapting our system, but if we do adapt our system, there could be big opportunities that are not costly.”

The study was published in Natural Energy.

The United States is facing nine major supply chain challenges that could delay the rehabilitation of its hydropower infrastructure, according to a new report from the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR).

The report has examined the difficulties hydropower operators encounter when upgrading or replacing large power transformers (LPTs).

These custom-built devices raise the voltage of electricity generated by hydropower turbines, allowing it to travel efficiently across long-distance transmission networks.

Their importance extends beyond hydropower, as more than 90% of the electricity consumed in the United States passes through high-voltage transformers at some stage.

Transformer deliveries can take five years

One of the most serious challenges identified in the report is the time required to procure new transformers.

A typical LPT rated at 100 megavolt-amperes takes approximately 2.5 to three years to acquire. Lead times for extra-high-voltage units can extend to five years because only a limited number of facilities worldwide can manufacture them.

Transformer prices sharply increased by approximately 80% in 2025 compared with 2021 levels, according to the report. A single unit can now cost as much as $10 million.

These pressures come as demand rises across the power sector. Although domestic manufacturing and assembly capacity has expanded in recent years, the report found that it has not grown quickly enough to meet current requirements.

US manufacturers also depend heavily on international suppliers. Approximately 80% of the raw materials used in domestic LPT production, including grain-oriented electrical steel and refined copper, are imported.

Changing trade conditions could further increase the baseline costs of copper and steel, adding uncertainty to transformer procurement.

Remote dams create transportation problems

Delivering an LPT to a hydropower facility presents another layer of difficulty. Many dams are located in isolated regions surrounded by rugged terrain, making them considerably harder to reach than conventional power facilities.

Transformers require specialized vehicles and heavy-duty trailers capable of carrying oversized loads. However, the United States has a limited domestic fleet of such equipment. Transportation routes must also be planned carefully and require special permits.

Permitting and regulatory procedures can produce additional delays, particularly when an operator must remove an existing transformer before installing its replacement.

Federal contracting rules and domestic-content requirements could also create near-term bottlenecks while US production capacity remains limited.

Report could guide domestic investment

The NLR study builds on the US Department of Energy’s broader Hydropower Supply Chain Gap Analysis, which previously identified five gaps affecting the domestic industry.

DOE’s Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office funded the follow-on study to provide a closer examination of the LPT supply chain. Researchers used feedback from hydropower industry participants to define the nine challenges.

The findings could help shape federal policies, incentives, lending programs, workforce initiatives and investments intended to expand US transformer production.

Strengthening the domestic supply chain will be important for new construction as well as upgrades, refurbishments and relicensing work at existing facilities.

Hydropower currently provides more than 6% of total US electricity generation, making the availability of critical transformers essential to its continued contribution to the grid.

The report is titled as Large Power Transformer Supply Chain Gap Analysis and Domestic Content Strategies for Hydropower Rehabilitation.

Rune Technologies has unveiled TyrSense, a new line of ruggedized sensors designed to help military units track personnel, casualties, and supplies in contested environments where conventional communications may be unavailable.

The hardware marks the company’s first expansion beyond software, extending its TyrOS logistics platform directly to personnel operating at the tactical edge.

The initial TyrSense products use small, durable NFC tags that can be attached to personnel or cargo. When scanned during a handoff, the system records the location and status of the individual or pallet in TyrOS.

Unlike conventional tracking systems, the location is determined by the node where the scan takes place rather than through GPS.

The tags can also operate without an active cloud connection or satellite signal, allowing units to continue recording movements in denied, degraded, intermittent, or low-bandwidth environments.

Once connectivity returns, the collected information can synchronize with TyrOS.

Aim to replace manual military tracking

Military units continue to rely heavily on manual processes to account for personnel and supplies, according to Rune.

Information about available resources is often maintained through whiteboards, paper manifests, and manually compiled reports. These systems can become difficult to maintain when units relocate or lose network connectivity.

TyrSense is initially designed around three military workflows that commonly depend on manual reporting: personnel accountability, medical operations, and cargo tracking.

For personnel, scanning a tag allows units to update an individual’s duty status, reducing the need for the daily manual process of compiling accountability information.

In medical operations, the system can record each transfer of a casualty as the individual moves from the point of injury through successive levels of care.

For logistics, tags attached to pallets can register shipments as they move through different nodes across a military supply network.

Built to operate when battlefield networks fail

Rune has designed the sensors around conditions where military personnel may have limited or no communications access.

Because individual scans can be registered locally at the tactical edge, units can continue collecting information even during network disruptions.

“A tag has to work in a vehicle and with no signal, because that’s where these counts happen,” said Peter Goldsborough, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Rune Technologies.

“We built TyrSense so the scan registers at the edge and reaches TyrOS the moment a connection is there. The hardware is deliberately simple. The value is what TyrOS does with the data,” he added.

The approach allows TyrOS to receive updated information once connectivity becomes available rather than requiring personnel to maintain continuous access to remote infrastructure.

Rune plans sensors for fuel and water

TyrSense builds on the company’s deployment of TyrOS with operational military units over the past year.

During Balikatan 26 in the Philippines, the software provided tactical commanders with information on food, water, fuel, and personnel supporting thousands of troops across a Joint Task Force, according to the company.

Rune is also the sole logistics provider for the US Marine Corps’ Project Dynamis and is the only application selected by both prime contractor teams participating in the US Army’s Next Generation Command and Control program.

The company now plans to expand the TyrSense hardware portfolio beyond NFC-based tracking.

Creating a realistic 3D model from a simple image remains surprisingly difficult for artificial intelligence. 

