An infographic of Aselsan's Marlin USV, which is on display at DSA 2024. (Janes)

Turkey's Aselsan has for the first time displayed its Marlin unmanned surface vessel (USV) in its full anti-submarine warfare (ASW) configuration.

In this configuration – on show at the Defence Services Asia (DSA) 2024 exhibition in Kuala Lumpur from 6 to 9 May – the USV is integrated with the Mini-Düfas low-frequency active towed array and passive towed sonar system. Aselsan aims to operationalise the mini version of its Düfas towed active sonar for USVs, called Düfas-M, in 2024.

Tests on hardware components are under way, with sea trials on a Marlin USV set for the second half of 2024. Düfas features both active and passive arrays and detection and tracking capabilities.

Speaking to Janes on 7 May, Suat Ekmen, Aselsan's Asia-Pacific manager, said, “The specifications including operating frequencies of the array and the towed cable length are kept confidential since the system is at the final stage of development.”

An image of the URAL radio relay system on display at DSA 2024. (Janes/Rakend P)

Turkish company Aselsan has unveiled its latest radio relay system at the Defence Services Asia (DSA) 2024 exhibition held in Kuala Lumpur from 6 to 9 May.

The system, known as URAL, is an airborne software-defined radio relay operating in the very/ultra-high frequency (V/UHF) band.

URAL is designed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other airborne platforms for surveillance, reconnaissance, and mapping applications.

It utilises Aselsan's advanced network waveform features to achieve the high throughput data rate.

The VHF and UHF bands are incorporated in a single unit to reduce the system's size and weight to meet the low size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirement of UAVs. The company told Janes that older radio relays are available in single band only, either VHF or UHF frequency.

Aselsan's representative did not disclose the modulation type, data rate, and the waveforms incorporated in the system at the time of publication. Based on Janes

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on 14 February 2024. (US Space Force)

The Pentagon's Space Development Agency (SDA) has awarded a USD414 million deal to build a series of new satellites, presumably capable of early warning and precision tracking of hypersonic missile systems.

Agency officials selected California-based Millennium Space Systems to construct the eight fire-control satellites as part of the SDA's Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) programme, according to an agency statement. The space vehicles (SVs) and associated payloads for the FOO Fighter satellites “will demonstrate advanced missile defence capability by incorporating fire control-quality sensors into a prototype constellation”, SDA officials said in the statement.

The eight satellites, which SDA anticipates to be launched into orbit by the first quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2027, “will accelerate fire-control capability” for the agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) programme. Specifically, agency officials are looking to develop and mature the SDA's counter-hypersonic capability in Tranche 2 Tracking Layer (T2TL) of the PWSA.