THE PENTAGON — The Obama administration’s proposed funding level for the U.S. Navy’s major surface-fleet procurement drops a bit for the upcoming fiscal year. Funding levels are sinking for destroyers, holding steady for Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) and rising for the new proposed afloat forward staging base.
Though part of NASA’s top-funded science directorate, the agency’s planetary exploration budget suffers a sustained, pre-sequester 20% reduction in the Obama administration’s 2014 budget proposal and its outyear projections.
Establishing a U.S. human commercial space transportation capability by 2017 will require more than $821 million annually for the next three years if the initiative is to achieve the White House’s goal, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden emphasized as the fiscal 2014 budget request went to Capitol Hill today. Commercial crew is to receive $525 million under the 2013 budget continuing resolution, up from just more than $400 million in NASA’s 2012 budget.
Click here to view the pdf NASA 2014 Budget Request (Dollars in millions) NASA 2014 Budget Request (Dollars in millions) Division Subdivision FY2012 FY2013 FY2014Request FY2
COLORADO SPRINGS — After a decade of multibillion-dollar cost overruns and delays in delivering satellites, it seems the U.S. Air Force can claim that it has finally averted a potential disaster—at least for now—on its next big satellite program.
Partisan divides may be blocking Washington from an agreement on how to reduce the deficit, but interest groups from all over the political spectrum are united in panning President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget request for failing to acknowledge sequestration.
NASA plans to launch a program in fiscal 2014 to accelerate dramatically the development and certification of new composite materials and structures for aircraft, but also is re-evaluating its rotary-wing research with the aim of phasing out lower-priority work. The agency’s aeronautics research budget is planned to stay essentially flat to fiscal 2018, slipping just 0.6% to $565.7 million in the fiscal 2014 request. Funding is planned to stay at that slightly lower level for the rest of the five-year budget plan.
THE PENTAGON — The U.S. Army says network-centric technology is its biggest “investment priority,” but it still comes in behind combat vehicle development among research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) projects in the service’s fiscal 2014 budget request unveiled April 10 at the Pentagon.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is nearly finished negotiating the details of its first two contracts providing launch services to the U.S. Air Force. Talks for its Falcon 9 v1.1 launch of NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr) satellite and a Falcon Heavy flight lofting the Air Force’s Space Test Program (STP-2) satellite should be wrapped up by the end of the month, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell tells Aviation Week. Dscovr is slated to boost in November 2014, with STP-2 to follow in September 2015.
The U.S. Army is halting procurement of the Light Utility Helicopter program after fiscal 2014, cutting the number of UH-72s Lakotas it planned to buy by just over 30. The Army, which has said it would buy 346 UH-72 Lakotas from EADS North America (EADS NA) through 2016, has cut the proposed fiscal 2014 procurement to only 10 aircraft from an original 31. The service also dropped the final ten aircraft from its fiscal 2015 plan, for a net reduction of 31 aircraft from the overall buy.
NASA spending rises to a pre-sequestration level of $17.7 billion under President Barack Obama’s proposed 2014 budget and holds steady in outyear projections, essentially casting off the current fiscal year deficit-reducing rollback to fuel an accelerated asteroid encounter by astronauts.
The French defense procurement agency DGA has cleared the laser-guided AASM modular air-to-ground weapon for use with the country’s air force and navy.
The top brass for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps started the Navy League’s 2013 Sea Air Space Symposium with a drumbeat in support of the nation’s amphibious fleet during the event’s opening panel of maritime service chiefs. “The number-one thing I need — it’s amphibious ships,” says Adm. Jonathan Greenert, U.S. chief of naval operations (CNO). “We need to move them into the fleet. We need them badly.”
COLORADO SPRINGS — Lockheed Martin is entering the final assembly, test and launch phase of NASA’s Maven spacecraft, which will be launched in November on a mission to investigate what caused the disappearance of most of the Martian atmosphere.
LONDON — The Netherlands government has decided to place its two F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters into storage while it decides whether to adopt the aircraft for its future fighter needs.
Two Astrophysics Explorer-class missions are set for launch in 2017 under a NASA selection announced April 5: a planet-finding satellite and an X-ray timing detector to be mounted on the International Space Station.
BUDGET COVERAGE: When the U.S. government’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal is released on April 10, Aviation Week Intelligence Network subscribers should be sure to visit http://www.aviationweek.com/awin/USBudget2014.aspx, which will feature all the latest budgetary and programmatic news, data and analysis grouped together in one place. To allow for the most up-to-date budget news to be included, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report subscribers should expect a delay in the arrival of their issue dated April 11.
Lockheed Martin has taken the wraps off its contender for the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) program to field a small fleet of carrier-capable unmanned aircraft. Unveiled at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space show in Washington, the stealthy, tailless flying-wing design strongly resembles Lockheed’s private-venture Polecat and once-classified RQ-170 Sentinel long-endurance UAVs.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Protection of U.S. and friendly assets in space remains a top priority for the U.S. Air Force, though budget pressure may determine the pace of progress in this area, says Gen. William Shelton, Air Force Space Command chief.
The “old paradigm” of major-powers nuclear arms control is dead, and yet it will take several more iterations of deals between Russia and the U.S., as well as smaller nuclear powers like India and Pakistan, before another major arms reduction agreement is reached, let alone one including several countries, key officials and analysts opined April 8.
COLORADO SPRINGS — The senior officer overseeing U.S. Air Force Space Command says he refuses to lose sight of looking toward a future of more resilient architectures for spacecraft and launchers, though the near-term focus is on slicing $508 million from its operations and maintenance budget through the end of September.
LONDON — The Swedish armed forces have begun operational use of four newly purchased UH-60M Black Hawks in Afghanistan. The Swedish Air Element, based at Camp Marmal near Mazar-e-Sharif, officially began operations with the Black Hawk, locally designated Hkp 16, on April 1, following the deployment of the aircraft in mid-March. The Swedish Black Hawks are being used for medevac duties and troop transport.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Next year’s flight test of the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle will include an operational practice session for NASA flight controllers, as well as data collection needed to refine the heat shield and other design elements. When the Delta IV Heavy carrying the Orion clears the launch tower at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., control of the flight will shift to Mission Control Center-Houston, just as it did during shuttle-era human launches.
