For defense contractors in the U.S., this year suddenly has gone from bad to worse. Just as contractors for the Pentagon and intelligence community were beginning to grapple with the fact that the majority of $37 billion in so-called sequestration reductions to fiscal 2013 spending will come from their lines of business, now comes the epitome of a defense contractor many in America will love to hate: Edward Snowden.
The U.K. Royal Air Force will lose the ability to conduct air sampling for nuclear treaty verification when the last Vickers VC-10 air-to-air refueling tankers are retired later this year. The little-known and highly secretive mission, passed to the Vickers VC-10 following the retirement of the Avro Vulcan back in the 1980s, has been quietly conducted as part of international nuclear verification efforts.
SUPPLY CHAIN: An effort by the Republican-run House Armed Services Committee to guard against Defense Department use of information technology (IT) manufactured by firms with known Chinese affiliations is drawing the ire of U.S. technology lobbyists. The committee is pushing legislation mandating a Pentagon report on the telecommunications and IT supply chain of select military components, especially nuclear weapons command and control.
GMD SITES: The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is promoting a letter from leading three-star officers that refutes the need for an East Coast branch of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. The director of the Missile Defense Agency, Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, and the commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, Army Lt. Gen. Richard Formica, told Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that “there is no validated military requirement” for a proposed East Coast missile defense site.
BEIJING — Now classifying its Shenzhou spacecraft as operational equipment, not experimental, China launched its fifth manned space mission on June 11. The objectives of the 15-day Shenzhou 10 mission are to further develop China’s technologies for docking and supporting human life in space, laying the groundwork for the space station that is supposed to be operational around 2020. With Shenzhou 10, the phase aimed at perfecting docking and spacewalking techniques should be complete.
The U.S. Navy ramped up its Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) program this month, with the launch of one ship and a delivery of another. JHSV-3USNS Millinocket successfully launched June 5 from the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Ala. The next day, the Navy accepted delivery of JHSV-2 USNS Choctaw County from the same company at the same yard.
Aerospace & Defense Programs November 13-14, 2013 Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa, Phoenix, Ariz. Strategic Priorities in a Sequestration Era. Learn which programs are being affected and where government is likely to place its bets. Register Today www.aviationweek.com/events/adp
PARIS — BAE Systems has conducted the first drop of a Raytheon Paveway IV precision-guided bomb from a Eurofighter Typhoon in the Phase 1 Enhancements (P1EB) configuration. BAE Systems confirmed that test pilots dropped the weapon over the Aberporth test range in West Wales on June 5 using one of the instrumented test aircraft, IPA6.
STRATEGIC MOVES: The Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee will begin marking up its take on the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill this week. That version of the bill, as well as the whole Senate’s version, is expected to significantly push back on House GOP efforts to rein in the Obama administration’s push to further reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile, and Republican efforts to speed establishment of an East Coast branch of the Ground-based Midcourse system.
PARIS — Thales is planning to make its touchscreen-driven avionics human interface system available for integration into aircraft and helicopters by 2020. The manufacturer’s ‘Avionics 2020’ vision, which will be shown next week at the Paris air show, uses technologies developed from its Avionics 2030 ideas displayed in 2010.
NASA’s long-lived Opportunity rover is rolling toward a new destination at Endeavour Crater on Mars, following one of the nine-year mission’s most striking discoveries, a rock rich in clay minerals that points to an early, biologically friendly era dominated by water with a neutral chemistry.
NEW DELHI — India’s plans to loft France’s SPOT-7 satellite and six other small international spacecraft by early next year reflect a boost in demand for India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in the global market, according to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). “We are getting launch orders from around the world,” a senior ISRO official says.
With a program to modernize the “night” side of the Boeing AH-64D/E Apache’s targeting system almost complete, the U.S. Army has begun taking delivery for the first upgrade to the “day” side of the attack helicopter’s sensor suite. Lockheed Martin has delivered the laser rangefinder/designator (LRFD) for the modernized day sensor assembly (M-DSA), one half of the Apache’s distinctive nose-mounted targeting system.
