ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has awarded $360 million in contracts for cockpit, flight management, radar equipment and avionics suite improvements for its MH-60R/S Seahawk helicopters. Lockheed Martin is performing the work on the Seahawks, which are built by Sikorsky Aircraft. The two companies have delivered 85 upgraded MH-60Rs.
LONDON — BAE Systems is paying ₤217 million ($345 million) for Irish cyberprotection software provider Norkom Technologies. The all-cash deal, announced Jan. 14, has BAE paying a 36% per share premium over the stock price on Jan. 13 and a 121% premium over the price on Nov. 25, which was the last trading day before the offer period. Norkom’s board is recommending that shareholders approve the offer.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) JAN. 20 — The Wings Club Luncheon featuring Willie Walsh, CEO, British Airways, The Yale Club, New York. For more information call 212-867-1770 or email [email protected] JAN. 24 - 27 — Institute for Defense and Government Advancement’s “Network-Enabled Operations 2011,” Crystal Gateway Marriott, Arlington, Va., 800-882-8684. For more information go to www.idga.org
NO BMD: French defense minister Alain Juppe is rejecting industry entreaties to spend up to €100 million ($133 million) on ballistic missile defense (BMD) technologies, according to industry officials. Contractors had hoped that Juppe would reverse the anti-BMD policy of his predecessor, Herve Morin, following a NATO agreement in late 2010 approving a plan for territorial missile defense. Separately, Juppe met with his British counterpart, Liam Fox, in Paris last week to gauge progress on a military cooperation treaty between the two countries signed on Nov. 2.
China’s newest combat aircraft prototype, the J-20, will require an intense development program if it is going to catch up with fast-moving anti-stealth technology. In fact, anti-stealth will bring into question all stealth designs. How much invulnerability will current low-observability techniques offer as air defense systems adopt even larger and more powerful active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars?
L-3 Communications subsidiary Coleman Aerospace is preparing its air-launched target, which was put in the spotlight for performance problems last year, for return to flight this summer. Lt. Gen Patrick O’Reilly, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which uses this target for flight testing, announced early last year that he was withholding funding for the short-range system (Aerospace DAILY, March 24, 2010).
LONDON — The British government this year is expected to develop a detailed plan for a mid-life update of Royal Air Force (RAF) Merlin Mk. 3 helicopters to prepare them to take over for retiring Royal Navy Sea Kings.
Continuing uncertainty over U.S. civil space policy is increasingly a safety and economic risk to the nation, according to a new report by the independent review panel charged with overseeing safety at NASA. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) finds a lack of “clarity and constancy of purpose among NASA, Congress and the White House” its primary concern, with repercussions across the space agency.
LONDON — The Norwegian government is in the process of devising a new long-term defense plan due for submission to the country’s parliament during the spring, defense minister Grete Faremo says. As part of the overhaul, the country’s fighter plans also will come into focus again, with the scope of the planned F-35 procurement program under discussion, as well as its funding.
PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) is poised to award EADS Astrium a contract to develop a data relay satellite network that will permit real-time download of the agency’s remote-sensing data.
LOOPHOLE LEGISLATION: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) plans an attempt to free NASA from a requirement that it fund the moribund Constellation Program of exploration spacecraft, which was killed in the new NASA authorization act Nelson helped draft. Under current appropriations language, NASA must fund Constellation until a new appropriations bill for the agency passes Congress. NASA’s inspector general finds the agency will spend as much as $575 million by Sept. 30 on Constellation projects it otherwise would have scrapped.
CHINESE GATES: Defense Secretary Robert Gates left China last week with assurances that the country’s leaders are committed to further bilateral relations with the U.S., but Pentagon officials also came away with newfound doubt over relations between Chinese politicians and military leaders. Gates’s visit was punctuated by the flight test of the stealthy Chinese J-20 fighter prototype (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 12). “The [Chinese] civilian leadership seemed surprised by the test and assured me that it had nothing to do with my visit,” Gates later told accompanying reporters.
