LONDON — EADS and the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) are looking into bribery charges leveled against a unit of the aerospace and defense giant by a former employee. The employee, who worked for GPT Special Project Management, made the charges as part of a legal case he is bringing over his claimed unfair dismissal.
Endeavour’s astronauts checked out flight, reaction control and communications systems as they prepared to end the 16-day STS-134 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with a landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center early June 1.
The dwindling U.S. defense budget has claimed another victim – the Aegis Advanced Capability Build (ACB) 14 – with the U.S. Navy planning to leapfrog to ACB 16. The ACB upgrades for the Navy’s Aegis ship defense shields are meant to enhance the system’s ability to better perform certain missions – such as ballistic missile defense (BMD) – as well as provide the system with an open architecture framework and more opportunity for competition.
NEW DELHI — The Indian Air Force (IAF) has long had big ambitions, and the pending arrival of a new service chief with a broad agenda indicates there will be no easing up in efforts to improve the breadth of the service’s capabilities. The first major restructuring of the IAF’s order of battle, a revival of border air bases to counter Chinese air force deployments and quick acquisitions of weapons and systems to plug capability gaps will be the operational priorities of the IAF’s next chief, Air Marshal Norman Browne, who takes office at the end of July.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) june 2 - 3 — Greater Los Angeles Chapter, Association of the U.S. Army Symposium: Enabling Army Operations: Global Employment. "Supporting the Warfighter with Space, C4 and Cyber Functionality," Long Beach Westin, Long Beach, Calif. For more information go to www.ausa.org/glac
SHORT WEEK: House lawmakers return May 31 for a short but jam-packed week; the Senate is on recess, though Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) will hear testimony about Strategic Command’s fiscal 2012 budget request. The defense appropriations process gets underway June 1. The House Appropriations defense subcommittee will take the first crack at the defense spending bill. Aides and industry sources say areas to watch include Army programs (Aerospace DAILY, May 27), satellite funding, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and upgrades to the F-22 Raptor.
LOS ANGELES — Northrop Grumman’s newly unveiled Firebird optionally piloted vehicle (OPV) is headlining at this year’s multinational Empire Challenge intelligence-sharing demonstration now under way in Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
LONDON — Airbus Military is closing in on the first formal A330 tanker delivery, with the first KC-30A due at Royal Australian Air Force Base Amberley on May 30. The aircraft maker began the ferry flight on May 27. The aircraft is heading from its Madrid production site to Australia via McCarran, Nev., and Hickam AFB, Hawaii. Airbus Military plans to deliver two KC-30As immediately, with two more due this year and the final one in 2012.
The deadline has passed for industry to submit questions to the U.S. Army for its HMMWV (Humvee) Recapitalization program. Questions were due May 27. The official Request for Proposals is not out yet for either the Army or the Marine Humvee recap programs, leaving observers wondering if the services will get together and offer a single program for truck makers to bid on, or pursue separate programs.
STAY OUT: Sikorsky area Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and powerful appropriator and China critic Frank Wolf (R-Va.) are lauding House adoption of language they proposed that seeks to ensure that the Defense Department does not procure the next presidential helicopter or any other defense system or system components from China. The congressmen became alarmed when news reports earlier this year quoted Chinese executives expressing interest in the reborn U.S. Navy and Marine Corps VXX program to field replacement helicopters for the president and other VIPs.
COST BENEFIT?: Eyebrow-raising figures included in background material for last week’s House Science subcommittee hearing maintain that NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) after the space shuttle retires will cost more per pound of payload sent to orbit than either the shuttle or Russia’s unmanned Progress spacecraft. NASA and the CRS contractors — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corp.
COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITY: NASA says it is seeking commercial suborbital flight service providers and payload integrators to support the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program. NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist wants to help “mature crosscutting technologies” to flight-readiness status, as part of the 2010 NASA authorization act and subsequent appropriations.
MOSCOW — Development of the improved Mil Mi-34C1 light helicopter has received a significant boost with Russia’s largest rotorcraft operator, UTair, placing a launch order for 10 units during the HeliRussia 2011 exhibition in Moscow last week. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2012; the contract value was not disclosed.
NO WAY: Lawmakers across Capitol Hill — backed by aerospace and defense industry representatives — are moving to ward off an Obama administration proposal to make federal contractors publish more information about their campaign and political contributions. Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republican senators all introduced similar legislation in their respective chambers May 26 that, if enacted, would prohibit federal collection of such data.
LUNAR PROCESSING: Workers at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., are beginning four months of testing and launch preparation with the twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) spacecraft, which reached the Florida launch site May 20 from Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. in Denver on a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17. Weighing 200 kg (440 lb.) each, the two spacecraft will be launched into tandem lunar orbits on a United Launch Alliance Delta II early in September.
NEW DELHI — France has stopped selling certain military hardware to Pakistan until Islamabad explains its role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and in providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. strike on May 2.
HOUSTON — Space shuttle Endeavour astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff pushed the time dedicated to the spacewalking assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS) past the 1,000-hr. mark on May 27, as they equipped the orbiting science lab with far-reaching aides to future external repair tasks. Also, NASA’s Mission Management Team cleared Endeavour’s heat shielding for a pre-dawn descent to Earth on June 1, based on May 26 inspections of the wings and nose cap using the camera and laser-tipped Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS).
A system enabling solders to use handheld computers to request live and archived video from a wide range of unmanned and manned aircraft is being prepared for operational deployment to Afghanistan by the U.S. Army. Developed by Northrop Grumman for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Heterogeneous Airborne Reconnaissance Team (HART) system allows users to request stored imagery or task aircraft sensors to collect new, real-time video.
NEW DELHI — Singapore’s first locally-built microsatellite, X-SAT, which was placed in orbit by India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, has started transmitting images back to a dedicated facility in the Southeast Asian city-state. The imagery data is being sent to the 13-meter X-band antenna at the Center for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), which initiated the X-SAT project.
HOUSTON — The Endeavour astronauts completed a final damage survey of the heat shielding on the orbiter’s wings and nose cap early May 26, setting the stage for the fourth mission spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS).
A second attempt at a boost/glide flight to demonstrate sustained hypersonic cruise in the atmosphere has been scheduled for Aug. 10-17 after changes following the loss of the first test vehicle in April 2010 just 9 min. into its flight across the Pacific. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (Darpa) first HTV-2 was lost because an adverse roll-yaw coupling on re-entry at Mach 20 exceeded the autopilot’s authority and led to the autonomous flight termination system destroying the vehicle (Aerospace DAILY, April 28, 2010).
