PARIS — Arianespace will loft the Eutelsat 25B and Indian G-Sat 7 satellites together on an Ariane 5 by the end of August, following the launch of Europe’s Alphasat I-XL and India’s Insat 3D atop the heavy-lift rocket July 25. The missions will mark the third and fourth of a planned five Ariane 5 launches in 2013, says Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel, who took the helm of the European launch consortium in April.
LONDON — The U.K. defense ministry has purchased a sixth Shadow R1 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. The purchase of the aircraft, a derivative of the Beechcraft King Air 350ER, was revealed in a written answer to a Parliamentary question on July 4 about the values of aircraft fleets operated by the U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF).
Just months after Adm. Jonathan Greenert, U.S. chief of naval operations, said the Chinese anti-ship-ballistic-missile (ASBM) development “hasn’t affected the way we operate” in the Asia-Pacific, a new report says ASBM deployment is on the horizon and could affect not only regional U.S. operations but also geopolitical relationships in that part of the world.
NEW DELHI — The Indian space agency’s Mars Orbiter Mission is on target to lift off in the third week of October. “The Mars mission is getting ready at our Satellite Centre in Bengaluru [in southern India],” says Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan. “We are planning to start stacking [the launch vehicle] from July 29, and the launch will be any day from Oct. 21 from the spaceport at Sriharikota.” Following the launch, the mission is expected to take eight months to reach Mars.
The potential for a protest is looming as the losing bidders react to the U.S. Navy’s decision to award Raytheon a contract to begin development of the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) pod to be carried by Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic-attack aircraft.
Bucking their Republican counterparts and the Obama White House, Democrats on the House Science Committee are offering an “alternative” NASA reauthorization that sets a 15-year goal of landing humans on Mars.
Click here to view the pdf 2014 U.S. Defense Markup: Changes To U.S. Navy Procurement RequestBy House And Senate Authorizers, House Appropriators (Sorted By Acct., Line Number; $ In Thousands) 2014 U.S. Defense Markup: Changes To U.S.
As the Pentagon this week begins to furlough civilian employees, including its embattled acquisition workforce, now comes a new internal report blaming most of the Defense Department’s epic acquisition mistakes and overruns on poor management and lack of workforce skills. Nevertheless, the June 28 report, titled “Performance of the Defense Acquisition System,” found that “a lot of the things we thought were important may not be as important as we believed,” according to defense acquisition czar Frank Kendall.
NEW DELHI — India has raised doubts regarding the launch of its second robotic lunar mission — Chandrayaan II — due to development delays with its Russian-furnished lander. Due to launch next year, Chandraayan II will include an unmanned orbiter, a lander supplied by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and a rover to be developed by India for in-situ scientific exploration of the lunar surface.
With the U.S. Army showing interest in high-speed rotorcraft to eventually replace its current helicopter fleets, the service’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) is seeking proposals for advanced rotors and control systems.
The U.S Army is planning to demonstrate the avionics architecture proposed for its Future Vertical Lift (FVL) family of advanced rotorcraft. The proof-of-concept demonstration in late 2014 with an initial, partial version of the Joint Common Architecture (JCA) is intended to show whether it delivers the software reusability required to meet targets for reduced costs and timescales for development and upgrades.
NEXT-GEN JAMMER: Raytheon has been selected to develop the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) pod to replace the ALQ-99 tactical jamming system now carried by U.S Navy Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic-attack aircraft. The company has been awarded a $279.4 million contract for the 22-month technology development phase of the program. NGJ is planned to become operational in 2020. Under the TD phase, Raytheon will “design and build critical technologies that will be the foundational blocks of NGJ,” says Naval Air Systems Command.
Telespazio has been awarded a €216 million ($277 million) contract by the European Satellite Service Provider, ESSP SAS, as part of the European Union’s Egnos satellite navigation overlay program.
French defense procurement agency DGA successfully completed the first qualification firing of the new MdCN (Missile de Croisiere Naval) naval cruise missile July 1 at the Biscarrosse test range in southwestern France. The test, which marks the fifth flight trial of the MdCN since DGA awarded the contract to missile-maker MBDA in late 2006, was representative of the missile launching from a frigate. It follows successful completion of the first launch of the MdCN in its submarine configuration in October of last year.
LONDON — The U.K. Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force are working on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will give the U.K. access to tankers equipped with refueling booms to support its fleet of RC-135 Rivet Joint intelligence-gathering aircraft. Officers close to the Airseeker program, which will cover the procurement of three Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joints, tell Aviation Week they hope to have the MOU in place by the end of this year when the first RAF Rivet Joint arrives in the U.K.
The Pentagon’s multi-billion-dollar missile defense shield has failed for the third time in nearly five years to intercept a target missile, marking the latest disappointment in a string of lackluster flight test results since the last successful intercept test in December 2008.
Making good on its plans to maintain its Middle East presence, the U.S. has added three more ships to the 5th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR). The coastal patrol (PC) ships PC-2 USS Tempest, PC-7 USS Squall and PC-12 USS Thunderbolt arrived pierside in Bahrain earlier this month as part of a realignment that will see a total of eight PCs permanently stationed in the U.S. PC-3 USS Hurricane and PC-4 USS Monsoon will complete the Navy’s plan to station 10 PCs in Bahrain by spring of 2014.
TOKYO — South Korea will have a homogenous force of 16 upgraded Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion maritime aircraft by 2018 under an L-3 and Korean Air Lines program to refit eight aircraft that remain unmodernized. Separately, the South Korean navy is seeking 20 more maritime aircraft, which would considerably augment its anti-submarine capability.
Taking its lead from prior programs that helped establish the U.S. as a leader in silicon and gallium arsenide integrated circuits for high-speed processors and active-array radars, the U.S. Air Force has launched a program to develop advanced electronic and photonic components for future electronic warfare (EW) systems.
