A new unmanned air systems (UAS) developer and integrator is making its U.S. debut at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International annual conference in Washington this week. Unmanned Systems Group (USG), headquartered in Switzerland with engineering facilities in Sweden and a large contingent of Saab veterans in its workforce, is presenting two fixed-wing UAS and a one-third-scale model of a rotary-wing system that revives and improves on a long-neglected propulsion technology.
Affordability will certainly be a guiding principle in the U.S. Army’s acquisition and operation of unmanned systems as the military pivots from recent wars, the armed service’s deputy chief of staff responsible for financial management told an industry audience Aug. 13. But just as important will be the need to integrate manned and unmanned systems across the U.S. military and with certain allies, too, as well as training with and supporting them.
Despite the July 5 failure of the Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) system during an intercept test, Pentagon procurement chief Frank Kendall says the massive program is funded at an appropriate level. The recent test was intended to be a show of force in response to North Korea’s work in testing nuclear weapons. But it was the latest in a string of flight test failures for the program. The last successful GMD intercept was in December 2008, and the July test was designed as a repeat of that trail.
LOS ANGELES — Refinements to the Lockheed Martin F-35B’s integrated propulsion and flight control will be tested in a second series of sea trials with the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) fighter beginning this week on the USS Wasp.
MIDWAY POINT: NASA’s $1.1 billion Juno mission reached the midpoint in its circuitous, 1.76 billion-mi. journey to Jupiter on Aug. 12. With an anticipated arrival at Jupiter of July 4, 2016, the spacecraft will maneuver into a polar orbit to probe the structure and atmosphere below the cloud cover and search for evidence of a solid core. Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011, and will fly past the Earth in October of this year for a gravity boost.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Sequestration is likely to cause the Pentagon to take a major near-term hit in its procurement and research and development accounts that will eventually taper off once force structure reductions are put into place, says Frank Kendall, the Defense Department’s acquisition czar. “If the overall sequestration cut is 10%, we can look at numbers about twice that for R&D and procurement,” he said during an Aug. 13 speech hosted by the 16th Annual Space and Missile Defense Conference here.
Click here to view the pdf U.S. Navy Procurement Funding Shifts:2013 Plan for Fiscal 2014 Compared to Actual 2014 Request (Losers) (Then-year dollars in millions) U.S.
A NASA-assembled Science Definition Team (SDT) is backing a Europa lander as the centerpiece for a U.S. mission to assess the habitability of the ice-covered Jovian moon. Top lander mission priorities should include an investigation of the composition and chemistry of the ocean beneath Europa’s vast ice shell; characterization of the thickness, uniformity and dynamics of the ice layer; and studies of Europa’s human-scale geology.
A budget crunch brought on by sequestration has pressured the U.S. Air Force to discontinue operations of its Space Fence, which has been surveilling objects in space since 1961. The Air Force Space Surveillance System (AFSSS), dubbed the Space Fence (and formerly operated by the Navy), consists of three transmitters and six receivers designed to form a radar line, or fence, across the 33rd parallel along the southern U.S.
Visiona Tecnologia Espacial S.A. has selected satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy and launch services provider Arianespace of Evry, France, to build and launch a geostationary broadband satellite system for the government of Brazil. Sao Jose dos Campos-based Visiona, a joint venture between Embraer and Telebras, was established to integrate Brazil’s Geostationary Satellite Defense and Strategic Communications (SGDC) system in support of the government’s National Broad Band Program (PNBL) and strategic defense communications.
NEW DELHI — India’s defense ministry says the Indian air force (IAF) has not yet made any formal request to buy more Swiss-made Pilatus PC-7 MK2 trainers instead of waiting for the country’s indigenous basic trainer aircraft (BTA) project to deliver. “As far as the ministry of defense is concerned, that project [the Indian-made BTA] is still on,” Defense Minister A.K. Antony says.
NEW DELHI — India has activated the atomic reactor on board its first indigenous nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arihant, enabling it to undergo sea trials. A defense ministry official says the 83 megawatt pressurized water reactor on Arihant has been started. “Now the submarine will undergo extensive sea trials before being made operational,” the official says. INS Arihant has been undergoing trials at the Indian navy’s submarine base in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, in southern India.
LACKING MOTIVATION: Analyst Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners doubts that recent U.S. embassy closings and the disclosure of an al Qaeda plot in Yemen will be enough to compel Capitol Hill lawmakers to find a political solution to sequestration. “We don’t see the latest threat as catalytic,” Callan says. “Terrorist actions and threats have become part of the security landscape.” As proof, he noted that defense company stocks did not see perceptible changes after the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S.
PALM BEACH, Fla. — As with UAV programs, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) require a strong foundation of modeling and testing to make them operate safely and efficiently. The maritime environment offers some benefits and presents some challenges for monitoring unmanned systems. For example, unlike UAV testing in the continental U.S., which has sparked some controversy and often requires special FAA permits and approvals, coastal U.S. UUV testing is much more flexible.
NAVY The Boeing Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded a $92,278,416 modification (P00025) to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, option-filled, foreign military sales (FMS) contract (W58RGZ-09-C-0147) for the procurement of Block III AH-64D helicopters and associated support. This FMS contract is in support of Taiwan. The cumulative total face value of this contract is $716,740,952. Fiscal 2009 procurement funds are being obligated on this award. The Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity.
LOGAN, Utah — The global groundswell of cubesat projects promises to generate more data than the ad hoc communications systems originally devised for the tiny spacecraft can handle, and the community is working on how to accommodate the flow. The issue is expected to become more critical as the short-lived cubesats launched by universities, government labs and private companies worldwide give way to swarms of tiny spacecraft carrying cameras, telescopes and other high-data sensors.
LOGAN, Utah - ATK will develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever flown for the planned Stratolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle (ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. (Image: Stratolaunch)
NEW DELHI — India’s 45,000-ton Vikrant aircraft carrier was floated out of its building bay at the state-owned Cochin shipyard in the southern state of Kerala Aug. 12, marking the end of the initial phase of construction on India’s first homegrown carrier.
HOUSTON — Michael Foale, long NASA’s most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spaceflights. One of them—a 145-day flight to Russia’s former Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a harrowing collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 command of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale became the first American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.
