As the U.S. Navy revs up its DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyer production line, the service is also getting the older vessels back into ship-shape condition in preparation for more rigorous deployments to meet expanded ballistic missile defense (BMD) requirements. The Navy this past week awarded new DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer contracts for up to three ships for a potential total of $2 billion, including options. So far this year, the service has signed deals for up to four ships worth up to $2.8 billion.
The F-35s in low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot 4 are expected to exceed their contracted cost target, but fall below the negotiated ceiling price, says Tom Burbage, vice president of F-35 program integration for Lockheed Martin.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) OcT. 12 - 13 — Aviation Week 5th Edition, Lean Six Sigma for MRO Forum - Americas, Crowne Plaza San Francisco International Airport Hotel, San Francisco, Calif. For more information go to www.aviationweek.com/events
Marshall Larsen may soon find himself running an aerospace empire. Larsen is the chairman, president and CEO of Goodrich, which has agreed to be acquired by United Technologies Corp. (UTC ) in an $18.4 billion deal. When the transaction was unveiled Sept. 22, UTC said Larsen would run a new operation that was widely assumed to include Goodrich and UTC’s Hamilton Sundstrand, a leading supplier of aircraft control systems.
HERCULES DELIVERIES: Lockheed Martin has delivered C‑130Js to four new customers in a week. The first units of a planned 37 HC-130J combat-rescue tankers were handed over to U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command on Sept. 24 and Air Education and Training Command on Sept. 29. The first of a planned 69 MC-130J Combat Shadow II transports was delivered to USAF Special Operations Command on Sept. 29. Four C-130Js were delivered to the Qatar Emiri Air Force on Sept. 28 at Lockheed’s Marietta, Ga., plant.
U.S. plans to sell Taiwan upgrades for its Lockheed Martin F-16A/Bs rather than new F-16C/Ds look set to kick-start the market to retrofit the popular fighter with active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars. The proposed $5.3 billion sale notified to Congress includes 176 AESAs, either Northrop Grumman’s Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) or the Raytheon Advanced Combat Radar (RACR). Both have been flight tested in U.S. Air Force F-16s (Aerospace DAILY, Sept. 28).
LONDON — Ultra Electronics is continuing its acquisition spree, adding AEP Networks in a $57.5 million deal. It is the third deal for Ultra this year, with more expected before year’s end. Depending on AEP’s financial results for the current year, Ultra may lay out another $17.5 million for the company.
After multiple attempts to field a single replacement for the Hellfire, TOW and Maverick missiles, the U.S. Army may once again find itself without support for the project. The U.S. Army has been slated to select a contractor to build the so-called Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) by year’s end. Raytheon and Boeing are pitted against Lockheed Martin for the work.
A decade of wartime contracting apparently has not been long enough for the U.S. Defense Department to get its contracting policies straight, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). While the Pentagon has spent $166.6 billion on reconstruction and stabilization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, many of those contracts have not yet been closed, which the report says is “a key step to ensure the government receives the goods and services it purchased at the agreed-upon price.”
NEW DELHI — When India did not shortlist either of the U.S. fighter offerings in its large Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft competition, it raised questions whether something was amiss with the defense-industrial relationship between the two sides. But U.S. industry still looks to have access to this growth market. The latest sign is that after seven months of on-again, off-again talks, India’s effort to re-engine more than 100 of its Sepecat Jaguar strike aircraft is finally moving forward, with indications that Honeywell will land the deal.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) engineers have concluded it may be possible to modify the company’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle to make it fully reusable, a feat SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk says could cut the cost of access to orbit “a hundred-fold.”
HOUSTON — U.S. and Russian flight control teams maneuvered the International Space Station on Sept. 29 to avoid a 4-in. piece of Russian rocket debris and prepare for future Progress and Soyuz dockings. The nearly 3-min. maneuver was carried out using the station’s Russian segment service module engines at 12:45 p.m. EDT, elevating the altitude of the orbiting science laboratory by 2.9 mi. Tracking indicated a moderate risk of an impact between the debris from a rocket launched in 1991 and the station at about 3 p.m. EDT.
