The June 10 story headlined “Pentagon Nominee Panetta Hints At Contractor Cost-Sharing” included the wrong party affiliation for Sen. Rob Portman, who is a Republican. Also, due to a publishing error, the story did not contain corrected versions of two quotes. While the gist of the quotes remains the same, some of the words were different. They have been corrected on the Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN).
Orbital Sciences Corp. will build the next communications satellite for Thaicom plc., a medium-sized hybrid platform set for launch in the second quarter of 2013 on a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9. The regional telecommunications satellite operator, based in Nonthaburi, Thailand, will buy a satellite based on Orbital’s GEOStar-2 platform, equipped with 18 C-band and eight Ku-band transponders, according to the companies. It will be launched on a Falcon 9 flying from Cape Canaveral AFS.
Defense budgets are under the microscope. Business aircraft sales are weak. Fuel prices threaten airlines. So, do tough times spur expansion? Yes, says the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), which has seen a 50% growth rate in its full membership ranks since January 2010. That expansion, which included eight new members accepted in May, reflects an attitude among aerospace and defense (A&D) companies that there is strength in numbers.
NOT SO FAST: A coalition of U.S. trade groups representing most aerospace and defense contractors are calling on the Obama administration to stop using accelerated rulemaking procedures so frequently. In a letter to the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy, the trade groups argue that the quick rulemaking contradicts the administration’s calls for governmental transparency.
ARMY BAE Systems Land & Armaments, LP, York, Pa., was awarded on June 3 an $11,598,005 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the modification of an existing contract to procure Paladin integrated management ballistic hull and turrets. The work will be performed in York, with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2012. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-09-C-0550).
The relatively aggressive testing schedule for the SPY-3 radar changes on the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer class radar suite will require the U.S. Navy to test those enhancements on a ship instead of further using a facility at Wallops Island, Va., specially built for such Zumwalt tests, Navy officials say.
KILLER APP: The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is migrating its Enhanced Quality Imagery Search (Equis) capability into commercial-off-the-shelf handheld devices like iPhones and Androids to give troops in the field instant access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s unclassified imagery. Equis Mobile has been in use since last November, and has received “extremely favorable reviews” from users, the NRO says.
LONDON — The Watchkeeper unmanned aircraft program is one of the first to come under scrutiny from the U.K. Defense Ministry’s Major Projects Review Board, which was created to help monitor large-scale defense modernization programs in a bid to avoid cost overruns and schedule delays.
Lockheed Martin has forfeited $15 million in an available award fee for the liquid apogee engine (LAE) mishap that has caused the U.S. Air Force’s first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) jam-proof communications satellite to take more than one year to reach its intended orbit.
NEW DELHI — Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace expects to start developing a new hypersonic missile, the BrahMos-2, this year. Also, tests for the air-launched version of the existing BrahMos supersonic cruise missile are scheduled to begin next year. “We expect to be able to start the tests of BrahMos missiles launched from aircraft. Various types of aircraft, including Su-30 MKI fighters, are expected to be armed with these missiles,” says BrahMos Aerospace Director Alexander Maksichev.
HOUSTON — The European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle Johannes Kepler boosted the International Space Station (ISS) by more than a dozen miles on June 12, setting the stage for the freighter’s departure as well as the arrivals of Russia’s Progress 43 cargo carrier and the shuttle Atlantis on its 12-day STS-135 mission.
The White House’s new cyber-doctrine says the U.S. will use all means to defend itself, but nobody knows what events will actually merit a response, say specialists with insight into the world of network warfare. Two decades of debate on the subject have not brought the U.S. or anyone else in the world any closer to codifying or regulating the cyber-frontier, says Judith Miller, former general counsel for the Defense Department. She spoke during a Global Security Forum sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies.
LONDON — Downward pressure on U.K. research and technology (R&T) funding for aerospace is persisting, with concerns mounting within the industry over an ability to reverse the trend. Although research and development spending was largely flat in 2010 compared with 2009 levels, total R&T spending was down 1%.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is conducting a planned revision of its Integrated Master Test Plan (IMTP), a comprehensive document outlining test goals for years to come. The first IMTP was unveiled last August by MDA Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly during the annual Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville, Ala.
JSF DELIVERY: Delivery of the last of the original 12 development F-35s is in sight for Lockheed Martin. The final fighter, short-take-off-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) aircraft BF-2, is entering final finishing at Lockheed’s Fort Worth plant and is expected to be delivered to the U.S. Navy’s NAS Patuxent River, Md., test center by early August. BF-2 will be used for radar cross-section testing as well as Stovl flights and is the first F-35B to be fitted with the production-standard Pratt & Whitney F135 engine.
Key lawmakers in the U.S. House may have sliced $9 billion from President Barack Obama’s request for fiscal 2012 defense spending, while also adding millions for Army Abrams tanks and handing down steep cuts for an international missile defense system and the Navy’s purchase of Fire Scout rotary-wing UAVs. On June 14 the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) is scheduled to vote on a draft of the $690 billion defense spending bill for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
A Delta II launch vehicle flying from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., lofted a U.S./Argentine spacecraft on the first leg of a three-year mission to map the salinity of the world’s oceans. The Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft lifted off at 10:20 a.m. EDT, and separated from the upper stage 57 min. later following a brief burn to circularize its polar orbit at an altitude of 408 mi.
The House Appropriations Committee is set to debate a draft version of the fiscal 2012 defense spending bill on June 14 that adds $100 million to encourage more competition on development of the future bomber. A report on the bill providing details of how the $649 billion total should be spent in the eyes of the defense subcommittee began circulating on June 9. Aviation Week obtained portions.
