Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, June 20, 2016

The U.S. Air Force faces growing pressure to competitively select an airframe.

The Norwegian and Polish navies have conducted a series of live firings with the Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile.

The U.S. Navy installed a new AN/SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) in its Advanced Radar Development Evaluation Laboratory (Ardel) at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) off Hawaii earlier this month.

As the U.S. Marine Corps continues to develop its own new large UAV, dubbed “MUX,” the service sees the Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout as a good short-term gap-filler, says Col. John Barranco, the service’s unmanned systems cell lead.

AEROJET ROCKETDYNE achieved full-power during pre-burner test series of AR1 engine (RD-180 replacement) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center earlier this month. FINCANTIERI signed €4b ($4.5b) contract with Qatar for construction of four corvettes over 100 meters in length, one amphibious vessel, two patrol vessels, plus 15 years of support. Construction in Italian shipyards to begin in 2018 and last six years.

Elon Musk is getting some competition on the public stage from fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos and his formerly secretive Blue Origin spaceflight company. On June 15, the Amazon founder pre-empted the latest SpaceX launch with a broadcast e-mail on Blue’s progress with the big BE-4 rocket engine. “We’re making multiple copies of the BE-4 to take us through our development campaign, along with a healthy amount of hardware spares to mitigate schedule and technical risks encountered along the way—a ‘hardware rich’ approach to development,” Bezos wrote.

The aerospace and defense industry may be just now embracing digitization of business practices, but already warning signs are emerging.

NASA’s inspector general has found lingering lapses in the agency’s oversight of long-running ties to dozens of institutes paid to provide expertise on topics ranging from Earth and planetary science to advances in composite materials, astronaut health and solar activity.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (NDAA) passed by the Senate includes language meant “to cut through acquisition red tape and provide more funding flexibility to develop electronic warfare technology,” according to the sponsoring lawmaker.

Forecasting costly and potentially deadly high-energy solar storms could improve with the deployment of small-spacecraft constellations, some experts say.

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