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.
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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.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The U.S. Army is spinning up its ability to perform aerial electronic attack (EA) and general electronic warfare (EW) missions, even in the face of budget turmoil, says Army Col. Jim Ekvall, the chief of the service’s EW division. “We need the ability to do aerial EW and electronic attack,” Ekvall said March 19 during the Electronic Warfare Summit hosted by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement.
In its hunt for a squadron of long-endurance, carrier-capable unmanned aircraft, the U.S. Navy is preparing to issue four sole-source contracts this fall for nine months of preliminary design work, and will ultimately choose a single winner for a technology demonstration phase in early 2015. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics are each expected to submit designs for the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) contract.
Efforts to stop funding the development of a tri-national missile defense system that the U.S. has no plans to deploy are part of the down-to-the-wire debate on a spending bill crafted to keep the government running after the current stopgap measure expires March 27.
NEW DELHI — India plans to loft its first navigation and timing satellite in June, the country’s top scientist says. The first satellite of the seven-spacecraft Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will be launched on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C22) from the spaceport at Sriharikota off the coast of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, according to the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), K. Radhakrishnan. Once launched, IRNSS-1 will be tested in orbit for nearly four months.
What has been reported by the mainstream press to have been a satellite collision in late January, which allegedly damaged a Russian satellite, never took place, according to a U.S. defense official. Major news outlets reported last week that the Russian BLITS satellite collided with a piece of orbital debris left after China conducted an anti-satellite test using its own defunct Feng Yun 1C satellite as a target in 2007. They quoted experts at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation.