While AI can generate impressive pictures, producing the precise CAD code engineers use to design aircraft parts, cars, and consumer products is far more challenging. Even a small mistake can make a design unusable. 

Now, researchers from MIT, IBM, and Red Hat have developed a framework that significantly improves the ability of AI systems to turn 2D images into functional CAD programs, producing more accurate designs while reducing inference computation by about 80 percent.

This new research work tackles one of the biggest obstacles in AI-driven engineering, which is the shortage of high-quality CAD training data. Existing image-to-CAD systems need vast numbers of examples linking 2D images to working CAD programs, but creating those datasets is expensive and labor-intensive. 

Instead of relying on more human-created data, the new approach teaches AI using the mistakes it already makes. “We want to obtain data augmentation that is informed by the model itself,” lead study author and AI researcher Giorgio Giannone said.

Turning failed designs into training material

The team’s framework, called Geometric Inference Feedback Tuning (GIFT), works with vision-language models that convert a 2D image and text description into Python code that can be executed in CAD software to create a 3D object.

To understand where a model struggles, GIFT asks it to solve the same CAD problem multiple times in parallel. Some outputs are correct, some are close to the target design, and others are much further away. 

According to the researchers, these ‘near-misses’ are the most valuable because they reveal exactly what the model does not yet understand.

The system executes each generated CAD program and compares the resulting 3D geometry with the target using a standard engineering metric known as Intersection over Union (IoU), which measures how closely two 3D shapes match. 

Rather than discarding imperfect outputs, GIFT identifies those that are close to correct and uses them to generate new training examples.

Giannone explained, “If we sample the model 10 times and it generates 10 correct answers to the same problem, then there is not much for it to learn. We care about the in-between cases, where the model might only solve the problem 50 percent of the time.”

Teaching the model how to fix its own errors

GIFT improves the model through two complementary techniques. The first, called GIFT-REJECT, keeps alternative CAD programs that generate the correct geometry even if the code differs from the original reference solution. 

Traditional AI training often assumes there is only one correct CAD program for each object, even though engineers can create the same part in many different ways. By exposing the model to multiple valid solutions, GIFT broadens its understanding of how CAD designs can be constructed.

The second method, GIFT-FAIL, focuses on imperfect outputs. The system takes a nearly correct 3D model generated by the AI, converts it back into an image, and pairs that image with the correct CAD program. By doing so, it creates new examples that effectively teach the model how to recover from specific mistakes.

More importantly, this process requires no human intervention. The framework automatically identifies errors, creates new training data, and uses that information to improve the model.

The researchers also designed GIFT around a technique known as inference-time scaling. Instead of retraining an entire AI model, which can be extremely expensive, the system improves performance during generation. 

Rather than discarding the extra computation spent searching for better CAD programs, GIFT converts successful and near-successful attempts into new training examples that can later be used to improve the model through fine-tuning.

Moreover, users can decide how much computation they want to spend depending on their budget and time constraints.

Better CAD designs with a fraction of the computing power

When evaluated on the GenCAD-Code dataset, models enhanced with GIFT achieved a 12 percent improvement in geometric accuracy compared with a strong supervised-learning baseline. 

The framework also reduced the inference computation needed to achieve comparable performance by about 80%.

“With GIFT, we started with geometry because with engineering problems, if the geometry of a 3D shape is not correct, nothing else will be correct, but there are many other aspects to consider,” Giannone said. 

The system’s ability to learn from its own mistakes could help accelerate product development by making AI-generated CAD models more reliable. 

Engineers could move more quickly from sketches to testable 3D designs, reducing development costs, shortening design cycles, and exploring a wider range of ideas without creating large amounts of new training data.

The researchers say this is only the beginning. So far, GIFT focuses on generating correct geometry, but future versions will aim to teach AI how to design parts that are not only accurate in shape but also easier to manufacture and better suited for real-world performance. 

The study is published on arXiv.

The US Air Force’s 142nd Wing has completed its first live bomb-dropping exercise with the F-15EX Eagle II, marking a key milestone in expanding the aircraft’s operational capabilities. In early May, pilots, maintainers, and munitions specialists traveled to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho to carry out the training mission.

During the exercise, crews loaded 500-pound BDU-50 and 2,000-pound BDU-56 practice bombs onto the aircraft before releasing them over the Mountain Home bombing range. Although these training munitions closely resemble live bombs, they are filled with concrete instead of explosives, allowing crews to safely practice real-world weapons employment.

While the F-15EX has previously undergone weapons testing with the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, this marks the first time an operational F-15EX unit has successfully loaded and dropped bombs as part of its mission readiness training.

F-15EX’s new combat role required months of pilot training

The F-15EX Eagle II is designed to do far more than its predecessor. Although it closely resembles the aging F-15C, the newer aircraft is built as a multirole fighter, capable of carrying out both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. Unlocking that expanded capability, however, required months of preparation and specialized training across the 142nd Wing.

A key part of that effort was led by Maj. Jesse Loya, one of only three pilots in the wing with prior experience in air-to-ground operations. Together, the three completed a nine-month training program focused on the tactics and technical aspects of delivering precision-guided munitions. They then developed a training curriculum to teach the rest of the wing’s pilots the fundamentals of air-to-ground operations, laying the foundation for the unit’s first operational bomb-dropping mission.

According to Loya, the training at Mountain Home Air Force Base served as a stepping stone toward preparing pilots to safely employ air-to-ground weapons. The program focused on building the skills needed to handle ordnance while following a much shorter timeline than the traditional nine-month qualification course. 

