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
LONDON — The British Army Air Corps (AAC) has withdrawn its last helicopters from Germany as the U.K. continues pulling forces out of the country. The final flight took place on Oct. 8, when 1 Regiment, AAC left their base at Gutersloh, Lower Saxony. The unit had been based at Gutersloh since 1993 flying the Westland Lynx and Gazelle helicopters. The Gazelle has since been withdrawn from Germany, leaving only the Lynx to carry out the last sorties in country.
U.S. Army, Navy and Other Procurements: Outyear Funding Decreases 2014-2017. Compares outyear funding estimates from fiscal 2013 request with fiscal 2014 request (then-year dollars in millions, ascending sort on outyear % change, cuts of 20% or greater). Click here to view the pdf
LONDON — Norway wants to purchase an extra six Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) in bid to speed the introduction of the aircraft into the country’s air arm. In its budget proposals for 2014, the Norwegian defense ministry is asking the country’s parliament for the funds to purchase an extra six F-35s for delivery in 2018, in addition to the 10-aircraft buy already approved. Four were ordered back in 2011 and the other six earlier this year. The new order would bring Norway’s purchases so far to 16 aircraft.
SAFELY UNSAFED: NASA’s Jupiter-bound Juno probe exited safe mode Oct. 11, according to a statement from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) of San Antonio, the institutional home to the principal investigator for the $1.1 billion NASA-funded mission to study the atmosphere, origins and evolution of Jupiter. “The spacecraft is currently operating nominally and all systems are fully functional,” SWRI reported. The spacecraft swung by Earth Oct. 9 as part of a gravity assist strategy to reach Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
LONDON — The Romanian government has signed a contract to purchase 12 General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons from Portugal. The sale, worth up to €186 million ($253 million), was finalized on Oct. 11 and will see Lisbon transfer nine former Portuguese air force F-16s and a trio of ex-U.S. Air Force aircraft purchased by Portugal to be upgraded and sold to Romania. The deal was signed by the two governments after authorization for the purchase from the U.S. Congress. Around €78 million has already been transferred to Portugal to begin the transaction.
The U.S. Navy is testing technology on Virginia-class attack submarines that could bring the same kind of situational awareness offered by commercial smart phones to submarine crews. The technology helps fuse Google Earth data and sub-specific computer platform needs to provide the same type of terrestrial awareness people have with smart phones to ship commanders patrolling undersea, as detailed in a recent article in UnderSea Warfare, the official magazine of the U.S. Submarine Force.
The U.S. Army made major cuts in its 2014 outyear spending plan, zeroing funding for 11 lines in its “Other Procurement” account, saving $1.6 billion. The U.S. Navy has made a similar sweep through its “Other” account, which includes many comparatively small-dollar items. (See charts pp. 6-11.) Looking at the outyear spending plans cut by 50% or more, the 2014 budget plan estimates spending at $539 million, down from the $3.3 billion estimated in the 2013 plan.
MOSCOW — The long-delayed retrofitting of the Kiev-class Vikramaditya aircraft carrier (formerly the Russian Admiral Gorshkov) finally seems to be over. The ship “will leave our waters and head for India on November 30,” Russian Vice Premier Dmitry Rogozin promised Oct. 14. The handover ceremony will take place in Severodvinsk—where Vikramaditya was retrofitted—on Nov. 16 during the visit of Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony.
Ad Astra Rocket Co., developers of the Vasimr commercial solar-electric propulsion (SEP) system, is proposing launching a Space Plasma Laboratory (SPL) to the International Space Station that would address fundamental questions of solar physics while flight-qualifying SEP technologies to advance human exploration and take on other deep-space roles.
The christening of the aircraft carrier CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford is still on schedule for Nov. 9, although the U.S. Navy had indefinitely postponed the Oct. 19 ceremony for the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer because of issues related to the federal government shutdown.
Lockheed Martin is designing a fix to address cracks found in one of four primary wing carry-through bulkheads on an F-35B ground-test article that was undergoing durability tests for a second life of service beyond 8,000 flying hours.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Oct. 14 - 16 — 51st Annual SAFE Association Symposium, Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, Reno, Nev. For more information email to [email protected] Oct. 15 - 18 — Homeland Security 2013, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C. For more information go to www.idga.org/events.cfm?filter=1005/
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.
