The U.S. Coast Guard has awarded a $487 million, fixed-price, incentive-fee contract to the Ingalls Shipbuilding division of Huntington Ingalls Industries to build the sixth National Security Cutter (NSC) WMSL-755 Munro. Jim French, Ingalls’ NSC program manager, says, “The design/build plan is at a mature stage. We currently have two more ships under construction and expect to start NSC-6 in October.”
NEW DELHI — India’s space agency has plans to start a new facility for production of cryogenic engines and components for its future rockets. The cryogenic engine manufacturing unit, to be established at the aerospace division of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) in Bengaluru three years from now, is estimated to cost around $25 million (1.4 billion rupees), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief K. Radhakrishnan says.
SPACESUIT AWARD: NASA will spend an estimated $4.38 million with ILC Dover on the design, manufacture and test of a next-generation spacesuit, under a contract announced April 25. Designed to improve astronaut capability during extravehicular activities, the Z-2 suit will operate at higher pressure than previous models, to improve productivity. It will also be designed to work with existing airlocks and new designs in development at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The U.S. State Department says Raytheon will pay $4 million in civil penalties and another $4 million to make remedial self-improvements to resolve “hundreds” of civil violations of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The old proverb warns about a war being lost for want of a nail, but in U.S. Navy circles the concern is about fasteners — either a lack or surplus of them. Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) completed a fleet-wide fastener study earlier this month, identifying and recommending the removal of thousands of fasteners from the Navy supply system.
BEIJING — China is developing four high-bypass turbofans, only two of which were previously known. All four have potential military and civil applications. Work at Shenyang on a high-bypass turbofan in the 30,000-lb. class and suitable for large transport aircraft was already known, along with development of the similarly sized CJ-1000 engine for the C919 commercial aircraft.
As much as the U.S. Navy depends on its destroyer fleet now for a host of missions, the service will expect even more from its ships once they are outfitted with the proposed air-and-missile-defense radar (AMDR) suite to perform integrated missile defense, according to Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. Keeping the right mix between the cruiser and destroyer fleets is important now, Greenert says. “We need 88 large-surface combatants — cruisers and destroyers,” he testified last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The U.S. Navy is considering buying 12 Seabird SB7L-360A Seeker light single-engine observation aircraft with electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensors and downlink systems for the Government of Yemen. According to a draft statement of work published April 30, the project is being managed by the Navy’s Counter Networks and Illicit Trafficking Project Office, which works with U.S. partner nations to “deter criminal and terrorist networks and illicit trafficking activities” and tackle “rapid response and irregular warfare challenges” anywhere in the world.
ROLLS BUYS: Rolls-Royce has bought Hyper-Therm High Temperature Composites of Huntington Beach, Calif., a supplier of heat-tolerant composite materials for gas turbine engines. Terms were not disclosed. Hyper-Therm specializes in ceramic matrix composites (CMC). Rolls is expected to apply the technology to new and existing civil and military engines.
The U.S. Navy is investigating options for a next-generation mid-air collision avoidance system that could be operational in its fleet of AH-1Z, UH-1Y, MH-60R and MH-60S helicopter models by fiscal year 2020.
Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives and other Taiwan boosters in Washington have mounted a fresh push to get the White House finally to allow sales of advanced fighters to the embattled island nation.
NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) are backing studies to address a range of health and performance issues confronting astronauts assigned to long-duration spaceflight, ranging from the vision impairments that have surfaced recently with International Space Station crew members to fundamental concerns like nutrition. The $17 million in grant awards to 23 principal investigators associated with 18 U.S. university, government and private-sector institutions will span from one to three years.
Sending the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom to Singapore — or four destroyers to Rota, Spain — is more than just waving the American flag in more places more often than was done before. It marks a major mindset change for the U.S. Navy and nation, according to Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations (CNO).
Submarines remain a chief shipbuilding concern for the U.S. Navy and top service officials worry sequestration could hamper the programs. At the same time, some federal lawmakers worry that the Navy’s long-term shipbuilding plan may come up short and hurt the nation’s efforts to “pivot” military focus to the Asia-Pacific region.
In response to a social media message making the rounds this week about sea-water intrusion into Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom on the port side, U.S. Navy officials said the vessel has been experiencing problems with coolers designed to bring water into the ship, but there was no flooding occurring.
INTEL CLOUD: The director of national intelligence “abruptly” canceled a multiyear effort to set up a single, consolidated data center for the entire U.S. intelligence community about a year ago in favor of migrating such services to cloud computing, according to a U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s report. Cloud-computing advocates have been pushing the government to use their services, claiming savings over the license and hardware costs of the legacy method of buying information technology services.
LONDON — GKN says it hopes to have fully integrated Volvo Aero into the GKN structure by the end of 2013 following the takeover of the engine component company in July 2012. “The integration was never a 90-100 day program,” said Mike McCann, CEO of GKN’s Aerospace Engine System division, speaking at the company’s pre-Paris Air Show briefing in London. McCann said it was now transitioning from the systems of its old owner Volvo AB and moving into the GKN organization.