MADRID — A huge drop in funding for maintenance activities in the Spanish air force has the service reassessing how it does business and could help drive platform rationalization. While defense spending has come down 18% since 2008, the budget for the air force’s logistics command has seen an even greater drop, plummeting 44%, says Maj. Gen. Pedro J. Abad Gimeno, the maintenance director for the Spanish air force’s logistics support command. “The trend will be maintained in the coming years,” he says at Aviation Week’s MRO Military Europe conference here.
AVX Aircraft, a small Texas company staffed largely by former Bell engineers, has won a U.S. Army contract to study a potential replacement for the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter. AVX joins Bell Boeing, Boeing and Sikorsky in conducting 18-month configuration analysis and trade studies for the Joint Multi Role (JMR) program, which aims to fly two competing rotorcraft demonstrators in 2017.
A top U.S. Marine Corps general acknowledges that while challenges in crafting the F-35 software are likely not insurmountable, Lockheed Martin’s ability to deliver it as currently planned is in question. Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, aviation commandant for the Marine Corps, is “very confident” of short-takeoff-vertical-landing (Stovl) performance in upcoming flight tests on the amphibious ship Wasp, but he is “not as confident” in Lockheed’s ability to deliver software on time.
BEIJING — China’s Tiangong 1 orbital laboratory, successfully launched Sept. 29, will serve as a docking target for three missions over the coming two years as China continues to take measured, careful steps in its manned space program. For the moment, the biggest goal of the program is a 60-metric-ton space station to be placed in orbit by 2020, although Chinese space scientists also hope to launch lunar missions.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — The U.S. Air Force is looking to the space industry for significant improvements in reducing program complexity, launch costs and development time as it struggles to balance national security space acquisition plans for 2012 through 2016 against a flattening budget. “We must adapt cultural changes, look at risk sharing and incentivize contractor teams for extra performance,” says service acquisition chief David Van Buren. “For that we’re focused on acquisition priorities and space is a big player.”
BACK ON: The Swiss parliament has voted to revive the F-5 partial replacement program, reversing a decision the government had previously made to delay the purchase. The move comes as Swiss legislators also have decided to boost defense spending to around 5 billion Swiss francs ($5.6 billion) per year to fund the fighter purchase and fill a hole in modernization funding. It has decided against a special financing mechanism to buy the fighters. The Swiss government has already evaluated the Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and Saab Gripen.
The U.S. Army released the eagerly anticipated program schedule for the HMMWV Modernized Expanded Capacity Vehicle — otherwise known as Humvee Recap — on Sept. 28, and it sets a low rate initial production goal for the first quarter of fiscal 2015. The full schedule calls for a draft request for proposals (RFP) to be released Oct. 6, followed a day later by an industry day. After that, an RFP for the program’s research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) phase is due in November 2011.
If U.S. defense budget cuts stay at $450 billion or less, the U.S. Air Force can maintain all its missions and capabilities but at a reduced capacity, says Lt. Gen. Herbert Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements.
HOUSTON — NASA’s International Space Station program misjudged the cost, schedule and requirements for crew radiation monitoring instruments aboard the six-person orbiting science laboratory, according to a Sept. 29 report issued by the agency’s inspector general, Paul Martin.
HOUSTON — Project Morpheus, a NASA initiative that is developing an autonomous, multi-purpose lander testbed for planetary missions and deep-space technology demonstrations, will be overhauled this fall to prepare for a year-long series of test flights incorporating a hazardous-terrain avoidance system.
L-3 Communications plans to add capability incrementally onto its new company-funded tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft in a push to garner customers in the U.S. and abroad.
NEW DELHI — India successfully test-fired its indigenously developed nuclear-capable Prithvi-II ballistic missile on Sept. 26. The medium-range missile, with a flight duration of 483 sec. and reaching a peak altitude of 43.5 km (27 mi.), has the capability to carry a 500-kg (1,100-lb.) warhead. The test of the missile, which has a maximum range of 350 km, was part of a user trial by the Indian armed forces, defense ministry officials said.