He said the ability to complete the training so quickly reflected the experience and capabilities the pilots had developed throughout their careers, allowing the wing to accelerate the F-15EX’s transition into a multirole combat aircraft.

Weapons loaders play key role in prepping F-15EX

Preparing the F-15EX Eagle II for its first bomb-dropping mission required extensive training from weapons crews as well as pilots. Tech. Sgt. Tyler Phelps, one of the 142nd Wing’s experienced weapons loaders, traveled to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada earlier this year to train with F-15E aircraft and earn certification to load bombs.

After returning to Oregon, Phelps and other certified Airmen trained the rest of the weapons team ahead of the Mountain Home mission. Seeing the bombs loaded onto the F-15EX marked the culmination of months of preparation and a major milestone for the 142nd Wing.

The training mission involved 10 sorties, during which crews dropped a total of 24 BDU-50 and 12 BDU-56 practice bombs. The operation was completed without any safety incidents, and all missions received satisfactory evaluations, marking a major step forward in the wing’s transition to the multirole capabilities of the F-15EX.

The next phase in the F-15EX’s air-to-ground certification process will involve loading and dropping live munitions. The crew is scheduled to conduct that mission at Nellis Air Force Base at the end of August, bringing the wing one step closer to full air-to-ground operational capability.

💾

British aerospace company Vertical Aerospace is set to conduct the first public electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) demonstration flights at the upcoming Farnborough International Airshow. 

The event represents another milestone in the company’s journey toward certification and the eventual launch of commercial electric aircraft services.

The demonstrations come at a key stage in the company’s development, Vertical Aerospace noted. In recent months, the company has unveiled its Valo aircraft, completed successful piloted transition flights, strengthened its financial position, expanded its global technology partnerships, progressed its hybrid-electric defense strategy, and continued advancing its certification program.

Valo eVTOL moves closer to commercial operations

Following successful demonstrations of the aircraft’s core capabilities, Vertical Aerospace is now shifting its focus toward the next stage of development, with efforts centered on certification, industrialization and preparing for commercial operations.

Alongside public piloted flight demonstrations of its full-scale prototype, the company will also showcase its full-scale commercial Valo aircraft model, offering visitors a closer look at the technology behind its next-generation electric aircraft.

According to Stuart Simpson, CEO of Vertical Aerospace, the company arrives at Farnborough with the key building blocks for its next phase already in place. He said Vertical has transformed over the past year by launching its Valo aircraft, achieving piloted transition flights, strengthening its financial position and expanding its industrial ecosystem, while continuing to prove the technology.

“Every milestone we deliver reduces risk, strengthens our competitive position and brings us closer to building one of the world’s leading electric aerospace companies,” Simpson noted. A major highlight of Vertical Aerospace’s presence at the Farnborough International Airshow will be its planned flight demonstrations, which are set to mark the first public eVTOL aircraft demonstrations at the event.

Company targets key certification and production milestones after expanding flight tests

The company intends to conduct demonstration flights throughout the show, subject to approved flight conditions. The planned flights follow the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s recent expansion of Vertical’s Permit to Fly, allowing the company to carry out public demonstrations beyond its Flight Test Centre at Cotswold Airport for the first time.

Following the expanded flight approval, Vertical’s test pilots have successfully operated the aircraft across multiple locations, including RAF Brize Norton, RAF Benson, Blackbushe Airport and Farnborough Airport. These flights have expanded the company’s test program, providing valuable experience across different operating environments.

The company is also targeting several important program milestones that will support the development, production, and commercial rollout of its aircraft. These include completing the Critical Design Review (CDR) by the end of 2026, which will establish the certifiable design baseline for the aircraft and enable the production and testing of certification-conforming models. 

Furthermore, the UK firm plans to bring its early production aircraft assembly facility online in Q3 2026 and expand the Vertical Energy Centre in Q4 2026 as part of its industrialization efforts. In addition, Vertical expects to select a long-term turbogenerator supplier during 2026, ahead of beginning hybrid-electric flight testing in the first half of 2027.

💾

A team of ten domino artists has set a new Guinness World Record for the most dominoes toppled in a three-dimensional pyramid, bringing down 29,193 tiles in a single chain reaction at a gym in Garden City, Michigan, on June 20.

Guinness World Records has officially certified the achievement, which was set by the FALLDOWN Domino Team led by Steven Price of Sprice Machines as part of a larger installation that incorporated no fewer than 123,456 dominoes in total.

The feat, documented in a YouTube video titled “123,456 Dominoes SUPERSIZED — FALLDOWN 2026,” has attracted widespread attention online for the scale and precision of its construction

Price has held four domino-related Guinness World Records previously and has served as a judge on Fox’s competition show Domino Masters. He holds a mechanical engineering degree, a background that is evident in the structural ambition of this project.

Building a 35×35 pyramid without triggering it

The three-dimensional pyramid that forms the centerpiece of the record sits on a base of 35 by 35 dominoes and rises in layers to a pointed apex. Constructing a 3D pyramid of this scale requires a level of precision that flat domino runs do not — every tile must be positioned accurately while the structure beneath it remains stable, and a single mistimed touch anywhere in the grid can bring the entire build crashing down prematurely.

Watch the video here.

The FALLDOWN team, which includes Michael Fantauzzo, Matt VanVleck, Gabe Dean, Alex Koops, Derek Koops, Stephan Burton, Brady Dolan, Evan Voeltner, and Aaron Bimrah alongside Price, spent multiple days installing the complete setup.

