EYES ON THE SKY: The Pentagon’s largest ground-based telescope and a smaller cousin are back online at the Maui Space Surveillance Complex in Hawaii after a two-year modernization effort by Boeing. The U.S. Air Force declared initial operational capacity on the 75-ton, 12-ft.-dia. Advanced Electro-Optical System (AEOS) and a 1.6-meter telescope at the same complex on Mount Haleakala. Both are used to track and image satellites and manufactured space debris in near-Earth and deep-space orbits, according to Boeing.
XCOR Aerospace will use its planned two-seat suborbital Lynx spaceplane to train crewmembers for missions that the Excalibur Almaz startup hopes to fly to low Earth orbit and beyond with surplus Russian hardware. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding during the third Royal Aeronautical Society European Space Tourism Conference in London June 20.
MOD TRANSPORT: The U.K. defense ministry has awarded BAE Systems a £15.5 million ($24 million) contract to convert two BAE 146-200QC (Quick Change) aircraft to military aircraft for passenger and freight transport to offload more mundane tasks from airlifters. The aircraft were previously operated by TNT Airways. The work is to be completed by March 2013.
The European Commission has called on the U.K. and other European Union members to make good on their commitment to implement new rules to ease arms trading among EU members. The U.K., as well as Belgium, Luxemburg, Poland and Finland, have so far failed to put forward any measures to implement so-called Directive 2009/43/EC. The implementation deadline was June 30, 2011. Denmark has also been called on the carpet for moving forward only with partial implementation of the rule.
The ultimate goal for U.S. military planners is to field a networked system that can break down or overcome any foe’s anti-access and area-denial (A2AD) capabilities. They need the ability to penetrate, avoid or punch through enemy defenses that include long-range, anti-ship missiles — both ballistic and cruise — long-range air-defense weapons, extended-range radars for small target identification, and cyber and electronic attack capabilities.
With law enforcement agencies eager to snap up new UAVs, Congress and the FAA are still in the early stages of trying to handle the resulting fears about the new form of surveillance. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), both first-term lawmakers, are sponsoring companion legislation that attempts to lend industry a hand by setting rules for the domestic use of UAVs before they proliferate widely. The bills would essentially require police to obtain a warrant for surveillance with UAVs as they currently do to wiretap phones.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Boeing has begun discussions with the U.S. Air Force and international customers about becoming involved in upgrading Lockheed Martin F-16s as the current fighter fleet ages and needs to be kept viable. The company believes the experience it is gaining on the QF-16 program, turning retired fighters into target drones, is giving it the intellectual know-how to become involved in upgrading and extending the service life of F-16s, says Torbjorn Sjogren, vice president for Global Maintenance and Upgrades at Boeing.
NRO LAUNCH: United Launch Alliance and the U.S. Air Force launched the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) classified NROL-38 satellite from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral at 8:28 a.m. EDT June 20 aboard an Atlas V rocket. The mission marks the second of four NRO launches scheduled to take place over a space of five months this year. The next is slated for June 28. Launch had been delayed from an earlier target of June 18 to allow for a valve replacement that required the rocket to be rolled back from the pad.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The U.S. government is expected to give the green light soon to equip three C-17s operated by NATO’s Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) partnership with directed infrared countermeasures. Clearing the NATO group to fit the Northrop Grumman Large-Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (Laircm) self-protection system has been a slow process, in part because the 12 countries that are part of the SAC consortium include two non-NATO members.
RADAR LOVE: Northrop Grumman has received an $87.8 million foreign military sales contract for APG-68(V)9 radars to upgrade six Royal Thai Air Force Lockheed Martin F-16s, plus radars for new-production F-16s for Iraq (22) and Oman (15). Deliveries are to be completed by March 2015.
ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, Md. — Boeing still expects to fly its company-funded MC-12S Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance Surveillance System (Emarss) risk-reduction prototype this year pending a decision by the contractor on full-rate production, says Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems.
HOUSTON — The NASA-funded National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) has selected seven U.S. medical researchers to lead focused studies of the top health issues faced by astronauts assigned to long-duration missions, including musculoskeletal deterioration, cardiovascular changes and radiation effects. The seven-year appointments require that each of the leads have direct research involvement in their space health focus.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Boeing is considering additional layoffs this year in anticipation of a broad decrease in U.S. defense spending should legislators fail to agree to $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction and trigger an automatic budget cut known as sequestration.
India’s armed forces are set to become highly reliant on Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), with plans to increase their use in a phased manner. “Given the threat perceptions along the borders, the country is likely to possess a fleet of around 30 attack RPAs in the next couple of years,” a defense ministry official says.
With six months until the government imposes a $1.2 trillion reduction to all federal programs — from the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter to the FAA’s NextGen air traffic modernization and NASA’s commercial crew development — lawmakers are debating how to best study the effects of that kind of budget cut.
While the U.S. Navy shipbuilding plan helps alleviate submarine and destroyer shortfalls, it still envisions a force below the level the service has said it needs, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS suggests what many defense analysts have maintained for some time — the Navy’s review of the ship-fleet force it needs and can afford will likely be much lower than what the service has desired over the past several years.
Looking at the shape of the U.S. defense budget markup at the account level, Army ground vehicles and missiles are especially favored by House lawmakers. The ground vehicle account gets a 25% increase over the fiscal 2013 request, from both the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) mark and the spending bill from the House Appropriations Committee (HAC). The House approved the HASC policy-making bill on May 18.
