WASHINGTON – The U.S. Navy has found another potential role for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) — a launching platform for teams of SEALs or other military units needing to get a better peek at difficult-to-reach coastal areas. Marketed mostly for its mine, anti-submarine and surface warfare missions, the LCS would make a perfect ship for transporting those units into those coastal regions, says Rear Adm. James Murdoch, LCS program executive officer.
AIR FORCE Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, Clearfield, Utah, is being awarded a $28,834,439 cost-plus-award-fee contract modification for sustainment support for the Minute Man weapon system, incremental funding for exercised option. AFNWC/PKME, Hill AFB, Utah, is the contracting activity (F42610-98-C-0001).
TOULOUSE – Although it is far from certain that the Airbus Military A400M transport will meet two of its 2011 targets — receiving its type certification and flying the fifth test aircraft — program officials are generally upbeat about overall development progress and confident that the far more important objective, delivering the first customer aircraft, can be met next year.
ROSAT RETURNS: Germany’s Rosat (Roentgen Satellite) re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the weekend, probably in the Indian Ocean between India and Indonesia. But the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said it did not know if any pieces of the 2.6-ton spacecraft reached the surface. In all likelihood they did, however. DLR estimated some 30 different pieces of the X-ray observatory might survive the plunge through the atmosphere. Overall, those pieces weighed 1.7 tons. According to DLR, the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere on Saturday, Oct. 22, between 9:45 p.m.
After nearly three weeks of F-35B flight testing onboard the USS Wasp amphibious ship, prime contractor Lockheed Martin will continue to work on an optimum design for the lift-fan door actuators. The ship trials took four days longer than planned owing to weather, according to F-35 Joint Program Office spokesman Joe Dellavedova. The testing, including 72 vertical landings and short takeoffs, took place Oct. 3-21. BF-2 and BF-4, the two jets used for the ship trials, returned to the NAS Patuxent River, Md., test facility on Oct. 21.
NEW DELHI – India is likely to open the commercial bids of the two shortlisted vendors for the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) in the first week of November. A Defense Ministry official said the vendors – French Rafale International and European consortium Cassidian Eurofighter – will be invited to witness the opening of their bids on Nov. 4.
BEIJING — South Korea is moving rapidly into the demonstrator phase for a stealthy combat drone that it does not expect to field until late in the next decade.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Oct. 24 - 26 — 49th Annual SAFE Symposium, Grand Sierra Resort & Casino, Reno, Nev. For more information go to www.safeassociation .com Oct. 24 - 26 — Aviation Week A&D Programs, Phoenix, Ariz. For more information go to www.aviationweek.com/events
NEW DEALS: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems will supply the Italian air force with two additional MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft and three Lynx Block 30 synthetic-aperture radars under a $15 million contract, part of Italy’s plan to build its fleet to six each of Lynx-equipped Predators and Reapers. The French navy, meanwhile, plans to upgrade its four Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeyes for $180 million and provide Argentina with a commercial off-the-shelf avionics upgrade for five Lockheed Martin C-130Hs, for $166 million. The U.S.
Click here to view the pdf Top Aerospace & Defense Programs 2011-2020 — Warship Top Aerospace & Defense Programs 2011-2020 — Warship Warships Top 10 Programs Per Category I
HELPING HANDS: What to do with a satellite that has reached the end of its useful life? Under the newly launched Phoenix program, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is hoping to demonstrate the robotic removal of space apertures and antennas from decommissioned satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Getting there, however, will require several steps.
The Senate Armed Services Committee indicates the U.S. may step up the use of drones and counter-artillery gear to counter attacks and artillery strikes against U.S. forces in Afghanistan emanating from inside Pakistan. In a strongly worded speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Oct. 21, committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) built on the concerns of Adm. Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about Pakistan supporting and providing safe havens for terrorist networks that are attacking U.S. troops.
BOUNCING BACK: The worldwide launch industry is recovering from its market downturn and should total $53 billion from 2011 to 2020, according to Forecast International. This would include production of 693 launch vehicles. Despite the uptick, there is still a dearth of commercial contracts. “The lack of commercial customers has forced launch operator United Launch Alliance (ULA) to focus almost solely on government contracts,” says William Ostrove, the report’s author.
The top priority for the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program is to deliver ships that meet the current requirements at or under the contracted costs, says Rear Adm. James Murdoch, LCS program executive officer.
PARIS — Europe’s first two Galileo navigation satellites reached orbit Oct. 21, separating from their Soyuz rocket upper stage less than four hours after blasting off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou. The mission also marks the first launch of a Soyuz rocket outside Baikonur in Kazakhstan or Plesetsk in Russia. It is the first of two planned additions to Kourou — already home of the Ariane 5 — which soon will be augmented by the Vega launcher as well.
LONDON — The German government is now formally acknowledging planned cuts it wants to make it its defense procurement program to go along with a broader reform of the armed forces, including scrapping its involvement in the Lockheed Martin-led Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) program. With the Pentagon already having signaled it would not continue with the tri-national missile defense effort beyond the development phase, the German government now says it will pass entirely on Meads. It will also reduce its Patriot inventory to 14 systems from 29.
NEW DELHI — An Indian air force (IAF) MiG-29 crashed into a mountain during a night-flying exercise in the northern part of the country Oct. 18, the second crash this month and the seventh IAF MiG fighter to go down this year. According to air force officials, two MiG-29s from western air command took off from Adampur in Jalandhar in northern India on Oct. 18 for an exercise in high altitude, and one of them crashed into a mountain at around 8:30 p.m. local time.
HARD BALL: It’s taxes, or else, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, taking a hard line when it comes to ongoing budget negotiations in the U.S. Congress. “This is all going to be determined by one word: revenues,” declares Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). Republicans, he says, have been unwilling to consider tax increases as a way to reduce the deficit by more than $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.
“Flying Humvees” being designed by AAI Corp. and Lockheed Martin have both made it through to the second phase of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Transformer program to demonstrate a fly-drive tactical vehicle. Transformer is a four-seater that must be able to drive off-road, survive small-arms fire, and rapidly reconfigure into an aircraft that can take off and land vertically and be flown without pilot training. Prototype demonstrations are planned for mid-fiscal 2015.
NASA will store some rocket engines, slow work on others and study still more as it struggles to squeeze the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) Congress has ordered into a flat, $3 billion annual budget for development. Early flights of the SLS will use surplus space shuttle main engines (SSMEs) and, as side-mounted strap-ons, the five-segment solid-fuel motors developed for the terminated Ares I crew launch vehicle’s first stage.
HOUSTON — Funding for NASA’s commercial crew space transportation services initiative appears headed for funding problems that could undermine the agency’s efforts to regain the independent U.S. human launch capability that lapsed with the shuttle program’s retirement earlier this year, members of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) warned Oct. 21.
CANADIAN UPGRADE: Canada has awarded a C$1.064 billion ($1.052 billion) contract to General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada for a comprehensive upgrade of the Canadian army’s fleet of LAV III combat vehicles. The upgrades will include a double-V-hull, more armor protection and energy-attenuating seats, all intended to provide crews with better protection against improvised explosive devices. A bigger engine and a more robust driveline and suspension will be part of the package.
NASA has re-targeted the launch of the trailblazing Npoess Preparatory Project (NPP) weather satellite for Oct. 28 — a one-day slip to accommodate engineering evaluations prior to installation of the payload fairing on the United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. The launch window at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., extends from 2:48 a.m. to 2:57 a.m. PDT, (5:58 a.m. to 5:57 a.m. EDT). The launch previously was delayed by two days for hydraulic and exhaust system repairs.
