1) General Motors is the latest automaker to report that a global chip shortage is affecting its production. Other automakers include Stellantis, Volkswagen, Ford, Nissan, Subaru, Renault, Honda, Toyota, and Mazda. Chipmakers in Asia are rushing to boost production but say the supply gap will take many months to plug. The chip shortage is expected to cut global output in the first quarter by more than 670,000 vehicles and last into the third quarter, for an estimated total production lost this year reaching 1 million vehicles. When there is a shortage of semiconductors that impacts production, GM intends to build vehicles without certain modules and will complete them as soon as possible. This will help us quickly meet strong customer demand as more semiconductors become available. The shortage is affecting production of automaker’s most profitable cars: the Chevy Equinox, Colorado, GMC Canyon, and Terrain, Ford’s F-150, and Toyota’s Camry and Tundra.
2) The Pentagon has awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics to develop an air-launch, missile-packed drone. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) handed out the contracts for Phase I design work on the LongShot unmanned air vehicle (UAV). The program is designed to use UAVs to deploy multiple air-to-air weapons. LongShot is part of the effort to allow crewed planes to launch drones from a standoff range away from enemy threats and allow the drones to close the gap and take more effective missile shots. Both the Air Force and the Navy consider that UAVs are the future in attempting to broaden their crewless arsenal both to save U.S. service person lives, and to cut costs. LongShot is likely to be designed in such a way that it can be deployed under the wing of a fighter or from the weapons bay of a bomber, which would extend its range well past whatever amount of fuel the drone is able to carry.
3) SpaceX has just crashed another test rocket, the Starship, which is designed to be 100% reusable, thus drastically dropping the cost of entering space. The Starship flew 10 kilometers up into the air, turned sideways, fell 10 kilometers back down, pivoted again to attempt a vertical landing, but failed to stick the landing. Descending too fast, it touched down more diagonal than vertical, exploding in a ball of flame on impact. However, SpaceX already has a clear solution to the problem by firing three engines in the landing burn instead of two.
4) Stock market closings for – 15 FEB 21:
Dow 31,458.40 up by 27.70
Nasdaq 14,095.47 up by 69.70
S&P 500 3,934.83 up by 18.45
10 Year Yield: up at 1.20%
Oil: up at $60.19