PRICE POINT: Don’t believe Lockheed Martin when it claims the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be comparable in cost with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, says Chris Chadwick, president of Boeing Military Aircraft. Lockheed says the F-35A will cost $65 million at peak production rate, but argues an F/A-18E/F costs about the same when the price of separately purchased systems such as targeting sensors and helmet displays are included. Not so, according to Chadwick, who says the F/A-18E/F’s “go-to-war” unit flyaway cost is $53 million in 2010 dollars.
BEIJING — China has renewed its polar-orbiting weather satellite group with the in-orbit verification of the Fengyun 3B. With the satellite now going into service alongside sibling Fengyun 3A, China will have a global observation interval of 6 hr., down from 12 previously. Fengyun 3B was subject to half a year of in-orbit checkouts after its Nov. 5 launch.
ARMY Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., Stratford, Conn., was awarded on May 23 a $207,133,531 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the procurement of 15 UH-60M aircraft for the Sweden’s armed forces and government furnished equipment to contractor furnished equipment. The work will be performed in Stratford, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 31, 2012. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, AMCOM Contracting Center, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-08-C-0003).
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee’s version of the defense appropriations bill slashes $2.3 billion from research and development accounts compared to what President Obama had requested and $524 million from the U.S. Army’s troubled Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (Emarss). The subcommittee is scheduled to debate and vote on the Republicans’ draft of the bill on June 1.
Space shuttle main engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne last week sent out notices of upcoming layoffs to 69 workers at Kennedy Space Center. The layoffs take effect July 31, the date the company’s four-month, $36.9 million contract extension with NASA for support of the space shuttle main engines ends. The Florida layoffs are part of 300 job cuts across the company.
NEW DELHI – India is expected to approve a deal with France for upgrading around 50 Mirage 2000 supersonic fighters, providing an additional boost to French company Dassault Aviation, which also is bidding for the Indian air force’s $11 billion program to purchase 126 fighters. The Mirages were procured from France, and the upgrade project would cost around $2.4 billion.
BEIJING — China will send its Chang’e 2 lunar probe to the second Sun-Earth Lagrangian point next month, laying groundwork for Martian missions. The opportunity to send Chang’e 2 into deep space from Earth has resulted from the good condition of the spacecraft as it approaches the end of its lunar observation mission, says the China Academy of Sciences.
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.
