FOURTH ESTATE: Making good on promises to trim the “fourth estate” of offices, staff and services outside the three branches of the military, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has announced a 20% reduction in funding for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff and the Military Service Headquarters over fiscal 2015-19, amounting to an estimated $1.5-2 billion in savings.
Despite the effects of sequestration and continuing budget resolutions, the U.S. Navy brass feels it is anchored securely when it comes to ships, aircraft and other platforms. What the service is looking to develop now is better command-and-control capability. “We’ve got the platforms,” says Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. “What do we need? It is command-and-control, [including] the organization and the staff. That’s what we’ve got to work on,” he said July 11 during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.
The kill vehicle failed to separate from the third stage of a Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) during the failed July 5 flight test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, preventing the GBI from destroying its target, says Missile Defense Agency Director Vice Adm. James Syring.
The U.S. Navy is planning to loft its second in a series of next-generation narrowband communications satellites on Friday, July 19. The United Launch Alliance Atlas V is slated to boost the second Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) spacecraft during a 44-min. launch window that opens at 8:48 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral. The launch vehicle is an Atlas V 551, meaning it will use a 5-meter fairing and five strap-on, solid-rocket boosters.
AEHF CHECKOUT: Technicians at Cape Canaveral will spend the next several months preparing the third Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF-3) military communications satellite, after the U.S. Air Force and manufacturer Lockheed Martin Space Systems delivered it with a C-5 Galaxy flying out of Travis AFB, Calif. Launch from Complex 41 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V is scheduled for this fall.
Democratic-led appropriators in the Senate are on a collision course with counterparts in the Republican-controlled House over spending for NASA, with the Senate Appropriations Committee this week set to approve $18 billion for next fiscal year for the space and aeronautics agency.
The U.S. Navy’s Stiletto Maritime Demonstration Program recently teamed up with the U.K.’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) for a UAV demonstration off the Maryland coast. “Stiletto [capability demonstrations] are conducted in partnership with a host warfighting command or government organization,” says Rob Tutton, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock engineer and Stiletto Maritime Demonstration program manager. “For this event, DSTL wanted to observe the operation of UAVs from a small boat platform for maritime missions.”
Now that the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1), the USS Freedom, has transited the Pacific and is deployed in Singapore, the U.S. Navy brass says it is comfortable with the increased crew size and current survivability of the design — two of the most controversial issues weighing on the vessel program. The initial core crew size was 40 and the Navy added 10 more sailors and three ensigns to Freedom for its Asian deployment. “We feel the crew size is about right now,” Rear Adm. Thomas Rowden, U.S. Navy director of surface warfare, tells Aviation Week.
Raytheon and Chemring are to fire a live missile from its Centurion weapons launcher later this year. The system, initially developed as a naval decoy launcher, was unveiled at the IDEX defense show in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, having been in development by Chemring since 2009. The Centurion is fitted with 12 130mm barrels mounted onto a rotating platform. Each barrel can be individually operated and adjusted in elevation, allowing a mix of weaponry and countermeasures to be housed in the same launcher system, then rapidly reloaded by hand.
HOUSTON — NASA is looking into a possible cooling system leak after water seeped into the helmet of spacewalking European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on July 16, prompting an early end to a two-man excursion that was to advance preparations for the arrival of Russia’s Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) later this year. Neither Parmitano nor lead U.S. spacewalker Chris Cassidy faced imminent danger, and all of the missed tasks can be rescheduled without urgency, according to NASA’s Mission Control.
GLASGOW, Scotland — The U.K. government will invest £60 million ($90 million) to advance cutting-edge propulsion technology in development at Reaction Engines Ltd (REL), a U.K.-based technology company that is building a radical new motor designed to power a reusable space vehicle. The new investment targets continued work on REL’s Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket (Sabre), which uses lightweight heat exchangers to chill the incoming airstream from more than 1,000C to minus 150C in less than 1/100th of a second.
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Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Kay Granger (R-Texas), whose districts have constituents interested in U.S. helicopter work, have organized and sent a letter to the Pentagon from more than 80 lawmakers trying to apply pressure against the Defense Department’s plans to buy Russian helos for Afghanistan.
The U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman failed to execute a fourth landing attempt of the X-47B onboard the USS George H.W. Bush carrier, and the Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstration flight test program has completed its planned “at-sea” trials.
ROCKET TEST: Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have tested a rocket engine injector made with additive manufacturing (AM), the 3D printing process that allows complex shapes to be crafted at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional machining. Aerojet Rocketdyne produced the injector assembly, which fired liquid oxygen and gaseous hydrogen in the test series, using high-energy lasers to melt metallic powder in a buildup process.
NEW DELHI — Rolls-Royce aims to double its defense business in the next three to five years and is looking to team up with Indian firms, the company says. One such collaboration was the recent International Aerospace Manufacturing Pvt Ltd (IAMPL), a joint venture between Rolls-Royce and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) that was inaugurated in Bengaluru in the southern state of Karnataka.
As the U.S. starts to refocus its efforts on the Asia-Pacific, some of America’s largest partners and allies in the region are set to make significant military investments of their own.
NEW DELHI — A MiG-21 Indian air force (IAF) fighter crashed July 15 while landing at Uttarlai airbase in the western Rajasthan state, the fifth MiG crash in recent months. The aircraft was on a routine training sortie. “The aircraft crashed at about 9.30 a.m. local time and the pilot suffered fatal injuries, A court of inquiry has been ordered to ascertain the cause of crash,” defense ministry spokesperson Col. S.D. Goswami says.
