The U.S. Navy this month launched "AIRWorks," an initiative modeled on Lockheed Martin Corp's Skunk Works and Boeing Co's Phantom Works divisions that aims to develop new weapons more quickly to meet U.S. military needs.
AIRWorks completed several projects over the past year even as it took shape. They included bulletproofing V-22 tiltrotor aircraft built by Boeing and Textron Inc for the Air Force, and adding rockets to the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter built by Northrop Grumman Corp for the Navy.
"More than anything else, for us it's about speed and cost," Rear Admiral Mark Darrah, chief engineer for the Navy's Naval Air Systems Command and commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center's aircraft division, told Reuters in an interview.
The goal is to use prototyping and the Navy's substantial in-house know-how to develop rapid solutions for urgent military needs. Depending on the situation, the products developed could later be opened to competition by defense contractors, he said.
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