While the current developing concept of Air-Sea Battle (ASB) has come to mean many things to many people, one key underlying principle is the need to communicate both before and during operations, according to a recent report by the Pentagon ASB Office. “In the ASB Concept, networked actions are tightly coordinated in real time by mission-organized forces to conduct integrated operations across all domains without being locked into service-specific procedures, tactics, or weapons systems,” the office says.
LE BOURGET — AgustaWestland will add a diesel engine to its Project Zero technology incubator program to boost the endurance of the electric vertical-lift aircraft. The off-the-shelf diesel engine purchased from a car manufacturer is now being modified to reduce weight and will be ready for installation into the demonstrator during the coming year.
LE BOURGET — Certification of Eurocopter’s EC175 medium helicopter will be delayed by at least another four months, as the company tries to mature its troubled Helionix avionics system. The company confirmed the delay during the Paris air show. Eurocopter’s head of engineering, Jean-Brice Dumont, told journalists that the European Aviation Safety Agency is now likely to certify the aircraft in early 2014.
ABOARD THE USS ENTERPRISE — The “Queen of the Seas” looked nearly naked without her crown — the upper mast of antennae and other combat accessories normally towering above her flight deck — but her carrier number “65” scrawled out in lights near her shorn top shone as brightly as ever against the dawn. Aircraft carriers are always a beehive of activity — from their gestation days at the Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding yard to the day, like today, when CVN-65 USS Enterprise gets ready to be “deactivated,” or essentially dismantled.
LE BOURGET — The U.K. Royal Navy will operate the Boeing/Insitu ScanEagle UAV from its warships. The service’s contract deal, worth £30 million ($46 million), was announced on June 20 and is the first purchase of a UAV for operation from British naval ships. ScanEagle has been operated from U.K. navy vessels in the past during capability trials.
LE BOURGET — Alenia Aeronautica is preparing for the second phase of flight testing—including the integration of precision-guided munitions—on its palletized MC-27J gunship kit. The concept is driven, in part, by U.S. Air Force interest, though the Italian Air Force also has interest in a C-27J gunship version.
A “discussion draft” of a two-year NASA reauthorization bill drew fire in its originating congressional committee June 19, with Democrats complaining about cuts in Earth Science funding, one Republican leader promising to vote again the bill unless funds are added to a project under way in his district, and two witnesses warning that NASA may have to choose between the International Space Station and human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
LE BOURGET — Raytheon is looking at ways to respond to an urgent U.S. Navy call for a new version of the AIM-9X Sidewinder with greatly increased range, Vice President for Air Warfare Systems Harry Schulte said at the Paris air show June 19. Although the Block II version of the missile is still in operational testing, the Navy wants to get the long-range Block III into developmental testing by 2018, according to budget documents. The Block III “overlaps the range capability” of the AIM-120 Amraam, Schulte says.
LE BOURGET — Diversification into business aviation and defense will let Embraer grow without forcing the company into direct competition with Airbus and Boeing, says President and CEO Frederico Fleury Curado. “The fact that defense can grow to be a solid business...and business aviation to be another important pillar is embedded in our decision not to try to engage in larger commercial aircraft,” he tells Aviation Week in an interview after the company launched its next-generation E-Jet E2.
LE BOURGET — The Italian ministry of defense and Alenia Aermacchi have agreed to jointly define the operational requirements for a jet-powered basic trainer aimed at pilfering market share from turboprop models such as the Beechcraft T-6, Pilatus PC-21 and Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano. The aircraft, called the M-345 High Efficiency Trainer, is the latest attempt by Alenia to find a market for its legacy, unsold M-211 single-engine jet trainer, which was derived from the decades-old SIAI-Marchetti S.211.
REAPER REALIGNMENT: The Pentagon may be scaling back its request for MQ-9 Reapers, but Congress is coming to the aid of the General Atomics UAV, citing industrial base concerns. In a report on a draft version of the House’s fiscal 2014 defense spending bill, appropriators contend that the Air Force is reducing the Reaper buy too quickly — from 48 to 24 in fiscal 2013 — and halving it again to 12 in 2014. If the language is adopted by the full Congress, it would direct the U.S. Air Force to buy eight additional Reapers next year.
LE BOURGET — The four Eurofighter nations have finally signed a deal to integrate MBDA’s Meteor air-to-air missile. The long-awaited signature, at the Paris air show on June 18, means that the Eurofighter consortium can now push ahead with the integration of the new missile onto the aircraft. The deal was signed with the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency (NETMA) in the presence of senior ministers from Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., the partner nations on the program.
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The Pentagon’s acquisition czar said he is “reasonably confident” that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program’s classified cyber systems are “well protected” from Chinese and Russian hacking, but Frank Kendall is “not at all” confident that unclassified information is protected.
LE BOURGET — With Boeing fighting to hang onto its $4.7 billion program to develop secure satellite terminals for the U.S. Air Force, Raytheon is wrapping up work on the initial stage of an alternative terminal development, and is gearing up to conduct an operational test of the system in October.
LE BOURGET — The Lockheed Martin-led consortium developing the Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) is requesting approval from Italy, Germany and the United States—the program’s three partners—to expand the scope of the second and final flight test for the system. Originally, this trial was slated to pit Meads only against a theater ballistic missile (TBM) threat. Meads intercepted an air-breathing target during its first flight test late last year.
LE BOURGET — U.S. aerospace giant Boeing has signed on to market the Brazilian KC-390 aerial refueler and transport, made by Embraer, in selected areas, expanding on a technical agreement signed between the two in the spring of 2012. Boeing will lead sales, marketing, training and sustainment of the KC-390 in the U.S., United Kingdom and two unnamed Middle East countries.
LE BOURGET — Making its world debut at the Paris air show is the Iomax Archangel, an armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft based on a Thrush 710P agricultural aircraft. Iomax is a closely held and secretive company, founded by CEO Ron Howard, a former aviator with the U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Air Regiment, and it previously supplied electronic equipment to private and government clients, Howard said earlier this year in a magazine interview.
LE BOURGET — Alenia Aermacchi and ATK have completed a series of trials involving the roll-on/roll-off palletized gun system envisaged for the MC-27J Spartan gunship. The trials, at Eglin AFB, Fla., saw the aircraft undertake a series of ground and flight trials to prove the installation of the ATK-built GAU-23 30mm cannon in a side-firing configuration from the paratroop door in the rear cabin of the aircraft.
HOUSTON - With eight new candidates, NASA intends to sustain the number of U.S. astronauts at 45 to 55 men and women for the foreseeable future, well down from an all-time high of 139 fliers in 2000, when the agency was launching five to six shuttle missions annually and beginning to continuously staff the International Space Station.
While the U.S. Navy trumpets the money-saving benefits of the multiyear block-buy deals the service made with the contractor teams that are building the two different versions of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a recent draft U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlights potential savings of downselecting to only one LCS class.
