Latest news with #LASSO
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Check out the Hellhound, a 375-mph 3D-printed turbojet-powered exploding drone competing for a spot in the US Army's arsenal
Cummings Aerospace showed off its Hellhound loitering munition at SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida. The system is mostly 3D-printed, can fly at speeds over 375 mph, and is powered by a turbojet engine. CEO Sheila Cummings told BI said the drone's design and features make it unique compared to others on the market. A couple feet long, rounded, relatively lightweight, and easy to make, this exploding drone can fly fast and attaches to a rucksack. That's the basics of Hellhound, a loitering munition made by Cummings Aerospace based in Huntsville, Alabama. This kind of weapon features characteristics of both missiles and drones, delivering surveillance and strike in a single package. The Hellhoud recently completed flight tests and a few demonstrations before being submitted to a top US Army drone competition. Earlier in the year, it was tested in the Army's Expeditionary Warrior Experiment 2025. Loitering munitions are becoming more prolific and playing a role in conflicts like the war in Ukraine. As a turbojet-powered drone, the Hellhound is unlike many other loitering munitions. The top speed is nearly three times faster than the popular Switchblade made by AeroVironment. Hellhound wrapped up flight tests earlier this year, and the S3 version of it, which Business Insider saw up close at SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida, is in submission for the US Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, program. LASSO requires select companies to build 135 munitions and 35 prototypes immediately. It's a new-start program, the goal of which is to give infantry brigades better stand-off weapons capabilities. Cummings Aerospace's CEO Sheila Cummings told BI that much of how her company is thinking about the Hellhound has been with modularity, ease of manufacturing, and warfighter feedback in mind. She also said the system is affordable but wouldn't disclose a specific cost or price range. At first glance, the Hellhound loitering munition, sitting inside its case, looks a bit like a boogie board. Weighing less than 25 pounds, the weapon is fairly lightweight and easy to pick up and carry. There are straps on the bottom that can attach it to a soldier's rucksack, something Cummings said was a key suggestion from soldiers who wanted the system to be as man-portable as possible. The majority of a Hellhound is 3D printed. Cummings estimated that, depending on the number of printers, they could fully print a Hellhound in a few days at least and a week at most. Any part that isn't 3D-printed is commercial off-the-shelf, an increasingly important quality for the weapons and systems that the US military acquires as it speeds up the process. The US military has been pushing for more of its systems, especially the uncrewed weapon systems, to be suitable for production on a large scale, interchangeable capabilities and components, and supply chain flexibility. There's a growing realization that for future wars, inexpensive, easily made weapons will be needed in mass in a protracted, large-scale conflict against a major rival like China. A key development of the Ukraine war has been how Ukraine has created an arsenal of cheap drones for surveillance and precision strike. That's something militaries around the world are watching closely given how effective it's been. "We're really trying to minimize the exquisite, custom products," Cummings told BI, explaining that the Hellhound's payload, too, can be interchanged with different sensors or warheads depending on what the mission requirements are simply by twisting and unlocking the nose. A defining characteristic of the Hellhound is its turbojet engine. Cummings said it's a differentiator for the system and company as it not only reduces fuel usage but also increases speed. Cummings Aerospace advertises the Hellhound as being able to fly faster than 375 mph with a range of around 25 miles. The turbojet engine is also a commercially available product, Cummings said. She said the munition's shape, sleek and long, also aids with aerodynamics. Cummings Aerospace has imagined Hellhound swarms in the field providing a mix of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance and strike. The focus on loitering munitions — which can, as the name suggests, loiter in an area before diving in to strike a target — comes amid efforts to give troops on the ground stand-off strike capabilities. These weapons have seen widespread use in the war in Ukraine, and Russian loitering munitions, like its Lancet drones and Iranian-made Shaheds, have been high-value targets for Kyiv's forces. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
13-05-2025
- Business Insider
Check out the Hellhound, a 375-mph 3D-printed turbojet-powered exploding drone competing for a spot in the US Army's arsenal
A couple feet long, rounded, relatively lightweight, and easy to make, this exploding drone can fly fast and attaches to a rucksack. That's the basics of Hellhound, a loitering munition made by Cummings Aerospace based in Huntsville, Alabama. This kind of weapon features characteristics of both missiles and drones, delivering surveillance and strike in a single package. The Hellhoud recently completed flight tests and a few demonstrations before being submitted to a top US Army drone competition. Earlier in the year, it was tested in the Army's Expeditionary Warrior Experiment 2025. Loitering munitions are becoming more prolific and playing a role in conflicts like the war in Ukraine. As a turbojet-powered drone, the Hellhound is unlike many other loitering munitions. The top speed is nearly three times faster than the popular Switchblade made by AeroVironment. Hellhound wrapped up flight tests earlier this year, and the S3 version of it, which Business Insider saw up close at SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida, is in submission for the US Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, program. LASSO requires select companies to build 135 munitions and 35 prototypes immediately. It's a new-start program, the goal of which is to give infantry brigades better stand-off weapons capabilities. Cummings Aerospace's CEO Sheila Cummings told BI that much of how her company is thinking about the Hellhound has been with modularity, ease of manufacturing, and warfighter feedback in mind. She also said the system is affordable but wouldn't disclose a specific cost or price range. At first glance, the Hellhound loitering munition, sitting inside its case, looks a bit like a boogie board. Weighing less than 25 pounds, the weapon is fairly lightweight and easy to pick up and carry. There are