The Pentagon is continuing to keep BAE’s work crafting an alternate F-35 helmet on the side burner, though program officials indicate they are lining up in support of fixes designed to improve the performance of the primary helmet manufactured by Vision Systems International. F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan has not, however, taken the step to sole-source the work to VSI, a joint venture of Rockwell Collins and Elbit, in hopes that even the specter of competition will drive down the helmet’s cost.
Aviation Week 2013 Military Fleet & MRO Forecast! The MRO Fleet, Forecasts and Data you need to accurately plan and strategize for the future. See for yourself with a free demonstration: AviationWeek.com/FleetMRO Aviation Week Intelligence Network Click here to view the pdf
U.S. military weapons systems and services acquisition will be slashed this decade across the armed services if the full effect of the 2011 budget law and its annual, widespread automatic budget cuts occur – as now expected.
AV-8 SUPPORT: The Boeing Co. has been awarded $16,497,835 for a delivery order under a previously issued contract to repair various parts in support of the AV-8 aircraft, the U.S. Navy announced Sept. 18. The work will be performed in St. Louis and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2015. Fiscal 2013 Navy working capital funds of $8,248,917 will be obligated at the time of award. The Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support, Philadelphia, is the contracting activity.
WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, Va. – Orbital Sciences Corp. has enough hardware on hand for the 10 commercial cargo missions it has contracted with NASA, and is already looking ahead to the day when it runs out of the surplus Soviet-era Russian engines it uses to power its new Antares launch vehicle.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Norman Polmar, a defense analyst and noted author of numerous books on naval matters, are trading barbs over the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. “I take strong exception to your rebuttal of my critique of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program, as ‘published’ by Fox On Line,” Polmar says in a Sept. 5 email to Mabus recently released by the author, whose work includes “The Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet,” considered by many to be the informational bible of the nation’s naval force.
The Netherlands has finally decided to purchase the Joint Strike Fighter, but will buy fewer than half the number it originally envisioned. The Hague says it will now purchase 37 of the 85 Lockheed Martin F-35s it had intended to purchase when it first signed up with the program in 2002. It based the decision on the need to remain within the tight €4.5 billion ($6 billion) budget assigned for its F-16 Fighting Falcon replacement program and the €270 million annual operations budget for fighter types in the service’s inventory.
Russia is strengthening its presence in the Arctic Ocean in order to protect natural resources on its part of the Arctic Shelf and the Northern Sea Route.
Click here to view the pdf U.S. Navy Aircraft Procurement: Outyear Funding Shifts, 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.
Sierra Nevada is conducting flight readiness reviews for the first drop test of the Dream Chaser lifting body at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards AFB, Calif., amid wider preparations for the company’s first Commercial Crew critical design review (CDR).
LCS MODULES: The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman a $25.2 million contract for three additional Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) mission modules — two for surface warfare missions and one for mine countermeasures. Each mission package comprises a specific set of subsystems such as data processing equipment, vehicles and sensors, and others. Northrop Grumman has delivered two surface warfare mission modules and one mine countermeasures mission module for LCS so far.
While the U.S. Navy brass has been trumpeting the Chinese naval participation in the upcoming 2014 Pacifica Rim (Rimpac) exercises, others question the benefits of working so closely with a potential geopolitical maritime rival such as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (Plan). “The Plan’s potential participation at Rimpac near Hawaii has raised concerns in Congress and elsewhere,” says a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, “U.S.-China Military Contacts: Issues for Congress.”
The U.S. Air Force has been supporting development of the Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) with risk-reduction contracts in five key areas, the service’s former senior acquisition officer said at the Air Force Association show here Tuesday. Like other details of the program, the contracts have not been disclosed publicly.
The way to ensure the viability of the industrial base that makes U.S. defense procurement possible is to determine now what is most important to preserve for the future and start planning to achieve that objective, a defense scholar argues.
Aviation Week A&D Programs Aerospace & Defense Programs November 13-14, 2013 Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa, Phoenix, Ariz. Strategic Priorities in a Sequestration Era. Learn which programs are being affected and where government is likely to place its bets. Register Today www.aviationweek.com/events/adp
The cost of maintaining the U.S. Air Force’s aging T-38 fast jet trainer increases “steeply” in the outyears, but Air Force Gen. Edward Rice, who leads the training command, says the fleet is safe. The aging T-38 will remain in the fleet for an uncertain amount of time due to repeated delays in launching a replacement program called T-X. Rice says it is not yet known if the T-X effort will get support from the Air Force in its fiscal 2015 budget, which is being refined this fall. Delays have pushed the initial operational capability to around 2023.
Conditions are good for the first flight to the International Space Station of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket with a Cygnus commercial cargo carrier, which would give NASA two ways to resupply station crews with food, clothing and hardware.
Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the competitors proposing capsule-based concepts for NASA’s Commercial Crew program, are approaching an intense period of key test and development milestones, made busier by new targets added by the space agency.
Click here to view the pdf U.S. Navy Weapons Procurement: Outyear Funding Shifts, 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.
NASA’s Mission Control Center has successfully carried out a communications software verification test with its first prospective U.S. commercial crew transport, Boeing’s seven-person CST-100 spacecraft. The company’s collaboration with NASA for CST-100 mission planning, training and flight operations under a reimbursable Space Act Agreement began under the second phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in 2011-12.
