Elbit Systems of America, the U.S. subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd., announced on Friday that it signed an agreement with the Harris Corporation to acquire Harris Night Vision business for $350 million. The transaction is conditioned upon completion of the proposed merger between Harris and L3 Technologies, Inc., customary closing conditions, which includes a receipt of all regulatory approvals.

“The market position and technological strength of Harris Night Vision make this acquisition significant to our long-term growth strategy with a particular focus on the U.S. Elbit Systems of America which has a proven track record of providing high performance solutions and support services to the U.S. defense and homeland security markets,” said Bezhalel Machlis, president and CEO of Elbit Systems.

Harris has led the industry for over 50 years. Warfighters in the U.S. and globally rely on Harris premier night vision and image intensifier technologies for enhanced threat detection and mission performance. The company produces more night vision devices than its competitors combined and continues working with customers to advance night vision and vision-enhancing capabilities, technologies and performance.

The Harris F5032 Lightweight Night Vision Binocular is the latest innovation in the field to answer the challenges of size, weight and power while also increasing warfighters’ low-light capabilities and introducing the industry’s leading close focus range giving soldiers superior near eye clarity.

About Harris Corporation

Harris Corporation is a leading technology innovator, solving customers’ toughest mission-critical challenges by providing solutions that connect, inform and protect. Harris supports government and commercial customers in more than 100 countries and has approximately $6 billion in annual revenue. The company is organized into three business segments: Communication Systems, Electronic Systems and Space and Intelligence Systems.

About Elbit Systems

Elbit Systems Ltd. is an international high technology company engaged in a wide range of defense, homeland security and commercial programs throughout the world.

The company, which includes Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries, operates in the areas of aerospace, land, and naval systems, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (“C4ISR”), unmanned aircraft systems, advanced electro-optics, electro-optic space systems, EW suites, signal intelligence systems, data links and communications systems, radios and cyber-based systems and munitions.

The company also focuses on the upgrading of existing platforms, developing new technologies for defense, homeland security and commercial applications and providing a range of support services, including training and simulation systems.

The Naval Research Laboratory aims to use artificial intelligence to predict when an employee is likely to leave the federal government. The plan comes as the Trump Administration wants to introduce the safe use of AI among the federal workforce, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Ranjeev Mittu, head of information management and decision architectures at the laboratory’s information technology division, said the lab seeks AI tools that can analyze data from exit surveys and review common workplace issues.

“As employees are progressing in their career, we can look at the predictors. Do those predictors tell us we might have an employee that is going to leave? Should we fix a problem because a lot of employees are leaving for a given problem that no one’s addressed? I think there’s a rich opportunity not just to apply machine learning, but a variety of approaches under AI to solve this kind of problem,” he said. 

Mittu said one naval command is already utilizing AI-based technologies to reduce time spent on manual tasks, like copying data from one spreadsheet to another. Some tasks that once required three weeks are now being done in four days.

“It allowed this analyst to focus on other problems within the command,” he said.

USAGov, the U.S. federal government’s official web service, launched an artificial chatbot to address scam cases online. The Sam chatbot is built on data regarding individuals who encountered scams.   

The General Services Administration deployed a team to begin 32 discussions about scams in two workshops, wrote Marietta Jelks, consumer action handbook program manager for the department, in a blog posted Wednesday.

The team learned from the conversations that users are mostly concerned with information about where to report scams, identifying scams and recovering from associated financial damage. Sam’s development builds on idea maps, illustrations and flow charts based on gathered input.

GSA intends for future versions of Sam to feature bilingual capability, topics in Spanish, free text response, user satisfaction surveys and contact center integration.  

The U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command partnered with U.S. Fleet Marine Forces and other organizations to assess the performance of additive printed impellers on M1A1 Abrams tanks. The service branch said Thursday it plans to utilize the impellers to replace tank components in the event of delayed parts deliveries.

The command teamed up with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to validate and create a 100-page technical data package for the impellers.

“We plan to continue to collect operational hours on three 3D-printed impellers to better assess the long-term reliability of the part,” said Joseph Burns, technical lead for the command’s advanced manufacturing operations cell.

The Marine Corps will test, evaluate and certify the impellers after completing the technical data package. The impellers work to maintain the clean state of tank filters through the removal of dust from the engines.

The Nuclear Weapons Council authorized development for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) effort to extend the W80-4 warhead’s service life.

NNSA, a unit of the Department of Energy, will work with the Department of Defense to develop and determine the final sustained design for the warhead via testing and analyses, the department said Thursday. The U.S. Air Force intends to use the warhead as a long range standoff cruise missile equipped on B-52 and B-21 aircraft.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory heads the design activities under the program, and Sandia National Laboratories manages the non-nuclear aspects of development. Los Alamos National Laboratory and Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center are among other contributors.

Heather Wilson, secretary of the Air Force and a Wash100 winner, said the service plans to resume previous “vanguard” programs to speed up prototyping, testing and deployment of next-generation technologies, Inside Defense reported Thursday.

The service intends to use a different way of identifying and fielding new technologies to maintain air dominance. 

“Rather than looking at a particular platform, our next-generation air dominance will identify the technologies that we need to develop and test and then make decisions along the way on how we will deploy those technologies,” Wilson said during a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

Wilson admitted that problems still remain in the Air Force’s major defense programs, which involve multiple processes to bring new capabilities to service members. The Air Force Systems Command created “vanguard” in the 1970s to provide a technology management approach that determines systems, costs, schedules and plans needed for acquisition and research.

NASA completed tests for engine systems designed to support the deployment of the initial four Space Launch System rockets to space. Sixteen RS-25 engines underwent hot fire demonstrations have accumulated 14,700 seconds through 32 developmental tests since 2015, the agency said Friday. 

The engines were initially developed to reach a performance rate of 100 percent and updated to operate up to 104.5 percent by using an engine controller designed to establish communications between the RS-25 units and the spacecraft. Testing efforts for the engines began in 2015 with a 500-second hot fire demo, followed by the initial SLS flight engine test in 2016.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has also started the construction of additional RS-25 engines for the agency.