A world built from supersized everyday objects

The pyramid was not the only engineering feat in the room. The team built a themed installation around 123,456 dominoes arranged into giant versions of ordinary objects — enormous paperclips, oversized friendship bracelets, massive bonsai trees, school supplies and a rubber duck that appears mid-sequence.

These elements fed into a series of Rube Goldberg-style chain reactions that snaked through the entire installation before converging on the pyramid, making the final topple a product of everything that came before it.

Guinness required a traditional domino-to-domino start

The team had originally planned to use a special mechanical trigger to bring the pyramid down. Guinness World Records rejected the approach: to qualify for an official record, the entire chain must begin with a conventional domino touching the next in sequence, with no external mechanism initiating the fall. The team revised their plans accordingly, and the record-setting run began exactly as the rules required.

Price’s fifth Guinness record in domino art

The FALLDOWN record is Steven Price’s fifth Guinness certification in domino-related categories. His prior titles include the largest domino circle field, the longest domino wall, and the largest two-dimensional pyramid. Price first gained wider recognition as a 22-year-old when his Incredible Science Machine project, which involved 250,000 domino tiles, set records and went viral.

His YouTube channel, Sprice Machines, includes videos with over 30 million views, with the Lemonade Machine — a chain reaction that travels through an entire house to serve lemonade — among the most-watched.

Researchers at the University of Toronto Engineering have developed six new metal alloys using an artificial intelligence-driven discovery platform that could improve the durability of parts used in jet engines, nuclear power plants, and other extreme environments. The findings show that the AI-assisted system identified promising alloys within just a few weeks, significantly speeding up the search for high-performance materials.

These new alloys also work well with 3D metal printing, enabling the production be complex parts that are hard or impossible to produce with traditional methods.

AI speeds up alloy discovery

Led by Yu Zou, Canada Research Chair in Materials and Manufacturing for Extreme Environments, the team worked with Jason Hattrick-Simpers to build a system that uses computer modeling, machine learning, and robots to help with manufacturing.

Their method, called active learning, acts like a self-driving laboratory. Rather than testing thousands of metal combinations by hand, the system picks the best options, makes them, tests how they perform, and uses those results to guide the next experiments.

“There’s enormous demand for materials that can stand up to huge swings of temperature and pressure, such as what you would find inside a jet engine or in the steam generators inside nuclear power plants, anywhere conventional steel just can’t survive,” said Yu Zou, who led the project.

“We also need materials that can be printed layer by layer, enabling us to make components that can’t be created by traditional manufacturing processes. For example, to make a material that is both lightweight and strong, you can vary the composition: a hard, tough alloy on the outside to something softer and lighter on the inside.”

The project was partly supported by the University of Toronto’s Acceleration Consortium, a group that uses AI and automation to accelerate the discovery of new materials.

Active learning cuts the need for massive datasets

Most AI systems need a large amount of experimental data to make accurate predictions. This becomes a problem when researchers look at materials that have not been tested yet.

“One problem you often run into when trying to use AI to design materials is that most machine learning models require lots of data about material properties to learn from,” revealed Ajay Talbot, a Ph.D. student in Zou’s lab and lead author of the study.

“But if you’re working in part of the design space that hasn’t been explored yet, that data doesn’t exist, so you’re kind of flying blind.”

“The way we get around that challenge is to use data-lean models that essentially feel their own way along. Our active learning model strategically selects a few samples to manufacture and test, and the data from those experiments is fed back into the model to inform where we go next. It really speeds things up.”

<a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFYJV7WvtOM“>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFYJV7WvtOM</a>

New alloys outperform industry benchmark

To demonstrate the system, the researchers focused on compositionally complex alloys made from nickel, cobalt, and chromium. Within weeks, the automated platform identified six new alloy formulations with strong performance.

“One of the properties we were targeting was puncture resistance at temperatures of up to 1,112°F (600°C), which is what you’d find in the front section of a jet engine,” Talbot said.

“The industry standard in this space is nickel-based alloys such as Inconel 625. But we found one made of 12 percent nickel, 62 percent cobalt, and 26 percent chrome that was great for retaining hardness at extremely high temperatures. Even with just three components, our alloy outperformed Inconel 625, an alloy of more than 10 different elements, by 4.5 percent in our lab tests.”

The team also developed another alloy designed for hotter sections of jet engines, where temperatures can reach 1,832°F (1,000°C).

“One of the things that happens in an environment like that is the formation of oxide scale, which essentially means that your material is just getting burned away,” Talbot explained.

“We found a material made of 36 percent nickel, 14 percent cobalt, and 50 percent chrome that was extremely good for oxidation resistance at these high temperatures: It even outperforms Inconel 625 by 85 percent. We’re eventually aiming to ramp up to even higher temperatures, up to 2,192°F (1,200°C).”

Researchers plan to expand to more complex materials

The researchers say the current alloys represent an early demonstration of what the AI-driven discovery platform can achieve.

“This nickel-cobalt-chrome system has just three elements in it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively simple system,” he added.

“But it’s great for showing that this whole closed-loop discovery platform really works. What we want to do next is ramp up the complexity a bit more to make even crazier stuff, with maybe up to 10 or 12 different elements.”

“As you add more components, you can get different strengthening mechanisms, different kinds of useful properties. There’s a lot more out there just waiting to be discovered.”

The study was published in the journal npj Advanced Manufacturing.

A process called Alkaline Thermal Treatment (ATT) has been tested to turn mixed plastic waste into high-purity hydrogen fuel.

Researchers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Ewha Womans University in South Korea undertook this new study. This process eliminates the costly and laborious step of sorting plastic waste before recycling.

