Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, September 6, 2017

The fate of United Technologies Corp.’s proposed $30 billion takeover of avionics and cabin interiors leader Rockwell Collins could rest on savings that the newly enlarged supplier provides to all-important customer Boeing.

BELL-BOEING JPO has $7.7m U.S. Navy contract for Marine Corps MV-22 integrated aircraft survivability equipment and Air Force CV-22 directional infrared countermeasures, advanced mission computer kits, validation/verification kits, delta kits, non-recurring engineering and installation. GENERAL ATOMICS AERONAUTICAL SYSTEMS, INC. formally opened new hangar at Grand Sky Unmanned Aircraft System Business Park near Grand Forks, N.D., Aug. 31.

Command of the International Space Station transitioned from Russia’s Fyodor Yurchkhin to NASA’s Randy Bresnik late Sept. 2, as the veteran cosmonaut, NASA spaceflight record-setter Peggy Whitson and colleague Jack Fischer descended to Earth in remote Kazakhstan. Their Soyuz MS-04 capsule touched down at 9:21 p.m. EDT. Whitson’s extended mission stretched to 288 days, the longest ever for a woman, while her career total over three spaceflights reached 665 days, a record for any American. Three U.S. and Russian replacements are to lift off late Sept.

The U.S. and South Korea have agreed to lift arbitrary restrictions on the range and payload of Seoul’s ballistic missile force.

The Fixed-Wing Utility Aircraft program has been in development since November 2015, intended to replace the U.S. Army’s C-12 Huron and C-26 Metroliner fleets.

A contract awarded on Aug. 31 provides the first two of what will ultimately be 10 CH-53K squadrons.

France’s MQ-9 Reaper medium-altitude, long endurance (MALE) unmanned air vehicles (UAV), thus far used for surveillance purposes, will soon carry air-to-ground weapons.

Selected U.S. military contracts for Aug. 28, 2017. U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY