The U.S. is underscoring its increased focus on the Asia-Pacific with regional exercises and operations. U.S. forces ended August and started this month with exercises in Australia and Singapore, and a combined American-Australian force recently worked together to recover the live ordnance emergency-jettisoned by two AV-8B Harriers in the South Pacific.
NAVY Lockheed Martin Corp., Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando, Fla., is being awarded a $33,996,000 firm-fixed-price contract for AN/AAQ-30 Target Sight Systems (TSS) and data. The TSS will be integrated into the AH-1Z Cobra Attack Helicopter and is part of the United States Marine Corps H-1 Upgrades Program for the remanufacture of legacy aircraft with state of the art designs incorporated into the existing fleet of AH-1Ws, converting them to AH-1Z. AIR FORCE
LONDON — The U.K. Royal Air Force has deployed Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Cyprus to defend Sovereign Base Areas on the island. Six Typhoons arrived at RAF Akrotiri on the island on Aug. 29, within hours of a Parliamentary debate on possible action against government forces in Syria accused of a chemical weapon attack in the country’s capital of Damascus last week.
DRIVER’s SEAT: NASA supporters may not like the limited funding being proposed by the Republicans who control the House, but space fans would be wise to study them, according to an ex-official of the embattled agency. Scott Pace, a former NASA associate administrator, says that by at least marking up their annual spending bill and a new NASA authorization bill within the constraints of spending limits mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, House Republicans have put themselves in the driver’s seat.
While China says it still seeks peaceful resolutions to the territorial maritime disputes it is embroiled in with some of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific, the country still wants the debates to take into account China’s “historical” perspective, says Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan. Such a perspective could be a significant hurdle, some regional geopolitical analysts say. Many of the disputes pit China’s historical claims against more accepted, modern-era international maritime limits.
LONDON — An offshore safety committee that called for the grounding of all variants of the Super Puma helicopter following the loss of a CHC-operated aircraft in the Shetland Islands has lifted the suspension. The Helicopter Safety Steering Group (HSSG) came to the decision following a two-day meeting of helicopter operators, trade unions and regulators in Aberdeen, Scotland, on Aug. 29.
The U.S. Navy can not afford further delays in the design, construction and delivery of its SSBN Ohio-class nuclear-missile submarines, says Rear Adm. Richard Breckenridge, director of Undersea Warfare. The coming year is critical to keeping that schedule, he says. “By all rights, we should have delivered a replacement Ohio class in 2011 but Ohio replacement will submerge on its first patrol in 2031,” Breckenridge says. “We have extended recapitalization, and thus avoiding cost, by 20 years. Each SSBN generation requires special, national attention.”
LONDON — The U.K.’s Joint Helicopter Command is considering basing options for its enlarged fleet of Boeing CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters. The Royal Air Force’s 46-strong fleet of Chinooks is currently based at RAF Odiham, Hampshire, but the air arm will soon be taking delivery of an extra 14 Chinooks in the Mk. 6 configuration currently being built by Boeing in Philadelphia. But the base at Odiham does not currently have the facilities to cater for 60 Chinooks, so commanders are exploring alternative options.
In observance of the U.S. Labor Day holiday, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not publish an issue on Sept. 3. Subscribers to the Aviation Week Intelligence Network can visit www.aviationweek.com/awin for continuous updates.
The Pentagon has added $12 million to its 2014 spending plans to equip its Boeing 737-based C-40s with a fuel-tank inerting system, the same upgrade mandated for U.S. operators of Boeing commercial aircraft. The 2013 spending plan anticipated spending about $1 million more than fiscal 2014-17 for various required modifications. In the fiscal 2014 request, the figure jumped $6.1 million for 2014 and another $6 million for the outyear estimates through fiscal 2017.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) sept. 9 - 11 — Aviation Week NextGen Ahead: Air Transportation Modernization Conference, "Re-Defining NextGen," The Dupont Circle Hotel, Washington, D.C. For more information go to www.aviationweek.com/events
COPEHILL DOWN, U.K. — The U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) is rapidly building up its fleet of modernized CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters upgraded through the £290 million ($450 million) Project Julius program. Sixteen of the RAF’s 38 Chinook Mk. 2 helicopters have now been updated to the Mk. 4 standard and the first aircraft will shortly be deployed to join the U.K.’s Joint Helicopter Force operating from Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Several Mk. 4s are already in-theater, having arrived in December 2012 to support special forces operations.
LONDON — U.K. air crash investigators have salvaged the voice and flight data recorder from a CHC-operated Eurocopter AS332L2 Super Puma that crashed near the Shetland Islands on Aug. 23. Investigators have been using sonar to try to locate the recorder, housed in the tail boom section of the aircraft, which crashed on approach to Sumburgh airport while returning from the drilling platform Borgsten Dolphin on behalf of oil company Total.
NEW DELHI — India expects to make another attempt to launch the GSAT-14 communications satellite aboard its Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in December, a senior space scientist says. Plans to loft GSLV-D5 were scrubbed on Aug. 19 just hours before the scheduled liftoff from the launch pad in south India, due to a fuel leak in the second stage of the rocket engine.
Despite a call for budget cuts, the U.S. intelligence community’s budget for fiscal 2013 was $52.6 billion, and placed a high priority on certain major acquisition programs. That classified request to Congress was a reduction of $1.3 billion from the previous year, a start toward saving $15 billion by 2017 and $25 billion over the decade, according to a report by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that was leaked to the Washington Post by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
New findings from India’s 2008-09 Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter mission point to an internal source of water on the Moon detected in magmatic deposits at an equatorial crater peak, according to NASA-funded research led by scientists from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
