NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A program to develop a 3,000-shp turboshaft will transition to the U.S. Army’s utility helicopter program office this year, with the goal of fielding more powerful engines on the Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk in 2019 to improve hot-and-high performance. General Electric and Honeywell/Pratt & Whitney are developing competing turboshafts under the Affordable Advanced Turbine Engine (AATE) technology demonstration, which will wrap up in fiscal 2013.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Boeing is preparing to fly an aerodynamic prototype for the MC-12S Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System (EMARSS) — a program the U.S. Army plans to terminate after completing development in 2013. A Boeing-owned Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350ER is at Summit Aviation being modified to the MC-12S external configuration, including extended sensor nose and fuselage-top Ka/Ku-band radome, and is expected to fly in May.
The Dutch defense budget is too tight to achieve the ambitions for the Royal Netherlands Air Force’s (RNLAF) F-16s, the Netherlands Court of Auditors concludes in a report on the fighter replacement effort. Auditors concluded that there is a growing imbalance between the Dutch government’s stated goals, the budget for flying hours, the number of pilots and the number of aircraft.
BOEING DELIVERIES: Boeing defense aircraft deliveries in the first quarter of this year were marked by the rising number of CH-47 Chinook completions, with 10 new-build helicopters handed over, compared to seven in the first quarter of last year and two the year before. A slowdown in C-17 deliveries saw just two aircraft handed over versus three for the previous quarters, while this year also marks the first delivery of a P-8A Poseidon in a first quarter.
The government is already struggling to overcome technical and procedural hurdles to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in civil airspace. Now the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are teaming up to make sure policy makers craft privacy rules for UAVs before they take flight. The two advocacy groups met last week to see where they have common ground.
DALLAS — Global military aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) spending was roughly $66 billion in 2011, but is expected to decline 2.7% this year because of reduced utilization and increased budgetary restrictions, according to consultancy ICF SH&E.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The U.S. Marine Corps has chosen a classified weapon to arm the AAI RQ-7B Shadow tactical unmanned aerial system (UAS) for a field evaluation in Afghanistan. “The weapon is classified. It’s a high-TRL [technology readiness level] system,” says Lt. Col. Scott Anderson, product manager for Shadow in the Army’s UAS program office, which is supporting the Marine Corps’ plan to weaponize the aircraft to meet an urgent operational need.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sikorsky and the U.S. Army have reached agreement on the eighth multiyear contract for the Black Hawk helicopter — the second for the UH-60M model — with a deal that allows the Army to achieve the projected savings while buying fewer aircraft than originally planned because of budget pressures. “We have a handshake on multiyear eight,” says Col. Thomas Todd, program manager for utility helicopters, speaking April 4 at the Army Aviation Association of America convention here.
KEPLER EXTENDED: NASA has approved the Kepler planet-finding mission for an extension through fiscal 2016, following a senior-level agency review of operational astrophysics missions. The extension provides four additional years for the probe to look for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around their parent stars. “Kepler has revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets and the study of stellar seismology and variability,” says Roger Hunter, Kepler project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
HOUSTON — U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station have begun an upgrade of the air-to-ground communications system to support a substantial increase in simultaneous science research, including a doubling of the downlink data rate, solid-state recording and additional voice loops.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Stood up only in October, the program office responsible for all the U.S. Army’s fixed-wing aircraft is awaiting Pentagon approval of its requirements document for a future utility aircraft to replace 117 Hawker Beechcraft C-12s operated in a variety of roles.
NEW DELHI — The Indian navy on April 4 formally commissioned a Russian-built Akula-II-class submarine into its fleet. The submarine — originally the K-152 Nerpa and now renamed INS Chakra-II — is on a 10-year lease from Russia at a cost of nearly $1 billion. This is part of India’s growing effort to modernize its naval forces. INS Chakra is the first nuclear-powered submarine to be operated by the navy in almost two decades.
The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office has three more intelligence spacecraft to orbit in the next four months, following Tuesday’s launch of its classified NROL-25 payload — probably an imaging reconnaissance satellite — from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Liftoff of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Medium-plus 5.2 rocket from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex-6 came at 7:12 EDT, and the NRO termed the launch “successful.” Launches from the California military site go into polar orbit for global overhead coverage.
HOUSTON — Boeing’s candidate in NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative, the CST-100 capsule, completed the first in a series of parachute drop tests this week at the Delmar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev. A second test is planned for later this month, and will incorporate the landing system drogue chute for the first time, demonstrating the full anticipated parachute system sequence.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Within two years, U.S. Army special forces will be operating more than 300 unmanned aircraft, says Brig. Gen. Kevin Mangum, commander of Army Special Operations Aviation Command (USASOAC). That total will include two companies of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-1C Gray Eagle armed, medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Slower-than-expected fielding of unmanned aircraft systems using high-capacity Ku-band data links is leading the U.S. Army to look at broadening the capability of the latest Block 3 version of the Boeing AH-64D Apache. Now wrapping up initial operational test and evaluation, the Block 3 can be equipped with the UAV tactical common data link (TCDL) assembly (UTA), which allows the Apache crew to take control of an unmanned aircraft’s sensors and flight path: so-called Level 3 and 4 control.
LONDON — The U.K. is projecting that the Paveway IV guided bomb will be fielded on the Eurofighter Typhoon in 2013. The new date was released as the Defense Ministry awarded Raytheon a £60 million ($96 million) contract to replenish Paveway IVs expended from Tornado GR4s during last year’s Libya operation. The number of weapons being acquired is not being released.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — EADS North America is bidding to dominate any potential competition for a U.S. Army Armed Aerial Scout (AAS) helicopter by offering not one, but two versions of its AAS-72X. In addition to the baseline aircraft built on the Army’s UH-72A light utility helicopter, a version of the commercial Eurocopter EC145, the company has unveiled a higher-performance AAS-72X+ based on the improved EC145T2 now in development.