straps on the bottom that can attach it to a soldier's rucksack, something Cummings said was a key suggestion from soldiers who wanted the system to be as man-portable as possible. The majority of a Hellhound is 3D printed. Cummings estimated that, depending on the number of printers, they could fully print a Hellhound in a few days at least and a week at most. Any part that isn't 3D-printed is commercial off-the-shelf, an increasingly important quality for the weapons and systems that the US military acquires as it speeds up the process. The US military has been pushing for more of its systems, especially the uncrewed weapon systems, to be suitable for production on a large scale, interchangeable capabilities and components, and supply chain flexibility. There's a growing realization that for future wars, inexpensive, easily made weapons will be needed in mass in a protracted, large-scale conflict against a major rival like China. A key development of the Ukraine war has been how Ukraine has created an arsenal of cheap drones for surveillance and precision strike. That's something militaries around the world are watching closely given how effective it's been. "We're really trying to minimize the exquisite, custom products," Cummings told BI, explaining that the Hellhound's payload, too, can be interchanged with different sensors or warheads depending on what the mission requirements are simply by twisting and unlocking the nose. A defining characteristic of the Hellhound is its turbojet engine. Cummings said it's a differentiator for the system and company as it not only reduces fuel usage but also increases speed. Cummings Aerospace advertises the Hellhound as being able to fly faster than 375 mph with a range of around 25 miles. The turbojet engine is also a commercially available product, Cummings said. She said the munition's shape, sleek and long, also aids with aerodynamics. Cummings Aerospace has imagined Hellhound swarms in the field providing a mix of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance and strike. The focus on loitering munitions — which can, as the name suggests, loiter in an area before diving in to strike a target — comes amid efforts to give troops on the ground stand-off strike capabilities. These weapons have seen widespread use in the war in Ukraine, and Russian loitering munitions, like its Lancet drones and Iranian-made Shaheds, have been high-value targets for Kyiv's forces.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cummings Aerospace ready to manufacture Hellhound munition
Cummings Aerospace is now ready to manufacture its Hellhound loitering munition at what equates to low-rate production, CEO Sheila Cummings told Defense News in a recent interview at its new production facility near Huntsville, Alabama. The company chose a space next door to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, home to the program office and testing and development for Army aviation, in 2021 and designed and built a facility intended to produce large numbers of the drones. 'The work we have done to date, not only with the development of the vehicle, but preparing for major acquisition and production of these vehicles, has been a huge focus for us,' Cummings said. 'We're really excited that we are now at manufacturing readiness level 7.' The classification equates to a defined production workflow at the facility and the establishment of work instructions for building the air vehicles. Hellhound, weighing less than 25 pounds, flew faster than 350 miles per hour at full throttle while passing distances of 20 kilometers using just 50% of its fuel, according to the company. The air vehicle is the first major end-to-end weapon system developed by Cummings Aerospace, a Native American woman-owned small business founded in 2009 as an aerospace engineering outfit with expertise in design, development, production and sustainment of capabilities, including missiles, radars and command-and-control system technologies. Hellhound will be demonstrated in several upcoming events with special operations, the U.S. Navy and even abroad in the U.K. this summer, according to Cummings. 'We're using these demo opportunities, in addition to our flight tests, to ultimately execute low-rate production,' Cummings said. 'We're talking about quantities of 12 to 14 vehicles for these demos,' she added, 'but it's really allowing us to fully vet our production process.' The military is changing the way it acquires weapon systems and, in many cases, requires companies to prove they can build systems at scale as part of competitive acquisitions. Historically, a weapon system might be chosen for its performance on the battlefield without much attention paid to the amount of work it would take to build a system or even how stable the supplier base was. Cummings Aerospace wrapped up flight tests of its turbo-jet-powered, 3D-printed kamikaze drone earlier this year and is readying the S3 version of its man-portable Hellhound for submission to the U.S. Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance, or LASSO, competition set to kick off later this year. The competition would require the company to build 135 munitions total and would expect companies chosen to build 35 prototypes right out of the gate. In Cumming's opinion, the war in Ukraine and tensions in the Indo-Pacific have underscored the need to ensure production capacity and understand the supply chain and its risks. 'That's what's driven the whole modular design and making sure that we have an open systems architecture and be able to swap in technologies very readily,' Cummings said. A large portion of the air vehicle is made using commercially available 3D printers in-house and buying commercially available standard parts that are not unique to just a few suppliers, Cummings said. 'If you think about low-cost solutions — that's part of the strategy — is we have to design something that we can get screws from multiple vendors, we can get 3D print material from multiple vendors,' she said. 'We talk about exquisite payloads, that's a different challenge, but electronics, we have to make sure we can source them from multiple vendors.' And to surge even further, Cummings said there are other solutions that are easy to implement like licensing the design to other suppliers to go and produce using standard 3D printers to help expand production capacity. For the Huntsville facility, Cummings said her goal is to produce at least 100 air vehicles a month. 'Payloads obviously drive some of that,' she noted, but added that there is room to grow beyond that, whether it's next door or using the supplier base to ramp up demand. The expectation now is 'not just a new, novel technology or capability, but prove that you can make it,' Cummings said. 'So we're proving we can make them and make them at scale.'
