Senior U.S. defense and Lockheed Martin officials have wrapped up a semi-annual Joint Executive Steering Board meeting with international Joint Strike Fighter partners in Rome, a defense official says. The Nov. 11 session came just after the chairmen of a White House-chartered deficit-reduction commission proposed sharply curtailing U.S. orders for the single-engine F-35.
TURKISH TURN: Turkish Technik is branching out into the design side of manufacturing as part of its 2010-2015 strategic plan to double revenue, potentially moving from just commercial maintenance repair and overhaul work and into defense. The company wants to design its own tools instead of buying them, as well as designing cabin interiors, trolleys, seats and galleys.
AEROSPACE UP: Concerns over China’s and North Korea’s military buildups and ongoing Indian-Pakistan tensions will help drive Asia Pacific’s military aerospace procurement to $70.64 billion by 2016, according to Kunal Sinha, a Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific consultant in the group’s aerospace and defense practice. Sinha says the market will see a compound annual growth rate of 5.8% from 2010 to 2016, with newfound humanitarian missions adding to traditional military requirements in driving military aerospace spending.
NEWPORT RIF: Northrop Grumman will lay off about 380 salaried workers at its Newport News, Va., shipyard complex in what is the first reduction there in more than a decade, the company said Nov. 12. Matt Mulherin, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding-Newport News, called it a “very difficult decision,” but said it was necessary to hold down costs for the company and the U.S. Navy. “This is a necessary step to improve efficiency across the organization,” he said.
Australia and the United States will work together to develop options for increased U.S. access to Australian training, exercise and test ranges, consider prepositioning of U.S. equipment in Australia, and develop options for greater U.S. use of Australian facilities and ports, Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith said Nov. 10.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Nov. 16 - 21 — AVIATION WEEK Airshow China, Zhuahai. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/events Nov. 18 - 19 — Air Force Association’s Global Warfare Symposium, “Adapting to Challenges and Exploiting Opportunities,” The Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills, Calif. For more information go to www.afa.org/events/NatlSymp/2010/default.asp
SECURITY BOOM: Service providers—not hardware suppliers—will dominate the U.S. homeland security landscape in the near future, according to Kunal Sinha, a Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific consultant in the group’s aerospace and defense practice. For instance, the Obama administration’s plans for the Defense Department’s homeland defense budget have allocated a majority of funding toward security, enforcement and investigations mission areas. The overall homeland security budget has grown 6.2% from 2008-09.
LONDON – The U.S. Defense Department says foreign military sales (FMS) for the past fiscal year reached $25.2 billion, with another $6.4 billion in other security cooperation deals. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency notes that its combined deals now topped $30 billion for the third straight year. The FMS total is slightly below the level achieved in the prior two years, although still well above the five-year average. The combined Fiscal 2010 total of $31.6 billion also is a drop-off from the more than $37.9 billion in sales seen last year.
Boeing has moved into a permanent production line at Boeing Field in Seattle for installation of mission systems into the 737-800 platforms used for the U.S. Navy’s P-8 maritime patrol aircraft. The new line is located in the 14-10 bay, commonly called the Thompson Building, which has served multiple uses over the years, including 737 assembly facility and B-2 bomber wing production.
There appears to be an emerging upside – improved intelligence gathering – to London’s defense budget cutting. Operationally, British forces may be linked to those of France to compensate for shortages in unmanned reconnaissance, strike aircraft, aircraft carriers, troops and airlift. The value of that merger is being questioned because the strength of the military and defense spending is slipping in both countries.
Bengaluru – India last week successfully flight tested the indigenously designed and developed Kaveri engine during Flying Test Bed (FTB) trials at the Gromov Flight Research Institute (GFRI) in Russia. In its first flight, the engine flew for more than one hour up to at an altitude of 6,000 meters (19,685.04 ft.) at a speed of Mach 0.6. Engine control, performance and health during the flight were found to be excellent. With this test, the Kaveri engine has now completed a major milestone of the development program.
U.S. Air Force officials have ruled out the Japanese-made liquid apogee engine (LAE) as the culprit for the failure of the first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite to reach orbit as expected, says Erin Conaton, undersecretary of the Air Force.
SHIP SUPPORT: Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding of Newport News, Va., has been awarded a $189,214,000 contract modification as part of the planned increment of detailed design engineering work supporting construction of the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78).
A draft document issued by the chairmen of a White House-commissioned panel on reducing the federal deficit recommends scrapping the Lockheed Martin F-35B short-take-off, vertical landing (Stovl) fighter outright, along with the General Dynamics Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and curtailing production of the Bell-Boeing MV-22 Osprey, all as part of a 15% defense procurement cut that only begins to try to help the U.S. rein in its budget deficit.
MOSCOW – Russia’s ground forces are preparing to field a new unmanned aircraft, plugging a capability gap in their arsenal that was highlighted during the 2008 conflict in Georgia.
Nov. 30 - Dec. 1, 2010 Munich, Germany Gain cost-effective best practices and strategies for engine MRO planning, new technology implementation, navigating maintenance contracts, green processes and compliance issues. Register now - http://www.aviationweek.com/events/current/mroeng/index.htm Click here to view the pdf
PARIS – Sagem has delivered the first prototype sensors for the main telescope on the Franco-Chinese SVOM gamma-ray mission. SVOM, or space-based multi-band variable object monitor, is being built by French agency CNES and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study gamma-ray bursts — the most violent events in the Universe after the Big Bang — and related phenomena. It is to be launched in 2015 as the successor to the Swift telescope developed by NASA, Italy and the U.K..
Preliminary analysis of the space shuttle’s Discovery’s leaking Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP) shows a misaligned seal, a NASA spokesman said Nov. 11. “Not to get ahead of the engineering investigation, but they’re analyzing the flight seal, which they found wasn’t aligned properly. The team plans to install a new GUCP ... connectors, seal, etc., by tomorrow,” Kennedy Space Center spokesman Allard Beutel said in an e-mail to Aviation Week.
Cyberwarfare is sending everyone from U.S. Air Force commanders to the newest recruit back to school. Air Force Space Command (AFSC) planners, for example, are ensuring that senior Air Force commanders understand cyberoperations and do not hinder their introduction into the service as warfighting tools.
WEBB STUCK: The James Webb Space Telescope Independent Comprehensive Review Panel said late Nov. 10 that the minimum cost to launch the planned Hubble successor would be $6.5 billion for an earliest launch date of September 2015 – far above the $5.1 billion in the Fiscal 2011 presidential budget request in February. In turn, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said he agreed with the findings and that he was shaking up JWST managers in NASA headquarters and nearby Goddard Space Flight Center, Md. “The cost performance and coordination have been lacking,” he said.
