LONDON — The U.K. Royal Air Force has begun flying MQ-9 Reaper unmanned air vehicle missions over Afghanistan from ground control stations in mainland Britain. Until last week, all of the U.K. missions were flown from Creech AFB, Nev., alongside their U.S. Air Force counterparts. But now the RAF’s second Reaper unit, 13 (XIII) Sqn has begun flying operations from their home base of RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire following the delivery of control stations and other equipment in April 2012.
LONDON — The Norwegian government wants to accelerate its plans to buy six Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as part of the country’s program to modernize its fighter fleet.
U.S. Army Thales Raytheon Systems Co., LLC., Fullerton, Calif., was awarded a $23,147,096 modification (No. P00003), to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (W31P4Q-13-C-0082), to procure Sentinel Mode 5 Identification Friend or Foe kits and spares. The total cumulative face value of the contract is $30,442,096. Fiscal 2013 procurement funds are being obligated on this award. The Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity.
ENTREPRENEURIAL DE-MINING?: Humanitarian activists are trying to figure out ways to maintain and promote de-mining efforts locally, as business-oriented ventures, in conflict zones now that the U.S. and most other western nations are scaling back defense and related national spending. Around 70 million landmines or unexploded ordnances exist in 70 countries, according to a League for Hope statement. “Local solutions often have the best outcomes,” says James “Spike” Stephenson of Creative Associates, a USAID contractor.
The U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (Spawar) is looking to establish “technical authority” to develop standards for and patch gaps in cyber-warfare. “Technical authority’s focus on standardization and variance reduction makes it easier to certify systems and reduce the training burden on operators so they can focus on cyber warfighting,” says Rear Adm. Patrick Brady, Spawar commander.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital reusable spaceplane went supersonic Monday morning during a 16-sec. flight test of its hybrid rocket motor. The short-duration flight over Mojave, Calif., with two test pilots from Scaled Composites at the controls, brings SS2 a major step closer to its first flight into space, and ultimately to flights with paying tourists and researchers in the pressurized cabin.
While the U.S. Navy is still predicting a shortfall in its tactical air (tacair) force, the gap is much less pronounced than it had been previously. The concern, though, is that sequestration could create another significant shortage.
NEW DELHI — India is working toward having a sea-based nuclear deterrent capability within next three years, the country’s security adviser says. The work on the development of the “third leg of the triad [of nuclear delivery systems], which is submarine-based, is in progress,” says Shyam Saran, chairman of the country’s National Security Advisory Board. “It is expected that a modest sea-based deterrence will be in place by 2015 or 2016.”
A failure review oversight board (FROB) convened by Sea Launch and Energia Logistics Ltd. has accepted the findings and proposed fixes of contractors investigating the Jan. 31 failure of a Sea Launch Zenit 3-SL shortly after liftoff from the Sea Launch Odyssey floating launch pad. The failure cost Intelsat a new communications satellite — Intelsat 27, designed to operate in the C- and Ku-bands for customers in the Americas, the North Atlantic region and Europe — and a hosted communications payload that could have been sold to a government customer.
FLYING KIOWA: The first upgraded Bell OH-58F Kiowa Warrior flew on April 26 after modification by the U.S. Army Prototype Integration Facility at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The Army is lead system integrator for the Cockpit and Sensor Upgrade Program to tackle avionics obsolesence on the OH-58D, replace the aging, mast-mounted sensor with a nose-mounted unit more suited to irregular warfare, and reduce weight up to 160 lb. to improve performance. Plans call for 368 Ds to be upgraded by 2025, with the first F unit to be equipped by late 2016.
MRO 50/50: Despite a potentially historic opportunity to refashion how the U.S. military seeks and acquires maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of its equipment and systems, most executives voicing opinions at Aviation Week’s recent MRO Military conference in Atlanta said they expect the so-called 50-50 “core” mandate to remain in effect. Longstanding U.S. law requires the Defense Department to maintain a core logistics capability of its own, rather than outsourcing it all to the private sector, and that at least half of military MRO workload be provided in-house.
Beyond the immediate cuts of sequestration, the possibility of a fundamental, long-term reduction in public investment in national security will shape thinking on what defense capabilities should be developed, says Arati Prabhakar, director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). While not forecasting a long-term decline in defense budgets, the agency “must consider what will be required to meet the nation’s security needs even in these circumstances,” she says.
OBSERVING EARTH: The commercial sector is expected to make up a significant part of future demand for space-based imagery intelligence (Imint), according to Adam Keith, director of space and Earth observation (EO) at Euroconsult. Only 11 countries have developed EO defense capacity dedicated to supporting Imint; the number of unclassified defense and dual-use satellites launched by these 11 countries totaled 75 over the past decade.
BEIJING — China has begun building a high-definition Earth-observation system, with its first space launch of 2013. A Long March 2D rocket launched the Gaofen 1 satellite and three other, small spacecraft for foreign customers on April 26 from the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China. Gaofen 1 is the first of five or six spacecraft that are planned to be launched for high-definition observation of the planet between now and 2016, say state media. “Gaofen” means “high definition.”
DONLEY LEAVING: U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley is leaving his position to return to private life. “Mike has been an invaluable adviser during my first two months as Secretary of Defense and has been an outstanding leader of the Air Force for nearly five years,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement. Donley was appointed in October 2008, taking over from Michael Wynne, who resigned along with Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley after two high-profile incidents of nuclear weapon mishandling by the service.
U.S. Navy officials have for months been trumpeting the need to develop a stronger base of smaller warships to help implement the Pacific pivot, and the service’s recently released shipbuilding plan backs that up with proposed procurement through the coming decades.
Now that the U.S. Navy is pushing even harder to equip its vessels with lasers, the service is focusing on reliable, high-voltage shipboard power to feed those weapons. Indeed, Navy officials say, meeting that need is becoming a matter of national security.
