EXPORT COUNCIL: President Barack Obama appointed Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin’s president and CEO, to the President’s Export Council on Sept. 19. Hewson is one of seven new members of the council, including Virginia Rometty, chairman, president and CEO of IBM. Jim McNerney, Boeing’s board chairman, president and CEO, chairs the top U.S. advisory panel on international trade.
Turkish missile manufacturer Roketsan has begun developing a variant of its Stand-Off Missile (SOM) that is compatible with the weapons bay of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The 1,345-lb. SOM-J, developed in conjunction with TUBI˙TAK-Sage, Turkey’s Scientific and Technological Research Council, will be the fourth variant of the Turkish indigenous weapon family, which was developed to meet the long-range strike requirements of the country’s air force.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has achieved its first-ever salvo test of the SM-3 Block IB missile, and the intercept took place at the highest altitude for the system to date. The first SM-3 IB that was launched successfully intercepted the target, a short-range ballistic missile described as the “one of the most complex targets that we have shot to date,” says Mitch Stevison, Raytheon’s SM-3 program manager. The target was an Aegis Readiness Assessment Vehicle-C, Developed by Kratos, Port Hueneme NSWC, MDA.
A raft of large U.S.-India military deals worth billions of dollars are nearing completion and likely to be culminated in the next few weeks. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is preparing to arrive in Washington on an official visit starting Sept. 27, on the heels of a visit to India by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. And negotiations on pending acquisitions are in full swing. Top Indian defense ministry sources indicate one or more contracts could be finalized during Singh’s visit.
The Pentagon is continuing to keep BAE’s work crafting an alternate F-35 helmet on the side burner, though program officials indicate they are lining up in support of fixes designed to improve the performance of the primary helmet manufactured by Vision Systems International. F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan has not, however, taken the step to sole-source the work to VSI, a joint venture of Rockwell Collins and Elbit, in hopes that even the specter of competition will drive down the helmet’s cost.
Aviation Week 2013 Military Fleet & MRO Forecast! The MRO Fleet, Forecasts and Data you need to accurately plan and strategize for the future. See for yourself with a free demonstration: AviationWeek.com/FleetMRO Aviation Week Intelligence Network Click here to view the pdf
U.S. military weapons systems and services acquisition will be slashed this decade across the armed services if the full effect of the 2011 budget law and its annual, widespread automatic budget cuts occur – as now expected.
AV-8 SUPPORT: The Boeing Co. has been awarded $16,497,835 for a delivery order under a previously issued contract to repair various parts in support of the AV-8 aircraft, the U.S. Navy announced Sept. 18. The work will be performed in St. Louis and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2015. Fiscal 2013 Navy working capital funds of $8,248,917 will be obligated at the time of award. The Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support, Philadelphia, is the contracting activity.
WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, Va. – Orbital Sciences Corp. has enough hardware on hand for the 10 commercial cargo missions it has contracted with NASA, and is already looking ahead to the day when it runs out of the surplus Soviet-era Russian engines it uses to power its new Antares launch vehicle.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Norman Polmar, a defense analyst and noted author of numerous books on naval matters, are trading barbs over the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. “I take strong exception to your rebuttal of my critique of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program, as ‘published’ by Fox On Line,” Polmar says in a Sept. 5 email to Mabus recently released by the author, whose work includes “The Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet,” considered by many to be the informational bible of the nation’s naval force.
The Netherlands has finally decided to purchase the Joint Strike Fighter, but will buy fewer than half the number it originally envisioned. The Hague says it will now purchase 37 of the 85 Lockheed Martin F-35s it had intended to purchase when it first signed up with the program in 2002. It based the decision on the need to remain within the tight €4.5 billion ($6 billion) budget assigned for its F-16 Fighting Falcon replacement program and the €270 million annual operations budget for fighter types in the service’s inventory.
Russia is strengthening its presence in the Arctic Ocean in order to protect natural resources on its part of the Arctic Shelf and the Northern Sea Route.
Click here to view the pdf U.S. Navy Aircraft Procurement: Outyear Funding Shifts, 2014-2017Compares Outyear Funding Estimates from Fiscal 2013 Request With Fiscal 2014 Request Then-year dollars in millions. Descending sort on Outyear %change U.S.
Sierra Nevada is conducting flight readiness reviews for the first drop test of the Dream Chaser lifting body at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards AFB, Calif., amid wider preparations for the company’s first Commercial Crew critical design review (CDR).
LCS MODULES: The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman a $25.2 million contract for three additional Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) mission modules — two for surface warfare missions and one for mine countermeasures. Each mission package comprises a specific set of subsystems such as data processing equipment, vehicles and sensors, and others. Northrop Grumman has delivered two surface warfare mission modules and one mine countermeasures mission module for LCS so far.
While the U.S. Navy brass has been trumpeting the Chinese naval participation in the upcoming 2014 Pacifica Rim (Rimpac) exercises, others question the benefits of working so closely with a potential geopolitical maritime rival such as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (Plan). “The Plan’s potential participation at Rimpac near Hawaii has raised concerns in Congress and elsewhere,” says a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, “U.S.-China Military Contacts: Issues for Congress.”
The U.S. Air Force has been supporting development of the Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) with risk-reduction contracts in five key areas, the service’s former senior acquisition officer said at the Air Force Association show here Tuesday. Like other details of the program, the contracts have not been disclosed publicly.
The way to ensure the viability of the industrial base that makes U.S. defense procurement possible is to determine now what is most important to preserve for the future and start planning to achieve that objective, a defense scholar argues.
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The cost of maintaining the U.S. Air Force’s aging T-38 fast jet trainer increases “steeply” in the outyears, but Air Force Gen. Edward Rice, who leads the training command, says the fleet is safe. The aging T-38 will remain in the fleet for an uncertain amount of time due to repeated delays in launching a replacement program called T-X. Rice says it is not yet known if the T-X effort will get support from the Air Force in its fiscal 2015 budget, which is being refined this fall. Delays have pushed the initial operational capability to around 2023.
