Australia is budgeting a 2.6% inflation-adjusted rise in defense spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1, underpinning a commitment to lift its military budget to 2% of gross domestic product by 2020-21.
The crew of the guided-missile destroyer DDG 51 USS Arleigh Burke recently launched a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) missile off the coast of Virginia, the U.S. Navy says.
The Mexican navy has deployed Arcturus UAV’s T-20 JUMP fixed-wing vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) tactical unmanned aircraft operationally, the manufacturer says.
RAYTHEON has $90m U.S. Air Force contract for AN/DAS-4 Targeting System. UNIVERSAL AVIONICS SYSTEMS CORP. was selected by U.S. Army to provide avionics for Airborne Reconnaissance Low-Enhanced (ARL-E) program. AEROJET ROCKETDYNE has $67m NASA Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) contract to develop, qualify and deliver five 12.5-kw Hall thruster subsystems, including thrusters, Power Processing Units, xenon flow controllers.
House lawmakers are supporting two of the U.S. Air Force’s space-launch wishes – to seed a launch vehicle program and to double the number of Russian rocket engines the service can use. The House Armed Services Committee voted to add $100 million to develop a launch vehicle, upper-stage, strap-on motor or related infrastructure in its draft of a bill to authorize defense spending in fiscal 2017. The bill also includes a provision that will allow the Pentagon to use up to 18 Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines; current law caps the number of engines at nine.
A draft of the fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill would allow the Pentagon to spend a whopping $10.7 billion to buy new equipment and upgrades inside its war accounts.
Significant reductions in the cost and environmental impact of using composites have been achieved under a European research project and are being transitioned to industry.
While the U.S. Missile Defense Agency conducted key flight and ground tests for the Ballistic Missile Defense System in fiscal year 2015, it did not achieve all its testing goals, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says.
Lockheed Martin is introducing an improved version of its Indago quadcopter small UAV for commercial and defense applications at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems’ Xponential show in New Orleans on May 2-5.
Chinese military moves in the Asia-Pacific could prompt the U.S. to alter its nuclear weapons policy for the region, a recent National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) report says.
The Chinese manned space program proposes to land people on the Moon by 2031-36 as a follow-up to the space station that it will begin launching around 2018.
The company said that in light of “additional information gathered during the last 48 hours,” the manufacturer had chosen not to suspend flights “of any nature” for the EC225. The company halted commercial operations of the helicopter following a fatal accident in Norway on April 29.
NASA’s Human Research Program and the agency funded National Space Biomedical Research Institute will pursue 27 study proposals related to health issues facing astronauts assigned to future long-duration deep space missions.
Airbus Helicopters has called for a worldwide halt in commercial operations of its H225/EC225 helicopter in light of a crash in Norway that killed 13 people.
Workers are preparing more than $2 billion worth of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) elements for a rigorous integrated-testing schedule that will continue until shortly before launch in the fall of 2018.
