Boeing’s hold on a $323 million intelligence aircraft project for the U.S. Army has been dealt a blow after a government audit showed procurement missteps in the source selection.
RETURN TO FLIGHT: Deeming it a “recovery show,” Paris Air Show organizers say the June 20-26 event will help mark the revival of the global aerospace and defense industry. They said March 22 that an Su-30 is expected to fly, and possibly a Su-32, while the Pentagon will show off at least 13 aircraft, including Lockheed Martin F-16Cs, Boeing F-15Es, a Lockheed C-130J, and a Boeing C-17A. Several Bell Helicopter Textron military helicopters also will be exhibited.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) and XCOR Aerospace are planning a joint effort to develop a low-cost, upper-stage engine in the same class as the venerable RL-10, using technology XCOR is developing for its planned Lynx suborbital spaceplane. The two companies have been testing actively cooled aluminum nozzles that XCOR is developing for its liquid oxygen/kerosene 5K18 engine for the Lynx, a reusable two-seat piloted vehicle the company plans to use for commercial research and tourist flights.
BEIJING — The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has sent two Boeing C-17 Globemasters to Japan with a water cannon system for cooling at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station. The apparently urgent deployment follows the dispatch immediately after the March 11 earthquake of another Australian C-17 to Japan for disaster relief missions. It also comes less than a week after the government decided that the RAAF’s four C-17s were so useful that it should buy a fifth.
Based on two recent reports, the U.S. Navy should revisit its long-term shipbuilding plan and the way it looks at constructing its vessels. At the very least, the Navy must get a better grasp on just how many ships it wants or needs in the coming three decades — and for which missions those ships need to be built.
BEIJING – Power cuts are a bigger problem for Fuji Heavy Industries than earthquake and tsunami damage to suppliers, Fuji says in remarks suggesting that aerospace supply-chain problems in Japan will be temporary. All of Fuji’s product lines are influenced by the difficulties, says a spokesman for the company, whose aerospace products include Japanese military aircraft and major assemblies for foreign aircraft builders, including Boeing.
BENGALURU, India — India’s defense ministry has introduced a bilateral proposal under the United Nations banner to combat the growing threat to marine assets being posed by pirates. This comes in the wake of the Indian navy recently capturing 61 Somali pirates from the Arabian Sea. The finer points of India’s new proposal figure in the ministry’s Annual Report for 2010-11 delivered to the Indian parliament. The report says the increased incidence of piracy in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is an issue of serious concern.
When Congress returns to Washington next week, it will begin work on what is likely the last in a series of stopgap spending bills keeping the government running in this fiscal year, says Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.). The spending package is likely to include funding for the Defense Department, along with domestic programs. “I don’t see defense being pulled out,” the House Armed Services committee member said after remarks at the 9th Annual U.S. Missile Defense Conference and Exhibit on March 21.
AIR FORCE L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace, Madison, Miss., is being awarded a $314,623.67 firm-fixed-price contract for contractor logistics support for the C-12 aircraft for Pacific Air Force, Air Force Material Command, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Defense Security Corporation Agency, consisting of maintenance, repair and support functions for seven months (including phase-in) from April 1 through Oct. 31, 2011. The location of performance is Madison. OC-ALC/GKSKH, Tinker AFB, Okla., is the contracting activity (FA8106-11-D-0002-0001).
HOUSTON — Russian federal space agency Roscosmos has scheduled an early morning April 5 launch for the Soyuz TMA-21/26S spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) with cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev and NASA astronaut Ron Garan, following a review of a Kvant-V communications system failure. The launch with the three Expedition 27 crewmembers from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is slated for April 5 at 4:18 a.m. Moscow Standard Time, or April 4 at 6:18 p.m. EDT.
MDA BUDGET: Current stopgap bills are funding the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Ground-based Midcourse Defense program at a reduced budget of $320 million, says Rep.
The new Northrop Grumman shipbuilding spin-off, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), will feature a mixed bag of opportunity and risk. Starting out with no small amount of debt, HII is promoting the consistently financially rewarding nuclear shipbuilding work done by its Newport News, Va, yard and the promise of better – and more secure – performance from its Gulf yards.
LONDON — Even as the U.K. looks to be entering a new phase of Libyan operations with a heavier emphasis on direct attack rather than standoff weapons, the country is preparing for the possibility of having to quickly replenish some of its cruise missile inventory. The U.S. and U.K. have combined to fire more than 120 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles since the start of operations on March 19. The U.K.’s launches have come from a Trafalgar-class submarine.
LIBYAN OPS: U.S. Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, who heads up U.S Africa Command and is currently tasked with leading Operation Odyssey Dawn over Libya, told reporters March 21 that while the coalition had launched 12 more Tomahawk missiles and flown about 60 sorties over Libya during the day — over half of which were performed by European jets — “no one who is part of this coalition is on the ground.” He also said that aircraft from France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and the U.K.
Though early work on the first two land-based “Aegis Ashore” missile defense sites was sole-sourced to Lockheed Martin, U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly says that the prime contractor on a third site will be selected through a competition. O’Reilly approved a justification for sole-source work based on the need to deploy the system quickly, by 2015. He made his comments in response to a question from an audience member at the 9th Missile Defense conference in Washington March 21.
LONDON — The Dutch defense ministry is projecting the 30-year life-cycle cost of operating 85 Joint Strike Fighters to be 12% higher than earlier estimates.
The U.S. Army will use a General Atomics’ MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAV this spring to flight-test a new system of multiple sensors that can be controlled by ground troops or aircraft crews. Called Triclops, the system adds a sensor under each wing to the fuselage sensor carried by UAVs. If Triclops works as well in flight as in the laboratory, the Army will deploy it to Afghanistan as soon as December so combat forces can test it in operations, says Tim Owings, Army deputy project manager for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., St. Louis, (FA8651-11-D-0035), and Raytheon Co., Missile Systems, Tucson, Ariz. (FA8651-11-D-0036), are being awarded a $20,000,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for integrated precision ordinance delivery system (IPODS) Phases II-IV; research and development. The work will be performed in St. Louis and Tucson. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Two proposals were received in a full and open competition under a broad agency announcement. AFRL/RWK, Eglin AFB, Fla., is the contracting activity.
Key officials in the U.S., Italy and Germany – the three partner nations working on the Medium Extended-Air Defense System (Meads) – have agreed on an abbreviated flight-test program following a decision by Washington last month to leave the partnership prior to production.
NASA’s troubled James Webb Space Telescope could one day be used to look for the signatures of life on extrasolar planets, according to the director of Ames Research Center. Pete Worden told the Space Transportation Association the big infrared telescope could perform spectroscopy on light from a star passing through the atmosphere of one of its planets in the habitable zone, where water could be expected to be in the liquid state.
