Gregory Johnson, the newly named president and executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis), hopes the International Space Station (ISS) can be a proving ground for a new type of commercial spaceflight just getting underway.
With the technological developments of current and potential adversaries making it more difficult to gain access into certain maritime areas, the U.S. has to invest as much in tactics as it does in state-of-the art equipment and systems to implement air-sea-battle (ASB) concepts, military leaders say. Successful ASB does not require “totally technical” solutions alone, U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Kevin Killea, director of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, said Oct. 10 during a House Armed Services seapower subcommittee hearing on ASB.
LONDON — Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has begun development of an indigenous helicopter. Details of the work, which began Sept. 6, have only just emerged from Turkey’s Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM). The start of development follows the signing of an agreement with TAI at the end of June.
The Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology that represents the core of the transmitter-receiver (TR) modules underpinning recent radar development was key not only to winning the U.S. Navy’s Air And Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), but also to developing the Air Force’s upcoming Space Surveillance System, Raytheon officials say.
A LEGEND PASSES: Mercury astronaut M. Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit the Earth, died Oct. 10 in Denver of complications following a stroke. He was 88. A naval aviator during the Korean War who went on to become a test pilot, Carpenter conducted some of the first scientific experiments in space and ate some of the first solid food consumed there. His sole spaceflight — three orbits over five hours on May 24, 1962 — ended 250 mi.
The U.S. government shutdown has claimed another victim — the christening of the DDG-1000 USS Zumwalt-class destroyer. “It is incredibly unfortunate that we are being forced to cancel the christening ceremony for this great warship,” says Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. “But the ongoing government shutdown prevents us from being able to honor Admiral Zumwalt’s memory with a ceremony befitting his and his family’s legacy of service to our nation and our navy.”
L’Garde Inc., prime contractor for NASA’s Sunjammer solar sail mission, has successfully executed a partial ground deployment of the mechanisms that comprise the centerpiece of the deep-space propulsion demonstrator. Sunjammer, a $27 million NASA Science and Technology Mission Directorate initiative, is tentatively scheduled for a January 2015 liftoff as a secondary payload aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Deep Space Climate Observatory (Discovr) launch.
The European Defense Agency (EDA) is preparing for a second series of manned test flights of a sense-and-avoid (S&A) system under development to allow unmanned aircraft to operate in unrestricted airspace. The system is being developed under the four-year Mid-air Collision Avoidance System (MidCAS) program, which ends in 2014, by a consortium of 13 companies from five European nations, including Saab, Alenia Aermacchi, EADS Cassidian, Indra, Selex and Thales.
Two U.S. Army command systems and the Navy’s Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (Surtass) lead the list of a dozen budget lines in the services’ “Other procurement” accounts with outyear spending plans that are doubled or more compared to what the Pentagon had estimated just a year ago. (See charts pp. 6-10.) For example, the 2014 request for Surtass is $10 million, five times the estimate in the 2013 spending plan. The total for the fiscal years 2014-2017 is $31 million, three times the 2013 estimate.
Click here to view the pdf U.S. Army, Navy Other Procurement: Outyear Funding Increases 2014-2017Compares Outyear Funding Estimates from Fiscal 2013 Request With Fiscal 2014 Request Then-year dollars in millions. Descending sort on Outyear %change. U.S.
LONDON — AgustaWestland has flown the first production AW189 helicopter in Italy. The eight-ton aircraft — ultimately destined for launch customer Bristow — took to the air at the company’s Vergiate facility on Oct. 10. The aircraft is still pending type certification, which is expected soon following what the company called a “milestone” AW189 board meeting held in Germany in late September.
The Afghan Air Force (AAF) has taken delivery of its first two C-130 Hercules aircraft as the fledgling air arm rebuilds its airlift capability. Afghanistan becomes the 70th country to operate the C-130 following the formal delivery of the two former U.S. Air Force aircraft on Oct. 9 at Kabul International Airport. The air arm is due to take delivery of another two C-130Hs in 2014.
Engineers at Lockheed Martin and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are downloading data from NASA’s Juno probe after the $1.1 billion spacecraft put itself into safe mode during a close Earth flyby designed to sling it toward Jupiter.
The head of Boeing’s defense and space unit thinks the true negative effects of sequestration on the aerospace and defense industry have yet to be felt, and will only get worse over time.
In what senior Obama administration officials call a “recalibration” of the relationship between Washington and Cairo, the White House is halting deliveries of Boeing Apache attack helicopters and Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Egypt and maintaining an earlier hold on the country’s orders of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 52s. Also on hold are deliveries of M1A1 tanks made by General Dynamics.
PARIS — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced the appointment of Deputy Defense Minister Oleg Ostapenko to replace Vladimir Popovkin as head of Russian space agency Roscosmos. The Oct. 10 announcement comes as Moscow reviews proposals to centralize oversight of its space industry in an effort to curb government waste and restore confidence in the nation’s space program following a spate of spacecraft and launch vehicle failures in recent years (AWIN First, Oct. 9).
CARTER DEPARTS: Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter will step down on Dec. 4, leaving the Pentagon after four and a half years. Carter left Harvard at the start of President Barack Obama’s first term to serve as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official under Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In 2011, he was promoted to become the second-highest ranking civilian in the Defense Department under Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. In a statement, his third boss, Chuck Hagel, says Carter will help ensure a smooth transition: “The Department will miss him. I will miss him.”
