AIR FORCE Telephonics Corp. Farmingdale, N.Y. (FA8730-12-C-0007), is being awarded a $60,082,968 firm-fixed-price contract award for the production of 19 UPX-40s to include hardware installation kits, installation support, manufacturing and sustainment support. The location of the performance is Huntington, N.Y. The work is expected to be completed by Oct. 19, 2018. The contracting activity is AFLCMC/HBSK, Hanscom AFB, Mass.
TOO CONFIDENT: Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) believe aerospace and defense executives may be “overconfident” in the information security practices at their respective organizations, given the trends of information security budget slashing, rising security incidents and accelerating technology development. The survey of more than 200 executives found that “72% of respondents are confident that they have instilled effective security behaviors into their organization’s culture, yet most do not have a process in place to handle third-party breaches,” PwC says.
Click here to view the pdf F-22 Spending Profile Fiscal 2008-2017 ($ in thousands) F-22 Spending Profile Fiscal 2008-2017 ($ in thousands) Type of Expense Sum of $Ks FY08 Sum of $Ks FY09 Sum of $Ks FY1
With Congress gone and no deal to prevent a nearly $1 trillion across-the-board budget cut from taking effect next January, a group of senators is laying the groundwork for proposals to delay the penalty known as sequestration.
It is not certain that the U.S. national airspace system (NAS) will be ready to accommodate unmanned aircraft by the deadline set by Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says. In February, Congress set a series of deadlines to accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the NAS. In a recent report, GAO says FAA “has missed one deadline and could miss others.”
The U.S. Coast Guard needs to get a better handle on its major development and spending plans, a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says. “The planned cost and schedule of the Coast Guard’s portfolio of major acquisitions is unknown because of outdated acquisition program baselines and uncertainty surrounding affordability,” says the Sept. 20 report.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) sept. 26 - 29 — Society of Experimental Test Pilots' 56th Annual Symposium and Banquet, The Grand Californian Hotel, Anaheim, Calif. For more information go to www.setp.org sept. 27 - 28 — Aerospace Summit Global Supply Chain, Palais Des Congress, Montreal, Canada. For more information go to www.aeromontreal.ca/summit2012
Paris — Since 2009, the commercial launch sector estimates nearly $1 billion in new orders have gone to a single U.S. company developing a rocket that has yet to be flown. Over the past two years, Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) proved its Falcon 9 medium-lift rocket can deliver unmanned payloads to low Earth orbit in two demonstration flights for NASA.
November 6-7, 2012 Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix, AZ Join top defense program leaders for discussions on complexity, lessons learned, and affordability aimed at improving program performance! Themes for 2012 include: Complexity Driving improvement and the roles that innovation and technology play Value chain optimization Register now at www.aviationweek.com/events/adp.
PASSING MUSTER: Loral Space & Communications says its proposed sale of spacecraft maker Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) to investors MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates has passed one regulatory hurdle. Loral says the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has “concluded its review and investigation” of SS/L’s sale and found there are “no unresolved national security concerns with respect to the transaction.” Still pending is anti-trust approval by the U.S. Justice Department. SS/L expects the sale to be completed in the fourth quarter, an official says.
Inmarsat expects that costs for satellite-based flight deck safety services, which airlines typically use for ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) messaging in oceanic regions, will be 30% lower than its traditional services when the SwiftBroadband Safety Services option is approved for use in 2014.
Thanks to early supervision and a tight working relationship between the U.S. Navy and contractor General Dynamics NASSCO, the service’s Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) vessel is set for manufacturing, the service says. “The Navy worked very closely with General Dynamics NASSCO to identify cost savings early in the MLP design work while pursuing a concurrent design and production engineering approach,” the Navy says in a recent blog.
The heavy-lift Space Launch System that Congress ordered NASA to build is ahead of schedule in some areas despite an austere funding profile, with hardware for the first NASA exploration flight test being machined and a critical design milestone coming up later this year.
Houston — Unconstrained by budget forecasts, and even the limits of current technology, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s 100-Year Starship project is surging ahead with concepts for the first human interstellar mission. The program is taking a visionary look at propulsion systems that extract their fuel from dark energy, manipulate space-time or look to other sources that have yet to be dealt with.
The Senate is poised to vote early Sept. 22 on a bill to continue funding the government in fiscal 2013 — legislation that will freeze funding for all programs, including Boeing’s U.S. Air Force KC-46A tanker program in a year when its budget was expected to take off. In fiscal 2012, the program received $877.1 million. The fiscal 2013 request was $1.8 billion.
NEW DELHI — India successfully conducted a development test of its nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface Agni-IV missile on Sept. 19 from a military base in the eastern state of Odisha. The missile will be introduced into service next year after undertaking one more developmental trial, a defense ministry official says.
NEW DELHI — The Indian air force (IAF) aims to spend $37 billion over the next 10 years to step up its modernization program, according to a defense official. “We are on [a] path of modernizing our assets,” says Air Marshal R.K. Sharma, IAF’s deputy chief. “In the last five-year plan [2007-12], IAF procurements were around $27 billion. We envisage [purchasing] assets worth more than $37 billion over the next two plan periods [by 2022].”
If budget sequestration hits, the U.S. Defense Department will protect wartime funding first, driving higher cuts to the base budgets. And next, more than 2,000 account lines and their contracts will have to be scrutinized, according to Pentagon officials. It’s not something the Pentagon wants to do, the department comptroller and four generals told the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Sept. 20. They want to avoid it, not plan for it.
With fuel consumption and thermal management concerns increasing as power demands on combat aircraft escalate, the Pentagon is seeking industry input on a national plan for research to address the energy, power and thermal needs of military platforms. A centerpiece of the Energy Optimized Aircraft (EOA) national plan will be the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Integrated Vehicle Energy Technology (Invent) program already under way to develop adaptive smart aircraft power systems.
