LONDON – Two Italian air force instructors have completed their training on the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 in the first step to introducing the aircraft into service. The two pilots from the 61st Wing completed their training with Alenia Aermacchi instructors at Lecce-Galatina airbase in the south of the country, home to the Italian air force’s training wing.
LONDON – AirTanker, the consortium charged with the operation of the U.K. Royal Air Force’s (RAF) aerial tanker force, has taken delivery of its 10th aircraft.
NEW DELHI—India is working to develop higher-capability communication satellites to meet the country’s growing requirements, a senior space scientist says. The country’s space agency is in the process of “developing various technologies and finding a suitable foreign industrial alliance to acquire the latest satellite platforms and payload technologies to upgrade its current satellite platforms,” Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan says.
Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding division marked a major milestone this month in the refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier CVN 72 USS Abraham Lincoln, with the installation of the final section of the ship’s main mast.
While the U.S. is still trying to figure out how to fund the Ohio-class ballistic submarine replacement, there is little doubt the whole industrial submarine force will be needed to do the job, according to Michael Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), which owns one of the two shipyards capable of building the vessels.
Astronomers, planetary scientists and spacecraft operators are working together to take maximum advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe an Oort Cloud comet as it hurtles past Mars on Oct. 19.
All six civil unmanned aircraft test sites selected by the FAA in December are now operational, and the agency is soliciting proposals from university teams to establish a center of excellence that will study issues critical to the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into national airspace. The Griffiss International Airport test site in Rome, New York, was declared operational on Aug. 7, followed on Aug. 13 by the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP), led by Virginia Tech with test ranges in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.
LOS ANGELES — Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are working through a final series of tests and development milestones as NASA’s final decision looms on which team will build systems to transport crews to the International Space Station.
DARPA DEALS: The Defense Department Inspector General released a report on Aug. 13 concluding that former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) Director Regina Dugan violated ethics rules when she “created potential business opportunities” for a company she had previously founded, RedXDefense, while heading the agency. However, according to the redacted report, dated April 9, 2013, the IG “found no evidence that Dr.
NEW DELHI – The U.S. has become India’s largest defense supplier in the past three fiscal years in terms of money spent, eclipsing traditional #1 arms supplier Russia, according to statistics revealed by Defense Minister Arun Jaitley on Aug. 12 in parliament. The U.S. has secured 40% of the money spent by India on defense imports in the past three years, followed by Russia with 30% and France with 14%. Israel, which used to be among the top two, has slipped to fourth place with 4%.
VANDENBERG AFB, California — DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3, the most sophisticated super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite yet developed, has been placed in a polar low Earth orbit following its successful launch here Aug. 13.
The U.S. Navy needs to hone its work in the electromagnetic spectrum, says Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. “Control of the information is going to be the key to the future,” Greenert said earlier this month at a change-of-command ceremony as Rear Adm. David Lewis relieved Rear Adm. Patrick Brady as commander of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (Spawar).
HOUSTON – The bold proposal by the U.S. nonprofit Inspiration Mars for a 501-day human flyby mission of the Red Planet might be eclipsed by the even bolder Mars Plus, a European concept that would incorporate 3-D printing technologies for the inflight construction of a surface habitat for two astronauts.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The U.S. Air Force has yet to turn on the sensors for its new – and until recently classified – set of space surveillance satellites launched last month.
LONDON — The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says it will consider making changes to the certification standards governing the maximum weight of helicopters. The regulator made the decision in response to comments to a Federal Register notice on the possible restructuring of rotorcraft airworthiness standards posted back in February 2013.
Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky/Boeing have been selected to build high-speed rotorcraft technology demonstrators for the U.S. Army. Both aircraft are scheduled to fly in 2017. Bell will build the 280-kt. V-280 Valor tiltrotor and Sikorsky/Boeing the 230 kt.-plus SB.1 Defiant rigid coaxial-rotor compound helicopter under the $217 million first phase of the Joint Multi Role technology demonstration (JMR TD).
Michael Gass, first CEO of the U.S. military launch monopoly United Launch Alliance (ULA), will retire from the company at year’s end, just as it faces a potential competition for work with upstart Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).
SOLAR PROBE: Northrop Grumman has won a $3 million NASA contract to provide a key piece of navigation gear for the agency’s 2018 Solar Probe Plus mission to image and take in-situ measurements of the Sun’s corona. Under the competitively bid contract, the company will deliver a Scalable Space Inertial Reference Unit, or Scalable SIRU, in May 2016. The device is designed to measure rotation-rate data for the systems that stabilize and point the spacecraft.
LONDON – The first A400M airlifter for the U.K. Royal Air Force has moved under its own power as preparations begin for its first flight. Taxi trials of the first of 22 RAF aircraft, MSN15, took place on Aug. 10, manufacturer Airbus Defense and Space said in an Aug. 10 press release. The tests will pave the way for a first flight in the coming weeks in readiness for delivery in September.
LOGAN, Utah – Big players are starting to take notice of the capabilities that small satellites can provide, and they’re putting significant skin in the game.
Japan’s ATD-X fighter technology demonstrator is due to fly in January 2015, confirming that the program is holding to its latest schedule. The aircraft, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the defense ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute, will be handed over to the ministry by the end of March, says the Mainichi newspaper, reporting the plan for the first flight.
LONDON – Bristow says plans for the company to take on the U.K.’s search-and-rescue helicopter capability are “on schedule and on budget.” In revealing the helicopter operator’s first-quarter results Aug. 4 in Houston, Jonathan Baliff, Bristow’s new president and CEO, told analysts that construction work on two new bases at Inverness and Humberside airports was already well underway and that both would be operational in the first quarter of 2015, with other bases at eight other locations around the U.K. following later.
