LEAVING NASA: Arthur E. (Gene) Goldman, acting director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, will leave the space agency to become head of Aerojet’s Southeast Space Operations, where he will oversee Aerojet’s partnerships with Teledyne Brown Engineering of Huntsville, Ala., and Florida Turbines Technology of Jupiter Beach, Fla., that could lead to a kerosene-powered strap-on booster for the planned NASA heavy-lift Space Launch System. Goldman, who has spent 22 years at the Alabama field center, will retire from NASA Aug. 3.
Hawker Beechcraft Defense Company (HBDC) is putting its AT-6 light attack/armed reconnaissance aircraft into low rate initial production (LRIP) in Wichita.
NEW DELHI — Boeing has moved a step closer to delivering the first P-8I aircraft to the Indian navy, with the flight-test program of the long-range maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft now under way. “The Boeing-led team is on track to deliver the first aircraft to the Indian navy in May 2013,” say company officials.
SINGAPORE — Now that the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has secured the tactical and strategic airlift that it wanted, the service airlift group’s next procurement is for VIP air transportation.
AIR FORCE Teradyne Inc., North Reading, Mass., is being awarded a $16,848,088 firm-fixed-price contract to procurement components for the organic assembly of 25 Versatile Depot Automatic Test Systems. The location of the performance is North Reading, Mass. The work is to be completed by Sept. 30, 2013. WR-ALC/PKOA, Robins Air Force Base, Ga., is the contracting activity (FA8571-12-F-0002). NAVY
Hawker Beechcraft intends to sell off its business and general aviation and customer support businesses to China’s Superior Aviation Beijing under a potential $1.79 billion deal. The Wichita, Kan.-based manufacturer entered an exclusivity agreement with Superior as part of an ongoing review of strategic options, and says it “decided to proceed with Superior after determining that its proposal would create the greatest value for the company and position it for long-term growth.”
FARNBOROUGH — Eurocopter and Heli-One are teaming to bolster a bid for Norway’s next-generation fleet of search-and-rescue (SAR) helicopters. Norway has said it needs new SAR helicopters, and Eurocopter is putting forward its EC225, optimized for these missions in Nordic environments and capable of flying in mountainous and coastal regions.
LONDON — Aerojet is forming a European subsidiary that will use indigenous manufacturing and engineering talent to produce in-space thrusters and propulsion systems, the Sacramento, Calif.-based company announced July 9. The new entity, European Space Propulsion, will be based in Northern Ireland. Work is to be conducted jointly with Thales Air Defense Ltd. of Belfast, a division of Thales UK, which will provide manufacturing assembly and test capabilities. Aerojet will furnish engineering-support services through its Redmond, Wash., operations.
FARNBOROUGH — Unmanned systems are making a big showing at the Farnborough air show here, but a highly anticipated announcement on advancing Franco-U.K. cooperation on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is looking unlikely. During a Franco-British summit held in February, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to forge ahead with joint development of a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) drone by 2020.
FARNBOROUGH — Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon’s Missile Systems business, is less than happy about the U.K.’s recent approach to weapons planning, including the awards made so far under the Team Complex Weapons (TCW) initiative. “We have been disappointed in the pace of opportunities presented to us,” Lawrence says. “The U.K. said that it was open to competition, but so far we have not seen any competition coming forward.”
ON ORBIT: Controllers in Luxembourg are checking out the SES-5 communications satellite after its successful deployment in a geostationary transfer orbit following a 9-hr., 12-min. Proton mission that started with liftoff at Baikonur Cosmodrome at 2:38 p.m. EDT July 9. Built by Space Systems/Loral, the 6-metric-ton spacecraft carries an L-band hosted payload for the European Commission that will aid in the verification, improvement and monitoring of European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (Egnos) positioning signals.
The U.S. Navy recently awarded a $212.7 million fixed-priced, incentive-fee contract for the detail design and construction of a Ship-to-Shore Connector (SSC) test and training craft to New Orleans-based Textron. The cumulative value of the hovercraft contract could reach as high as $570.5 million, if the Navy exercises options for up to eight additional craft.
A five-year contract for H-60 helicopters signed by Sikorsky and the U.S. Army gives a Pentagon facing budget uncertainty some flexibility to adjust its procurement numbers over the coming years. The $8.5 billion baseline contract covers 653 Black Hawk and Seahawk helicopters for delivery by December 2017, and includes 106 aircraft for foreign military sales (FMS) customers in addition to 354 UH/HH-60Ms for the Army and 193 MH-60R/Ss for the Navy.
FARNBOROUGH — Boeing is pitching in to strengthen Embraer’s bid in the U.S. Air Force’s protracted Light Air Support (LAS) competition by lending its weapons integration expertise, addressing a perceived weakness of Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano offering. The U.S. manufacturer will work on integration and testing of its Joint Direct Attack Munition and Small-Diameter Bomb onto the Super Tucano. U.S. weapons have never been integrated onto the aircraft before.
AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., Long Beach, Calif., is being awarded a $500,000,000 firm-fixed-price and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the C-17 transition to post production, which will provide for orderly transfer of C-17 production assets. The location of the performance is Long Beach. The work is to be completed by July 5, 2022. ASC/WLMK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8614-12-D-2049, Order 0001).
Missile guidance seekers could be helping helicopter pilots land safely in brownout conditions that have caused dozens of helicopter accidents in Iraq and Afghanistan
FARNBOROUGH — After a protracted protest from losing contractor Northrop Grumman, Raytheon has finally restarted work for the U.S. Air Force on a radar designed to find and track individuals on the ground.
FARNBOROUGH — Lockheed Martin has finally begun delivery of the latest lot of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to the Pentagon after a roughly six-month delay. The Pentagon has accepted delivery of three conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) variants and one short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) version, says Marillyn Hewson, the incoming chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin, F-35 prime contractor.
FARNBOROUGH — Rockwell Collins Chairman and CEO Clay Jones expects U.S. defense budgets to decline in 2013 and 2014, regardless of whether Democratic President Barack Obama or presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney win the U.S. presidential election in November.
