Swiss Space Systems (S3), a new commercial space company based in Payerne, Switzerland, will use the planned Colorado spaceport near Denver as the North American base for its air-launched Soar suborbital spaceplane. Under a preliminary agreement announced Oct. 8, Spaceport Colorado will be the U.S. home to S3’s converted A300, which will conduct dorsal launches of the Soar to deliver small satellites to orbit.
Just as the Pentagon, U.S. intelligence community and their panoply of contractors were beginning to figure out how to live under long-term budget cuts known as sequestration, now come growing fears that sequestration spending levels will be the ceiling, and not floor, for future spending.
STAYING COURSE: Many House Republicans who have supported allowing the government to shut down are continuing to hold fast, saying shutdowns and not raising the debt ceiling are not insurmountable. “No question, a government shutdown hampers the economy,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama’s defense and aerospace-heavy northern congressional district. But there were 17 shutdowns between 1976 and 1995, yet the economy boomed in the 1980s and 1990s, he added. “No question, not raising the debt ceiling poses economic risk,” he said Oct. 7.
Canada has begun “gathering data” on options to replace its Sikorsky CH-124 Sea King maritime helicopters as protracted negotiations continue with Sikorsky on its troubled CH-148 Cyclone program. On Oct. 3, officials from the Department of National Defense (DND) and Public Works & Government Services Canada (PWGSC) procurement agency “met with AgustaWestland, Eurocopter and Sikorsky to obtain their views on the elements that should be included in the data-gathering process,” PWGSC says.
Officials at NASA’s Ames Research Center triggered a scientists’ boycott of a conference on the search for exoplanets with an inaccurate characterization of federal law governing access by Chinese nationals to NASA facilities, according to the lawmaker who wrote the law.
Cluster munitions still play a significant role in U.S. military doctrine, and the costs of either keeping or getting rid of them, combined with the lack of a big-player endorsement for dispensing with the controversial munitions, may continue to sideline de-armament efforts for now.
The stage is set for a planned increase in U.S. Marine Corps deployments to Darwin, Australia, next spring as part of the U.S. shift of greater military resources to the Asia-Pacific. The second successful rotation of about 250 Marines left the region in September, about the same that Tony Abbott, who was sworn in last week as Australia’s new prime minister, confirmed the commitment of the two countries to a rotational 2,500-member Marine Corps force starting in 2016-2017.
LOS ANGELES — Test pilots pushing Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) toward a planned suborbital space flight in the coming months report the vehicle is rugged and stable, without any of the potential transonic flutter issues that could have bedeviled the design.
LONDON — The Thales WK450 Watchkeeper unmanned aircraft system (UAS) has moved another step closer to operational service with the British army after receiving certification from the U.K. Military Aviation Authority (MAA). The company announced on Oct. 7 that it had received a Statement of Type Design Assurance (STDA), a document which states that the system has now reached “an acceptable level for design safety and integrity” to meet the current stage of the system’s development.
LONDON — Argentina looks set to purchase 16 Dassault Mirage F1s from Spain in a bid to modernize its fast jet fleet. In its budgetary submissions for 2014, set out at the end of September, Buenos Aires plans to spend $217 million on the purchase of the Mirage F1s, which were taken out of service with the Spanish air force in June. The Mirage F1s will replace Argentina’s aging Mirage IIIs and 5s, which have served the country for more than 30 years and took part in the Falklands War in the South Atlantic against U.K. forces.
LADEE ARRIVES: NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) has reached lunar orbit, one month after lifting off from Wallops Island, Va., on a Minotaur V solid-fuel rocket. Operated by a skeleton crew at Ames Research Center during the federal government shutdown, the 884-lb. orbiter fired its main engine early October 6 to enter an elliptical orbit. The orbit’s apogee will be lowered with subsequent burns to move the spacecraft into its commissioning orbit at 124-186 mi., where it will spend 40 days.
LONDON — The New Zealand government has selected MBDA’s Sea Ceptor surface-to-air missile system for its Anzac frigate upgrade program. MBDA is the preferred bidder for the Local Area Air Defense (LAAD) system that will be fitted to the New Zealand navy’s frigates HMNZ Te Kaha and Te Mana as part of the country’s Anzac Frigate Systems Upgrade (FSU) project.
Pentagon officials announced Oct. 5 that the Obama administration’s interpretation of the Pay Our Military Act (POMA) allows wide latitude in recalling more than 90% of non-uniformed employees otherwise sidelined by the federal shutdown.
As the U.S. Navy starts to demand even more access in tougher undersea environments, contractors are honing sonar technology they say will give the service the same speed and fidelity for minehunting that it now enjoys for antisubmarine (ASW) operations. “We are compressing the timeline,” says Joe Monti, Raytheon’s Airborne Low-Frequency Sonar (ALFS) program director. The effort is to make countermine warfare missions similar to “highly integrated, quick-action ASW” operations, he says. “That’s where we and our partners want to go.”
NASA has exempted the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) mission preparations from the federal government shutdown, primarily because the orbiter will be needed as a communications relay for the two rovers operating on the planet’s surface. Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder said in a post on the mission website that the agency “has analyzed the Maven mission relative to the Anti-Deficiency Act and determined that it meets the requirements allowing an emergency exception.”
Four teams competing to build advanced-rotorcraft demonstrators for the U.S. Army have each been awarded $6.5 million of government funding toward completing preliminary design of their aircraft, the service reveals—but only two teams will be selected to flight-test their designs.
As the nation continues its Afghanistan withdrawal, the U.S. Defense Department is focusing its efforts on the logistics of retrieving equipment, successful counternarcotics operations and ensuring proper contracting procedures, a recent Pentagon report says. “Along with the withdrawal of military personnel is the complex withdrawal of DoD (Defense Department) equipment,” the Pentagon says in its report, “Fiscal Year 2014 Comprehensive Oversight Plan for Southwest Asia,” released Sept. 30 by the Pentagon’s Inspector General.
The U.S. pivot to the Pacific advanced this week with a security agreement between the U.S. and Japan that will bring U.S. Global Hawk UAVs, MV-22 Ospreys and, eventually, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Japan. Along with that, the two governments pledged to continue and in some cases expand their cooperation on space, cyberspace and missile defense, announcing that a second AN/TPY-2 radar system would be housed at the Air Self-Defense Force base at Kyogamisaki.
Thousands of aerospace workers could find themselves temporarily out of work if the U.S. government shutdown continues. Sikorsky Aircraft, which produces the UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopter, plans to furlough 2,000 workers at three plants on Oct. 7 due to the absence of Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) inspectors who audit and approve the manufacturing of military products. Sikorsky parent United Technologies warns that another 2,000 workers could be furloughed from its Pratt & Whitney and Aerospace units.