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Today's Wordle answer for Tuesday, March 18
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There's a hint for today's Wordle just below, designed to give you some guessing guidance while still leaving you enough room to work your puzzle solving magic. Use it before you've tried a single word if you want to give yourself a flying start, or save it for later if those yellow letters refuse to behave. The March 18 (1368) answer is here too, just in case. The single yellow letter in my opening row didn't give me a lot of hope, but I persevered and eventually found myself with a full set of winning greens after a few more attempts. Make sure you take a peek at today's clue if you'd like a better first line than I had. A mechanism for measuring time, but not a clock. If you need to know when an egg's cooked or a test's over, this is the thing to use. No, there is not a double letter in today's puzzle. A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you've got the basics, it's much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there's nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path: A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels. Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess. Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer. There's no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don't need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares. Another win? Another win. The answer to the March 18 (1368) Wordle is TIMER. Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today's Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated. Here are some recent Wordle answers: March 17: LASSO March 16: STAMP March 15: LADLE March 14: PIECE March 13: CHASE March 12: MANGO March 11: TRACK March 10: SPITE March 9: GREED March 8: NAVEL Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you'll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak. You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You'll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you're wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you'll see which ones you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you've got the right letter in the right spot. Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path. After that, it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above. Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wordle hints today for #1,368: Clues and answer for Tuesday, March 18
Hey, there! We hope your week is off to a great start. When it's time for a break today, there's a fresh round of Wordle waiting for you. In case you need a helping hand with it, here's our daily Wordle guide with some hints and the answer for Tuesday's puzzle (#1,368). It may be that you're a Wordle newcomer and you're not completely sure how to play the game. We're here to help with that too. Wordle is a deceptively simple daily word game that first emerged in 2021. The gist is that there is one five-letter word to deduce every day by process of elimination. The daily word is the same for everyone. Wordle blew up in popularity in late 2021 after creator Josh Wardle made it easy for players to share an emoji-based grid with their friends and followers that detailed how they fared each day. The game's success spurred dozens of clones across a swathe of categories and formats. The New York Times purchased Wordle in early 2022 for an undisclosed sum. The publication said that players collectively played Wordle 5.3 billion times in 2024. So, it's little surprise that Wordle is one of the best online games and puzzles you can play daily. To start playing Wordle, you simply need to enter one five-letter word. The game will tell you how close you are to that day's secret word by highlighting letters that are in the correct position in green. Letters that appear in the word but aren't in the right spot will be highlighted in yellow. If you guess any letters that are not in the secret word, the game will gray those out on the virtual keyboard. You'll only have six guesses to find each day's word, though you still can use grayed-out letters to help narrow things down. It's also worth remembering that letters can appear in the secret word more than once. Wordle is free to play on the NYT's website and apps, as well as on Meta Quest headsets. The game refreshes at midnight local time. If you log into a New York Times account, you can track your stats, including the all-important win streak. If you have a NYT subscription that includes full access to the publication's games, you don't have to stop after a single round of Wordle. You'll have access to an archive of more than 1,300 previous Wordle games. So if you're a relative newcomer, you'll be able to go back and catch up on previous editions. In addition, paid NYT Games members have access to a tool called the Wordle Bot. This can tell you how well you performed at each day's game. Before today's Wordle hints, here are the answers to recent puzzles that you may have missed: Yesterday's Wordle answer for Monday, March 17 — LASSO Sunday, March 16 — STAMP Saturday, March 15 — LADLE Friday, March 14 — PIECE Thursday, March 13 — CHASE Every day, we'll try to make Wordle a little easier for you. First, we'll offer a hint that describes the meaning of the word or how it might be used in a phrase or sentence. We'll also tell you if there are any double (or even triple) letters in the word. In case you still haven't quite figured it out by that point, we'll then provide the first letter of the word. Those who are still stumped after that can continue on to find out the answer for today's Wordle. This should go without saying, but make sure to scroll slowly. Spoilers are ahead. Here is a hint for today's Wordle answer: Mechanism that either sounds an alarm after a certain period has elapsed or measures how long something takes. There are no repeated letters in today's Wordle answer. The first letter of today's Wordle answer is T. This is your final warning before we reveal today's Wordle answer. No take-backs. Don't blame us if you happen to scroll too far and accidentally spoil the game for yourself. What is today's Wordle? Today's Wordle answer is... TIMER Not to worry if you didn't figure out today's Wordle word. If you made it this far down the page, hopefully you at least kept your streak going. And, hey: there's always another game tomorrow.
