Surrogates for the U.S. presidential candidates dueled in Washington this week, underscoring both sides’ inability to answer questions on the topic of defense spending. Speaking on behalf of the Obama administration at a Brookings Institution event July 25, Michele Flournoy, the former Pentagon under secretary for policy, outlined the military’s broad budget plans, emphasizing that what is called $487 billion in cuts to defense spending over the next decade is just “a reduction in the rate of planned growth.”
THE PENTAGON — The U.S. Army and Marine Corps are working on establishing a joint project to develop a UAV outfitted with equipment to perform electronic warfare (EW) missions. “There is a lot of cross talk between us and the Marines” on the UAV, says Col. Jim Ekvall, Army Electronic Warfare Division chief. The services are looking to leverage some of the UAVs currently in the field, from the relatively large Gray Eagle from General Atomics to the much smaller RQ-7 Shadow offered by AAI Corp., Ekvall says.
It costs more to pay for labor and materials for shipbuilding than other industries, and the U.S. Navy’s apparent failure to account for that is causing the service to underestimate its funding needs, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “Costs of labor and materials have traditionally grown faster in the shipbuilding industry than in the economy as a whole,” CBO says in its latest report on the Navy’s fiscal 2013 shipbuilding plans.
NEW DELHI — Aviation trials of India’s second aircraft carrier are set to begin soon in anticipation of the refurbished Russian carrier’s induction into India’s navy on Dec. 4. The “aviation facilities complex trials” of the 45,000-ton, 284-meter (932-ft.) long INS Vikramaditya, formerly the Russian Kiev-class Admiral Gorshkov, will begin before mid-August in the Barents Sea, off Russia, a naval official says.
HOUSTON — NASA’s 11-year-old Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been repositioned along its polar orbit around the red planet to provide a near-real-time communication link with Earth during the Mars Science Laboratory’s Aug. 6 entry and landing. News of the $2.5 billion rover mission’s fate should reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., through Odyssey on Aug. 6 at 1:31 a.m. EDT, nearly 14 min. after the actual landing — the time it will take X-band transmissions to cover the 154 million mi. separating the two planets.
While companies have developed various high-tech labeling or testing methods to combat the growing problem of counterfeit military aircraft parts, a trade association leader recommends a more traditional approach adopted in civil aviation: Get a handle on your supply network.
The global market for light tracked vehicles should produce nearly 9,300 units worth more than $19.7 billion through 2021, with China the single biggest producer as it continues its military modernization, according to Forecast International. “The international market for light tracked vehicles remains a highly competitive and dynamic environment,” the group says.
The Pentagon Inspector General’s office says it started an audit in June of the U.S. Navy’s P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, set to replace the service’s P-3C aircraft.
UNMANNED MILESTONE: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ Gray Eagle UAV has reached 10,000 automatic launch and recoveries with its Automatic Takeoff and Landing System, the company announced July 25. The milestone was achieved on June 2 while the system performed a routine surveillance mission in Afghanistan. The system is now flying 2,300 flight hours per month across six deployment and training sites. In total, Gray Eagle has accumulated 35,000 flight hours since its first deployment in 2008.
Three Republican senators have scheduled a two-day blitz of East Coast military hubs to make the case for preventing a $500 billion reduction to defense spending starting in January.
The first element of what could become the U.S. Navy’s sophisticated Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) and electronic attack weapon has flown. The $2 billion program is expected to enter its final phase next July. The Northrop Grumman candidate NGJ pod features the company’s unique power-generating system. Finding a system that can provide the massive amounts of power needed has been a stumbling block for the development of airborne electronic-attack and directed-energy weapons.
