Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, June 27, 2016

The U.K.’s aerospace and defense industry has been left reeling after voters elected to ditch membership in the European Union.

U.S. Air Force officials announced fives bases as candidates for the next round of active duty-led KC-46A Pegasus basing June 23: Dover AFB, Delaware; Fairchild AFB, Washington; Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota; Travis AFB, California; and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. Air Mobility Command will soon conduct site surveys and develop cost estimates for each choice. Air Force leaders then will select preferred and reasonable alternatives for the operating location. The Air Force plans to announce the second active duty-led KC-46A preferred alternative by the end of 2016.

U.S. Air Force officials announced fives bases as candidates for the next round of active duty-led KC-46A Pegasus basing June 23: Dover AFB, Delaware; Fairchild AFB, Washington; Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota; Travis AFB, California; and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. Air Mobility Command will soon conduct site surveys and develop cost estimates for each choice. Air Force leaders then will select preferred and reasonable alternatives for the operating location. The Air Force plans to announce the second active duty-led KC-46A preferred alternative by the end of 2016.

The head of U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command has renewed his commitment to fielding an AC-130 “mini arsenal plane” equipped with a high-energy laser by the turn of the decade.

The Team Spartan joint venture proposing the Italian-built Leonardo C-27J to replace Canada’s outdated Lockheed Martin C-130 and de Havilland DHC-5 Buffalo search-and-rescue fleets has proposed Comox, British Columbia, as its aircrew and maintainer training hub.

NASA has awarded the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) a five-year, $196.3 million contract extension for operations of the 26-year-old Hubble Space Telescope (HST) through the Space Telescope Science Institute of Baltimore.

Airbus Defense and Space is pushing ahead with the development of an automated refueling system to reduce the workload of boom operators on its A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT).

The U.S. Marine Corps sees mobile ground laser systems as a promising short-term technology for countering UAS threats and plans to develop the weapons over the long term to take out rockets, artillery and missiles, a high-ranking Marine says.

View the U.S. Navy Spending-Maritime Aircraft: FY15-FY17 ($K) chart in PDF format.

To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. For a complete list of Aviation Week Network’s upcoming events, and to register, visit www.aviationweek.com/events (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) July 13—Commercial Aerospace Manufacturing Briefing (CAMB), co-located with the Farnborough International Airshow, Farnborough, U.K. For more information go to www.awin.aviationweek.com/events