The U.S. Air Force is studying a hypersonic road map that calls for development of ambitious high-speed weapons and a high-speed reusable flight research vehicle (HSRFRV), slightly larger than the Darpa-led Blackswift Mach 6 demonstrator canceled in 2008. Both high-speed elements emerged from a government-industry workshop meeting in Washington Dec. 8-9, and covered development priorities designed to maintain the recent impetus in hypersonics gained with the X-51A WaveRider, X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle and HTV-2 hypersonic test.
After a half-decade’s worth of disappointments, the SBInet program—a controversial and problem-plagued suite of sensors, cameras and radar arrayed along the southwestern U.S. border—has been canceled. The program was put on hold by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano last March after a series of missteps and delays getting the program’s technologies off the ground, but the cancellation announcement—while hardly a surprise—comes with a huge question mark: what’s next in border security?
NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program allowed $2.7 million in unallowable and unsupported costs for travel, equipment and other expenses in 2008, according to a audit by NASA Inspector General (IG) Paul Martin.
POLISH PRESSURE: Human factors, including psychological pressure on the pilot to take unjustified risks in poor weather, were cited by the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee in its final report on the Polish air force Tupolev Tu-154M crash on April 10, 2010, which killed all 96 on board, including Poland’s president and much of the military high command. No evidence of aircraft, engine or system failures before the collision was revealed, the report says.
GENOA, Italy — The European Commission and Italy have agreed on the size of disbursements arising out of a dispute regarding the improper use by the Italian government of state development aid for two AgustaWestland aircraft. The ruling on the two programs — the A139/AW139 helicopter and the BA609 tilt-rotor — could have broad repercussions for Europe’s aerospace industry.
LONDON — Britain’s parliamentary defense committee plans to take a closer look at the government’s Strategic Defense and Security Review after raising concerns about the process before the document was released in October. On the eve of the SDSR’s publication, the committee warned that the review may fail to resolve all the questions it was supposed to address. Now, the committee notes it will hold a “major new inquiry into the outcomes of the [SDSR] within the wider context of the National Security Strategy.”
TAX HIKE: The 45% increase in corporate taxes that Illinois’ Democratic leadership, acting in a lame-duck session, agreed to on Jan. 12 as part of a budget-balancing package will not have an appreciable effect on the Boeing Co., a company official says. While Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago from Seattle in 2001, the company does not have a manufacturing presence in the state. Since state taxes tend to be tied to a physical presence in a state and sales are attributable to operations in a state, the increase “is not significant,” the official says.
Paris And Washington — Intelsal thinks there is a good chance it will regain use of Galaxy 15, the wayward “Zombie Sat” that terrorized telecom satellite neighborhoods around the globe until it was brought under control late last month. Galaxy 15 currently has its payload turned off. It is expected to arrive at 93 deg. W. Long. on Jan. 15 for a complete checkout, including validation of three command & control software patches uploaded in December to ensure the incident will not recur, company officials say.
LONDON — Cobham plans to consolidate its operations at several facilities, closing some locations and reducing headcount as part of an extensive cost-savings program. The company this year expects to generate ₤30 million in savings, and ₤65 million in cost reductions are set to be generated from 2013 on. The moves will see most of the company’s work located at 14 sites, although some specialist facilities may remain.
ARLINGTON, Va. — It appears the U.S. Navy has addressed two big question marks for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) fleet — how to replace key module sets that handle littoral and submarine threats, which are two of the key missions for the ship.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off, vertical landing (Stovl) variant of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter may not complete flight sciences testing and shipboard integration until late 2016, even if current efforts to resolve design problems are successful, according to the latest report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test & Evaluation.
PARIS — Astrium says it will report solid results for 2010 but predicts the going will be more difficult this year. The EADS space unit saw sales rise 4% last year, to around €5 billion ($6.6 billion), and orders leap 43%, to €6 billion (discounting a multiyear bulk order for 35 Ariane 5 rockets), belying a warning in January 2010 that activity was likely to soften. No hint of profitability was given, but EADS CEO Louis Gallois says underlying profitability across EADS was still not up to company objectives — 10% of revenues.
