Beechcraft is showing little sign of backing down from its fight for the Light Air Support (LAS) contract, filing suit in the Court of Federal Claims to object to the U.S. Air Force’s decision to move ahead with work on the program during a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of the LAS contract award.
All U.S. Air Force flight testing at Edwards AFB, Calif., other than the continuing evaluation of the F-35, will stop by September as a result of cost cuts associated with sequestration, warns Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger, commander of Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC).
Thanks to their long-term contracting nature, most of the aircraft carrier building and overhaul projects remain mostly protected from the severe impacts of sequestration, but continuing resolutions the Pentagon has been saddled with so far in fiscal 2013 have held up carrier work at the most inopportune time, a shipbuilding executive says.
NUKE BAN: Getting the strongly divided U.S. Senate to ratify the long-standing Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty “remains a top priority” for the Obama administration, according to a key State Department official, but it is not seen as imminent. “There are no set time frames to bring the treaty to a vote, and we are going to be patient, but we will also be persistent,” says Rose Gottemoeller, acting undersecretary for arms control and international security.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Despite having already set up one of the aerospace industry’s most advanced production systems for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Lockheed Martin is appealing for industry help as it looks for more improvements in anticipation of assembling up to 20 aircraft per month by 2017. “We need help with measuring gaps and mismatches on the aircraft. There are complicated joints, 10,000 points and 1,100 seams. Have you got any good ideas? We’ve got to do it fast and accurately,” says F-35 Fighter Production System Deputy Don Kinard.
Though last week’s White House decision to restructure the SM-3 Block IIB interceptor program shuts the door on Lockheed Martin’s aspirations to get into the large interceptor market, company officials are hopeful that new kill vehicle work may be on the horizon.
While the U.S. has been focused on the actual and potential changes in its aircraft carrier and amphibious fleets wrought by continuing resolutions (CRs) and sequestration, the Navy’s destroyer plans also are at risk. The Navy will probably be unable to buy and build the number of planned DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which anchor the nation’s ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans, due to the ongoing CR and sequestration, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Just how U.S. BMD plans will be affected later is unclear.
HOUSTON — Greatly enhanced gravity maps of the Moon, compiled from measurements made by NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) mission probes, have already made their way into the navigational models used by active lunar missions as well as those available to project teams preparing for unpiloted or future human missions, according to Grail project scientists.
Aviation Week MRO Military April 17-18, 2013 Atlanta, GA Reducing Costs Through A Better Understanding Of Partnerships And Better Forecasting, Sustainment, And Product Support Strategies MRO Military is strategically designed to provide you with the information you need in order to: -- Control lifecycle costs -- Improve your forecasting methods and inventory management techniques
Heavy-lift helicopter specialist Erickson Air-Crane is acquiring operators in the U.S. and Brazil in a move to diversify from its niche in firefighting into a global aviation services business. The acquisition of Oregon-based Evergreen Helicopter (EHI) and Air Amazonia of Brazil for up to $350 million will double Erickson’s revenues and operating earnings. The deals will also take the Portland, Ore.-based company into new commercial and government markets, halving its dependence on seasonal firefighting revenues.
THE PENTAGON — The first-of-class Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1), the USS Freedom, briefly lost and then regained power March 16 while en route to its first Asian deployment to Singapore, confirms Vice Adm. Richard Hunt, the director of Navy staff and the head of the special LCS Council of service admirals.
SEQUESTRATION SCARE: Across-the-board budget cuts directed by sequestration could cause an increase in the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S., the commander of U.S. Southern Command told the House Armed Services Committee March 20. Last year, the U.S. and other countries helped confiscate 200 metric tons of cocaine before it arrived from South America and Central America on its way north, said Marine Gen. John Kelly. The effort cost the U.S. about $600 million.
The Senate has passed a bill to keep the government running once the current stopgap spending bill expires on March 27. The bill, passed by a vote of 73-26, will fund NASA and the Pentagon at fiscal 2013 levels. That eases the military’s concerns about the effects on force readiness if it were to be funded at 2012 levels for all of fiscal 2013, but does not address $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts imposed by sequestration.
Recent high-profile Yemeni Air Force (YAF) crashes serve as a grim reminder to U.S. officials of how much work remains in preparing Yemen’s air force to pull its own weight in the ongoing battle against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is being carried out largely from the skies via UAV attacks.
As the U.S. Navy protects key parts of its Pacific operations from budgetary constraints to shield the U.S. military’s planned “Pacific Pivot,” Asia-Pacific observers are wondering how China will react to the shift. “There have … been questions about how China will respond to the United States’ strategic rebalancing to the region, and whether this will lead to greater or lesser tensions,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says in a recent report.
SPACE TURNDOWN: Government spending worldwide on outer space peaked last year at $72.9 billion, but Euroconsult expects such spending to drop due to global fiscal austerity pressures, with improvement not expected before 2015.
The FAA says it will identify technical, political, legal and operational methods to protect aviation users from intentional spoofing and jamming of GPS signals in a report to be issued in September. Results of the one-year study, initiated by the FAA in September 2012 and carried out by a government/industry team, are critical to the agency’s planned reliance on GPS as the navigation and surveillance backbone of the next-generation air transportation system (NextGen) program.