The single-reactor method successfully processes a mixture of the three most common, hard-to-recycle plastics: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), and polypropylene (PP).

“We are solving two urgent global problems at the same time,” said Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of UCLA Samueli and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. 

“Plastic waste is accumulating at alarming rates, and clean hydrogen is essential for decarbonizing energy. This technology tackles both of these challenges in a creative and scalable way,” the co-corresponding author added. 

Mixed plastic processing

Look around you. The water bottle on your desk, the crinkly shopping bag in your pantry, and the sleek dashboard of your car all share a drawback. Once you throw them away, the waste is almost impossible to recycle as a single stream.

A persistent challenge in global recycling is the labor-intensive requirement to sort plastics by type before processing. It leads to 79 percent of plastic waste ending up buried in landfills, while another 12 percent is burned away into atmospheric pollution. Only 9 percent ever get a second life.

But the new study overcomes this challenge. The team demonstrated a chemical technique that takes a chaotic, unsorted cocktail of the world’s three most common plastics and transforms it into hydrogen fuel. Interestingly, the method does it without releasing a single puff of carbon dioxide. 

Alkaline Thermal Treatment uses heat to trigger a reaction between sodium hydroxide and organic matter, generating hydrogen fuel in the process.

It was originally designed to extract hydrogen fuel from ocean biomass, such as seaweed. The researchers wondered if the same principles could dissolve our mounting plastic problem. 

While plastic bottles (PET) broke down easily during the process, shopping bags (PE) and food containers (PP) resisted the chemical attack due to highly stable, stubborn carbon-hydrogen bonds. 

To overcome this chemical defense, a thermal oxidation pretreatment was introduced. In this process, the mixed plastic was briefly exposed to mild heat in the air. After this, oxygen was introduced into the stubborn polymer chains, which created the reactive weak spots needed for the treatment to dismantle all three plastic types.

Eco-friendly process

Once activated, the unsorted plastic soup degrades beautifully inside a single reactor, pumping out hydrogen gas with a purity level exceeding 90 percent.

ATT process changes the game for environmental footprints by operating at temperatures around 400 degrees Celsius (752 F), which are cooler than those of extreme gasification methods.

Furthermore, the technique uses a sodium hydroxide reagent to capture the plastic’s carbon rather than venting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The carbon is permanently bound into a stable, solid mineral called sodium carbonate.

The researchers have already outlined a simple secondary process to turn that byproduct into calcium carbonate. That is the exact mineral used by the concrete and construction industries, locking the plastic’s carbon away forever in infrastructure.

The breakthrough is currently confined to precision laboratory settings. Significant optimization is required to scale the technology up for municipal recycling plants, and its long-term economic viability still needs to be rigorously tested.

The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

💾

A foldable, self-propelled pontoon barge has played a key role in rescuing more than 6,000 stranded students and staff from a flood-hit region in southern China.

The rapid-deployment vessel was used during evacuation efforts in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region after flooding due to Typhoon Maysak inundated communities, according to Chinese media reports. The modular barge can be assembled in just over 10 minutes, carry more than 500 people per trip, and transport loads exceeding 66.1 US tons. 

According to its manufacturer, the platform is engineered to operate reliably in harsh environments, including high-altitude regions up to 10,800 feet (3,300 meters) above sea level and areas with extreme cold.

Pontoon powers rescue

The self-propelled pontoon barge helped to evacuate more students and staff trapped after floodwaters nearly five meters deep cut off the campus.

The modular vessel, described by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning as “China’s real-life transformer,” played a central role in a large-scale evacuation at Guangxi Logistics Vocational and Technical College in Guigang, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reported the South China Morning Post (SCMP). 

The rescue operation took place after torrential rains left the college campus submerged under nearly five meters (16.4 feet) of floodwater, cutting off thousands of people from surrounding areas. According to China’s state news agency Xinhua, conventional rescue methods initially struggled to cope with the scale of the emergency.

Emergency teams first relied on inflatable rescue boats and assault boats to reach those stranded. While effective for small-scale operations, these vessels could transport only a limited number of passengers at a time, making the evacuation process slow and difficult.

To accelerate the rescue effort, the state-owned China Anneng Construction Group, China’s emergency rescue force, deployed three heavy-duty self-propelled pontoon barges to the flooded area between Wednesday night and Thursday. The arrival of the modular barges dramatically increased evacuation capacity, allowing rescuers to move hundreds of people during each trip. By midday Thursday, every student and staff member had been safely evacuated, according to Guangxi Television.

Heavy-duty lifeline

The pontoon barge used in the operation measures approximately 60 meters in length and eight meters in width. It is capable of carrying more than 500 passengers in a single journey while supporting a total payload exceeding 66.1 US tons. Unlike conventional floating bridges or barges that require external towing, the vessel is equipped with its own propulsion system, enabling it to travel at speeds of up to 6.7 mph (10.8 km/h) even when fully loaded.

One of its biggest advantages is its rapid deployment capability. China Anneng said the modular system can be transported to a disaster site, assembled, and placed into operation in just over 10 minutes. Its foldable design allows emergency responders to quickly establish a large-capacity transport platform without relying on permanent infrastructure.

The rescue barge is regarded as one of China’s most advanced modular heavy-duty water rescue systems. It was specifically developed to address one of the biggest challenges during major floods—transporting large groups of people, emergency responders, vehicles, and heavy equipment across inundated areas or rivers made impassable by rising water, according to the SCMP.

The vessel is manufactured by China Harzone Industry Corporation, a subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC). The company says the platform is designed to operate reliably in demanding environments, including high-altitude regions up to 10,800 feet (3,300 meters) above sea level and areas experiencing extremely cold temperatures.

