AEROSPACE AWARDS: NASA has awarded five sole-source contracts to Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., for independent assessments of selected NASA programs. The contracts last through November 2018 and have a total maximum value of $658.25 million.
A Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) trainer jet crashed April 28 in southern India during a routine sortie barely a week after an advanced light helicopter, also developed by the state-owned company, went down near the Indo-China border. “The intermediate jet trainer [IJT], prototype aircraft S-3466, was carrying out routine flight testing when it met with a mishap in the afternoon. Both of the test pilots onboard ejected safely,” HAL says in a statement. The company has begun an accident investigation.
REMEDIAL ACTION: An Australian defense ministry review of the MRH-90 has recommended that the multirole helicopter not be added to the “Project of Concern” watch list, but it wants contractor Australian Aerospace to “implement a remediation plan to improve the availability of the helicopters by addressing engineering and reliability issues.” The review was ordered in February by Defense Minister Stephen Smith and Defense Materiel Minister Jason Clare after the program suffered delays of 12 months for the navy’s helicopters and 18 months for the army’s aircraft.
Unmanned aircraft are useful for countries that can afford them, but many of the world’s air forces, governments and agencies cannot sustain long-term spending on training, personnel or force structure that UAVs require. A cheaper option is light, Predator-sized, manned aircraft equipped with sensors and weapons designed for the UAV market.
NEW DELHI — The Indian army’s artillery buy remains snarled in a maze as British defense and security company BAE Systems has opted not to bid on a program for 1,580 towed guns.
LOS ANGELES —Bolstered by its recent second-round NASA Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev2) win to continue development of the Dream Chaser spaceship, Sierra Nevada Corp. is revealing new details of its plan to conduct full-scale drop tests in 2012 using the Scaled Composites-developed WhiteKnightTwo mothership.
Sept. 28, 201I IFEMA, Madrid, Spain This event provides a forum for knowledge delivery and information exchange on defense sustainment in Europe. Attendees will benefit from fist-hand information from Military and Defense agencies on how they’re overcoming current challenges and changes facing maintenance and sustainment, including budgets, cutbacks, and shifting mission requirements. Co-located with MRO Europe! Learn more and register today at www.aviationweek.com/events
HOUSTON—NASA’s Mission Management Team (MMT) is looking to May 2 at 2:33 p.m. EDT, as the earliest it can make a second bid to launch space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-134 mission to the International Space Station, following the failure of primary and secondary Auxiliary Power Unit fuel-line heaters during an April 29 countdown.
The U.S. Navy has released $1.2 billion for construction of the 14th Virginia-class submarine (SSN-787) to General Dynamics Electric Boat, marking the beginning of production of two submarines per year on the Virginia-class program.
FAR TO GO: Retired Gen. Lance Lord, former commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, says “there is a lot of work to be done to align the government’s operational requirements and timetables with the commercial constraints of the private sector when it comes to the details of acquiring, designing, manufacturing and deploying payloads into space.” Still, hosted payloads on commercial satellites are an opportunity for the U.S. government to leverage commercial investments to provide access to space, Lord stresses.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Preparations for the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-134 mission, the next-to-last flight in the shuttle program, remain on schedule for a launch attempt at 3:47 p.m. EDT April 29. Workers here completed the load of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for the ship’s Power Reactant Storage and Distribution (PRSD) system and began installing the first of 10 mid-deck science experiments on April 28.
BEIJING — Enlargement of the Japanese F-X fighter program is under consideration as the repair of all 18 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries F-2B trainers damaged in the March 11 tsunami looks increasingly unlikely.
BELGIAN LIFT: The Belgian ministry of defense on April 28 placed its transport aircraft under the European Air Transport Command (EATC) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Since it was set up in 2010, the EATC has conducted nearly 3,500 missions, including 65 aerial refuelings and the medical evacuation of 400 patients. The EATC will eventually number 200 personnel, including 22 Belgians. In the future, it could include other operators of the A400M.
LOS ANGELES — Scaled Composites marked a dramatic increase in the test rate of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) by completing two glide tests over five days, including a 16-min. 7-sec. glide on April 27 that represents the longest flight to date.
DO OVER: Financial analysts covering ManTech International, which provides information technology services to federal agencies for national security programs, say a major countermine services contract — which accounted for 21% of the company’s fiscal 2010 revenue — will be recompeted by the military. Analysts at Lazard Capital Markets say ManTech management expects a contract decision in November. “In our opinion, further multiple expansion hinges primarily on the successful recompete of countermine,” the analysts say.
HARD TIMES: Signaling that the U.S. defense budget is likely to come under more pressure from the White House as much as anywhere else, Leon Panetta, President Barack Obama’s choice to succeed Robert Gates as defense secretary, says his first job will be keeping the country safe. But fiscal discipline will not be far behind. “This is also a time for hard choices,” Panetta said at a White House press conference April 28 announcing his Pentagon nomination. Gates was widely praised at the event, including by Panetta, for his stewardship.
HOUSTON — Russia’s 42 Progress cargo craft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 27, initiating a two-day flight to the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver nearly three tons of propellant, water, oxygen, research gear and other equipment.
NEW DELHI — The U.S., Russian and Swedish aviation companies that have been cut from the race for India’s estimated $11 billion fighter jet program say they are still keeping their options open and will request a debriefing on the decision. French defense company Dassault Aviation’s Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon were the only teams shortlisted for the Indian air force’s (IAF) technical selection for the 126-fighter Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (Mmrca) program, a defense ministry official says.
NEW DELHI — Indian scientists are on the path to develop an airborne missile-intercept system that employs high-powered lasers to destroy missiles during their boost phase. The Laser Science & Technology Center (Lastec) at India’s secretive Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has been building up technologies that can intercept missiles early in their flight.
For the Hawker Beechcraft/Lockheed Martin AT-6 light attack aircraft team, the mantra is to produce the right weapon effects. “If you are talking about counterinsurgency target sets, you want to be able to pick the right weapon and precisely place it where and when it needs to be there,” says Dan Hinson, AT-6 demonstration and test manager and chief test pilot for the team. “That requires persistence and network-centric command and control.”
LOOSEN UP: One question emerging now that India has eliminated U.S. contenders for its Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft program is whether the U.S. will further relax defense technology export restrictions to keep domestic production lines open (Aerospace DAILY, April 28). “In the 1950s and 1970s when the U.S. restrained or reduced its defense spending, policy shifted to exporting advanced weapons to strategic partners,” note analysts at Capital Alpha Partners.
