FIRE SCOUT BUY: Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., Integrated Systems Sector, San Diego, has been awarded a $25,709,758 contract modification from the U.S. Navy to purchase three Fire Scout vertical takeoff and landing tactical unmanned aerial vehicles and one ground control station, the Defense Department announced May 8. The work will be performed in Moss Point, Miss. and San Diego, and is expected to be completed in December 2013. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command is the contracting activity.
ROME – Function and reliability testing of the Airbus MilitaryA400M airlifter will start about a month late due to concerns with one of the aircraft’s four TP400D turboprop engines.
Washington – House authorizers are determined to fund what the U.S. Air Force said it could not afford in fiscal 2013, putting back nearly $200 million for the C-27 airlift and directing a slowdown on terminating the C-130 avionics upgrade.
Washington – Lawmakers are supremely unhappy with the Air Force’s defense of its fiscal 2013 budget request, and it was on display May 8 after the House Appropriations defense subcommittee approved its bill.
Washington – Boeing has “voluntarily suspended” flights of the A160T Hummingbird unmanned helicopter after an aircraft crashed on April 17 in Victorville, Calif., while carrying the BAE Systems Argus-IS wide-area surveillance payload. Both the platform and its payload were damaged, says the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency , which is responsible for both the A160T and the Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System , or Argus-IS.
Washington – Military operations over the last two decades have shown marked progress in the way NATO can respond to international crises, contends a senior NATO official. While it took months to respond to fighting in Bosnia, the execution time was reduced to weeks in Afghanistan and only days in the most recent conflict in Libya, says Gen. Stephane Abrial, the alliance’s supreme allied commander for transformation and former French air force chief of staff.
ASIA-PACIFIC STAFF / NEW DELHI, ASIA-PACIFIC STAFF / NEW DELHI
NEW DELHI – With India set to approve a $700 million deal with Switzerland’s Pilatus to purchase 75 new PC-7 basic propeller trainers, the Indian Air Force may also need to look outside the country for a fleet of intermediate jet trainers.
As the House of Representatives begins debate on funding legislation that would direct NASA to move quickly to pick a single commercial crew vehicle for public support, the commanders of three Apollo missions to the Moon endorsed the approach.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) believes it has an answer to the problem of how to deorbit spent cubesats before they can smash into more valuable spacecraft. SSC’s NanoSpace unit has developed miniaturized spacecraft thrusters using Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) fabrication technology. The tiny thruster systems have been partially validated in space, on the company’s Prisma satellites that also proved out the nonhypergolic green propellant developed by another SSC subsidiary.
Washington – There are dozens of photos of China’s new J-20 fighter design and technical assessments from multiple sources, but there has yet to be a single authoritative article by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) about the aircraft’s mission.
F-35 CHANGES: Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. of Fort Worth has been awarded a $237,740,000 contract modification for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter for changes to the configuration baseline hardware or software resulting from the JSF development effort, the Defense Department announced May 7. This modification increases the concurrency cap for the U.S. Marine Corps and U.K. short takeoff vertical landing aircraft; Air Force and Netherlands conventional takeoff and landing aircraft; and Navy carrier variant aircraft.
As the U.S. cuts its Army forces and shifts its focus and resources into the Asia-Pacific region, Congress may start to put the service’s proposed Ground Combat Vehicle under greater scrutiny.
Washington – When it comes to the Air Force’s request to pare back the Air National Guard and mothball the Global Hawk Block 30, the response from Capitol Hill is a resounding, “no.” The House Appropriations defense subcommittee will consider legislation May 8 that blocks the Air Force request to revamp the National Guard and to mothball Northrop Grumman’s RQ-4B Global Hawk and Alenia’s C-27J Spartan.
Bordeaux, France – Commercial satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe rejected an unsolicited May 4 offer from competitor GeoEye to purchase the Longmont, Colo.-based company in a $792 million deal that would create the largest fleet of high-resolution imaging satellites in the world. In a May 6 letter to GeoEye President and CEO Matt O’Connell, DigitalGlobe rejected GeoEye’s public offer, asserting it substantially undervalues DigitalGlobe in relation to its standalone business and financial prospects.