CSSC noted that the high-tech rescue platform has been widely deployed in domestic emergency response operations since 2020. Its successful use during the Guangxi floods demonstrates how rapidly deployable modular engineering systems are becoming an increasingly important tool for large-scale disaster response, enabling emergency teams to evacuate thousands of people far more quickly than traditional rescue boats alone. thousands of people far more quickly than traditional rescue boats alone.

💾

The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) has selected a consortium led by Thales and Leonardo to deliver a new generation of secure deployable communication and information systems for the Alliance’s Allied Special Operations Forces Command (SOFCOM). The award marks the first phase of a broader NATO initiative aimed at strengthening digital connectivity, operational resilience, and command capabilities for special operations forces.

Under the contract, the two European defence companies will provide six Deployable Points of Presence for Special Operations Component Commands (DPOP SOCC), along with operator training and long-term support. These mobile headquarters are designed to give NATO Special Forces secure command-and-control capabilities that can be rapidly deployed in demanding operational environments.

Secure communications, resilient networking

The deployable systems will combine secure communications, resilient networking, high-performance computing, and advanced IT infrastructure while maintaining a reduced electromagnetic and physical signature. This design enables forces to establish operational headquarters quickly without compromising security or mobility. The systems will also support classified, multi-domain information sharing and enhanced cybersecurity, ensuring interoperability across NATO forces and partner nations.

“Thales brings end‑to‑end expertise in secure information and communication systems, deep knowledge of NATO’s reference architecture, and a long track record of delivering projects to the Alliance,” said Alexandre Bottero, Vice President, Networks and Infrastructure Systems, Thales.

“By combining this expertise with Leonardo’s capabilities, we are harnessing the best of European industry in a modular, upgradable, and field‑proven system, providing NATO Special Forces with next‑generation deployable CIS.”

A notable feature of the programme is the introduction of real-time Full Motion Video (FMV) sharing between separate deployable systems, a capability being fielded for the first time in a NATO special operations communications network. The addition is expected to improve situational awareness, intelligence sharing, and mission coordination during complex operations.

Thales and Leonardo will oversee lifecycle support

Beyond delivering the systems, Thales and Leonardo will oversee lifecycle support, upgrades, maintenance, and user training to ensure the platforms remain operational and adaptable as mission requirements evolve. The project also brings together industrial expertise from across the Alliance, with key technologies contributed by companies in the United Kingdom and Germany.

The collaboration combines Thales’ experience in secure communications and NATO network architectures with Leonardo’s expertise in deployable command post solutions. Together, the companies aim to provide NATO with a modular, scalable, and future-ready communications capability capable of supporting special operations in increasingly contested environments.

“Leonardo’s experience, developed at Italian level through the delivery of complete Regimental and Divisional Command Post capabilities, enables the introduction of modular NATO-ready systems based on fixed and expandable shelters,” said Antonio Levato, SVP Air and Land Systems Land and Sea Business at Leonardo Electronics.

“The strength of the design stems from the close collaboration between industry and the end user, who has chosen Leonardo as both the System Integrator and the Design Authority for Italian command post. This partnership among two major players of the European defence industry allows to combine Leonardo’s field proven deployable solutions with Thales experience in NATO’s secure communications programs.”

The programme underscores NATO’s continued investment in modernizing command, control, communications, and information systems as the Alliance prepares for evolving security challenges. By enhancing secure connectivity and rapid deployment capabilities, the new systems are expected to strengthen operational readiness and improve coordination among multinational special operations forces during future missions.

The U.S. Air Force has carried out its first missile launch from a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), an important step in developing semi-autonomous drones that can fly with piloted fighter jets. In the test, announced on June 15, 2026, the Anduril-built YFQ-44A fired an AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missile at a digital target over California’s Mojave Desert.

This demonstration marks another milestone in the Air Force’s ongoing testing of Collaborative Combat Aircraft. The drone managed most of the mission by itself, but a human operator gave the final approval to launch the missile, following U.S. policy that requires people to control lethal weapons.

Drone completes air-to-air engagement sequence

The test happened in restricted airspace over California’s Mojave Desert as part of the Air Force’s work to prove the YFQ-44A’s combat abilities.

During the test, the aircraft used Anduril’s Lattice software to find, track, and lock onto the target, then figure out how to intercept it. The onboard system handled these steps, and a human supervisor on the ground gave the final order to fire.

This test was different from earlier drone launches, where people on the ground controlled the flight. Here, the aircraft managed the mission steps on its own, except for the operator’s approval to release the weapon.

A key rule of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program is still in place: the aircraft cannot fire weapons by itself. Every launch must be approved by a human operator, who stays in control during the mission.

Test follows months of phased evaluations

This live-fire test followed earlier trials this year, in which the aircraft carried dummy weapons during flight. Those tests collected data on how the aircraft performed and how it managed the extra weight.

Engineers then verified communication links between the aircraft and its weapon system. They ensured that commands from the operator were sent and executed correctly during practice runs before moving on to live-fire tests.

“Moving from inert carriage earlier in the year to this weapon release demonstrates program maturity, allowing us to validate our digital integration models with actual data,” said General. Dale White, portfolio manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems. “These tests provide operational validation that Collaborative Combat Aircraft can execute the weapon employment sequence autonomously within pilot-defined parameters, accelerating capability delivery to the warfighter.”

Air Force says capability is moving closer to deployment

The missile launch was supported by the 412th Test Wing’s Air Dominance Combined Test Force. This team includes active-duty members, government workers, and contractors who make sure models and procedures are safe for live-fire tests.

“This live-fire test is an important next step in the development of Collaborative Combat Aircraft,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach. “We’re one step closer to delivering capabilities to the warfighter.”

According to the Air Force, the CCA program’s goal is to have combat-ready, semi-autonomous aircraft that help U.S. airpower reach farther, see more, and survive better in tough situations. The Air Force is also accelerating development and testing, bringing these aircraft closer to deployment in real missions.

Wisconsin has committed up to $55 million in incentives to help Realta Fusion build its new headquarters and fusion research facility in Madison, a move aimed at strengthening the state’s position in the emerging fusion energy industry.

The funding package will support development of “The Realta Forge” at OM Station, the site of the former Oscar Mayer plant. Realta plans to build its prototype magnetic mirror fusion machine, called Hammir, at the facility and expects to create more than 600 technical and non-technical jobs.

According to the company, the incentive package includes about $37.5 million in state sales and use tax exemptions, up to $15 million in performance-based enterprise zone tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and $2.8 million in tax increment financing from the City of Madison.

Realta said it evaluated sites in Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, and other states before deciding to keep the project in Wisconsin, where it was founded.

State backs fusion

The company expects to break ground on the facility before the end of the year. Once completed, The Realta Forge will serve as Realta’s headquarters and dedicated research and development center for advancing its compact magnetic mirror fusion technology.

“We spent the better part of the past two years searching across the country to find the most favorable business environment and the most attractive site to build our R&D facility, and we found it in our own backyard,” said Realta CEO Kieran Furlong.

The company says its CoSMo fusion systems are based on the magnetic mirror concept, which uses magnetic fields to confine high-temperature plasma. Unlike conventional power plants, fusion aims to generate electricity by fusing light atomic nuclei, producing large amounts of energy without carbon emissions during operation.

Realta added that the Hammir prototype will help demonstrate the company’s fusion approach before commercial deployment.

“In terms of cash today, avoided costs tomorrow, and accelerating progress, this is the most impactful state-supported fusion deal ever done in the United States,” said Realta VP of Technical Development Dominick Bindl.

Building regional hub

The announcement follows Wisconsin’s passage of Act 165 earlier this year, becoming the first standalone state law in the United States to exempt capital expenditures on fusion energy projects from state sales tax. State officials say the legislation is intended to attract companies developing next-generation energy technologies.

“Fusion energy is not only good for our planet and our power grid, but it plays to all of our strengths as a state with our world-class research universities, research laboratories, and an incredible manufacturing and supply chain network supported by our dedicated and highly skilled workforce,” said Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers.

Madison also approved $2.8 million in tax increment financing tied to job creation at the OM Station redevelopment. According to the company, it is the city’s first tax increment financing package for private-sector job creation in a decade.

With construction expected to begin later this year, Realta said the facility will become the center for development of its magnetic mirror fusion technology while helping establish Wisconsin as a growing hub for fusion research, advanced manufacturing and high-skilled engineering jobs.

Electra has selected Safran Helicopter Engines to supply the turbogenerator for its EL9 Ultra Short aircraft under a production agreement that will run for the life of the program. The deal gives the Virginia-based aircraft developer a key propulsion partner as it works toward Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification and commercial service by 2030.

The agreement includes an initial order for 250 TG600 turbogenerators. Electra expects production to increase as demand grows for the EL9, a hybrid-electric aircraft designed to operate from landing areas as short as 150 feet. The capability could allow flights from locations that cannot support conventional commercial aircraft.

Hybrid system selected

Safran’s TG600 will generate 600 kilowatts of electrical power for the EL9’s hybrid-electric propulsion system. Engineers based the unit on the company’s Arrano helicopter engine, which delivers an 18% improvement in fuel efficiency over the previous generation of engines.

The system also integrates two GENeUS electric generators developed by Safran Electrical & Power. Earlier this month, Safran completed the first bench test of the flight-ready turbogenerator at its facility in Bordes, France. The company plans to use that hardware during the EL9’s initial flight-test campaign.

Electra CEO Marc Allen called the agreement an important milestone for the aircraft program. He said Safran’s expertise in hybrid-electric propulsion and long-term commitment would help bring the EL9 into commercial service.

Safran Helicopter Engines CEO Cédric Goubet said the contract formally launches the company’s turbogenerator business. He added that combining Safran’s engine technology with its electrical systems expertise creates a propulsion package tailored for the EL9’s performance goals.

Designed for short fields

Unlike conventional regional aircraft, the EL9 relies on hybrid-electric propulsion and blown-lift technology to achieve extremely short takeoffs and landings. Electra says the aircraft needs only about 150 feet of runway, opening access to small airfields and other locations closer to population centers.

The company believes that capability could reshape regional transportation by reducing dependence on major airports for shorter trips. Electra describes the concept as “Direct Aviation,” allowing travelers to fly closer to their origin and destination instead of connecting through large airport hubs.

FAA certification work is already underway under Part 23 regulations. Electra expects the aircraft’s first flight in late 2027 or early 2028 before targeting entry into service in 2030.

Growing production plans

The Safran agreement follows other commercial milestones for the EL9 program. Earlier this year, Bristow Group signed a pre-delivery payment agreement that secured the first production delivery slot through binding commercial terms, subject to aircraft certification. Electra also released market projections suggesting demand for between 12,000 and 16,000 aircraft during the first decade of Direct Aviation operations across the United States.

If those forecasts materialize, the EL9 would represent a new category of regional aircraft that combines electric propulsion with conventional turbine power. Electra and Safran aim to deliver an aircraft capable of connecting communities that currently lack practical commercial air service while reducing fuel consumption compared with traditional regional aircraft.

Elon Musk has reportedly acquired APR Energy, a company known for supplying rapidly deployable power generation systems. The move could help meet the growing electricity demands of his artificial intelligence venture, xAI. Details of the deal surfaced through regulatory filings rather than an official announcement from Musk or his companies.

APR Energy specializes in temporary and mobile power solutions, offering gas turbine and reciprocating engine systems that can be transported quickly and brought online in a short period. The company’s fleet is capable of generating more than one gigawatt of electricity, making it a valuable asset for organizations requiring large amounts of power without waiting for permanent grid infrastructure.

Strategic step to support xAI’s expanding computing operations

The reported acquisition is widely viewed as a strategic step to support xAI’s expanding computing operations. As AI models become larger and more sophisticated, the data centers that train and run them require enormous amounts of electricity. Securing reliable power has become one of the biggest challenges facing AI developers, especially as utilities struggle to keep pace with rising demand.

The turbines could emit over 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, according to the environmental groups. In Boxtown, the predominantly Black neighborhood closest to the facility, the cancer risk already runs four times the national average. xAI officials said they planned to “copy and paste” the same turbine strategy for Colossus 2, reported Electrek.

Unlike traditional power plants that often take years to construct, APR Energy’s modular systems can be installed much more quickly. This flexibility could allow xAI to expand its computing capacity faster by providing temporary or supplemental electricity while permanent infrastructure is developed.

Increasing importance of energy security in AI industry

The move also reflects the increasing importance of energy security in the AI industry. Rather than relying entirely on local power grids, technology companies are exploring alternative ways to guarantee uninterrupted electricity for their data centers. Owning a company with mobile generation capabilities could give xAI greater control over its future expansion plans.

However, the reported deal has also drawn attention because APR Energy’s portfolio primarily relies on natural gas and diesel-powered generation. While these technologies offer dependable and rapid deployment, they also raise environmental concerns due to greenhouse gas emissions. The acquisition highlights the ongoing debate between the immediate energy needs of AI infrastructure and longer-term sustainability goals.

Industry analysts believe the purchase is another example of Elon Musk’s strategy of integrating critical parts of his businesses. By combining AI development with direct access to power generation assets, xAI could reduce operational risks associated with electricity shortages and accelerate the deployment of new computing facilities.

Although the reported transaction has generated significant interest, several details remain unclear, including the financial terms of the acquisition and how APR Energy’s assets will be integrated into xAI’s future operations. Neither Musk nor xAI had officially commented on the reported purchase at the time the information became public.

As competition in artificial intelligence continues to intensify, access to reliable energy is increasingly becoming as important as access to advanced chips and computing hardware. If the reported acquisition is confirmed, it could signal a broader trend in which leading AI companies invest directly in energy infrastructure to support their long-term growth.

Intel Foundry has become the first chipmaker to manufacture and ship a high-volume logic product using ASML’s High NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, marking a major step toward commercial adoption of the next generation of chipmaking technology.

The milestone applies to a subset of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, code-named Panther Lake, built on the company’s Intel 18A process node. Intel said specific Intel 18A layers are now dual-qualified on ASML’s High NA EUV platform at its Oregon facility, with products shipping to customers at yields matched to the existing NXE platform.

The announcement signals a shift for High NA EUV from research and early testing into production manufacturing. Intel and ASML said the technology is being used on selected chip layers to collect manufacturing data and further optimize system setup, uptime, and production implementation before wider deployment in future process nodes.

High NA EUV is the next evolution of EUV lithography, offering higher resolution and improved process control for patterning increasingly smaller chip features. The technology is expected to help semiconductor manufacturers build denser and more complex chips while supporting future advances in computing and artificial intelligence.

Production milestone reached

ASML said the deployment builds on decades of collaboration with Intel to advance semiconductor manufacturing. The latest production milestone follows Intel’s installation of the industry’s first commercial High NA EUV system at its Hillsboro, Oregon, research and development site in 2024. The company later became the first to install and qualify ASML’s second-generation TWINSCAN EXE:5200B system, which delivers higher throughput, improved overlay accuracy, and an upgraded light source.

The Panther Lake processors are manufactured on Intel 18A, with High NA EUV used to pattern selected layers of the chips. Intel said the approach provides manufacturing experience while maintaining production performance on existing platforms.

“With increased resolution and better process control, the introduction of High NA EUV marks a substantial development in semiconductor lithography,” said Christophe Fouquet, ASML President and CEO. “We are proud to play a role in enabling the smaller, denser patterning that will accelerate advancements in AI and other emerging technologies.”

The companies said insights gained from production will help refine system setup, uptime and manufacturing processes, paving the way for broader adoption of the technology in future generations of semiconductor manufacturing.

Scaling future nodes

Intel described the milestone as an important step in integrating High NA EUV into commercial chip production at scale while maintaining manufacturing flexibility for future process technologies.

“This milestone reflects the close technical collaboration between Intel and ASML and shows how High NA EUV can be integrated into advanced semiconductor manufacturing at scale,” said Naga Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel Foundry.

According to Intel, qualifying High NA EUV on selected Intel 18A product layers allows the company to continue delivering production output while evaluating how the technology can support future process nodes with higher performance, greater transistor density, and improved manufacturing flexibility.

With Panther Lake now entering high-volume manufacturing using High NA EUV, Intel becomes the first company to ship commercial high-volume logic products built with the technology, providing an early demonstration of how next-generation lithography can move from development into large-scale chip production.