HOUSTON — United Space Alliance (USA), NASA’s space shuttle prime contractor, expects to lay off 320 workers on Jan. 7, in what will be its fourth round of downsizing in response to the shuttle program’s pending retirement. The departures will leave the Lockheed Martin/Boeing joint venture with slightly less than a total of 6,400 personnel at Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center to support the last two scheduled shuttle missions and possibly a third flight.
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
SINGAPORE — Corruption allegations are hobbling the Philippine military’s efforts to procure helicopters, but delivery of trainer aircraft and moves to purchase a secondhand Lockheed Martin C-130 appear to be on track. Derco Aerospace, a Sikorsky aerospace services company, appears likely to win a contract to sell a refurbished C-130H to the Philippine air force, according to officials at the service and the Philippine defense department.
NEW DELHI — The Indo-U.K. air force exercise “Indradhanush” will take place at Air Force Station Kalaikunda in East India from Oct. 18 to Nov. 3. The exercise is an effort to share experience and skills and fine-tune procedures for multinational operations, which are likely to occur with greater frequency in the future.
LONDON — The U.K. is expected to kick off a competition next year to modernize the ability of deployed forces to use geospatial intelligence (geoint) products. The effort is intended to produce a cultural shift within the British armed forces, pushing geospatial intelligence to lower levels of command and proliferating the availability beyond a small group of specialists.
LONDON — NATO’s Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) is eyeing up to €930 million ($1.29 billion) in contracts it may award in the next two years, although several are contingent on decisions that have yet to be made.
HYDERABAD, India — India plans to loft a series of dedicated satellites for defense purposes in the coming years, boosting the country’s capability to scan multiple activities on and across its borders. “We are looking at launching one or two satellites every year to fulfill the requirements of all three military formations,” says V.K. Saraswat, chief of India’s Defense Research and Development Organization.
FLYING HUMVEE: Lockheed Martin is to develop concept designs for a tactical vehicle that can fly as well as drive under an almost $3-million contract for Phase 1 of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Transformer program. The company is teamed with Piasecki Aircraft, which developed the ducted-rotor Airgeep in the late 1950s, and vehicle engineering company Ricardo. AAI is also working on Transformer, teamed with autogyro developer Carter Aviation Technologies, Bell Helicopter and Textron Marine & Land Systems (Aerospace DAILY, Sept. 29).
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
AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., Wichita, Kan., was awarded a $12,375,297 contract modification for a future beyond line of sight (BLOS) communication capability with the advanced extremely high frequency family of advanced BLOS terminals on the B-52. At this time, $10,011,418 has been obligated. ASC/WWVK, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8107-05-C-0001; PO0058).
LOS ANGELES — Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are reviewing data from the first free-flight of the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) space vehicle, which took place in perfect weather conditions at Mojave, Calif., early in the morning on Sunday.
NASA and its backers on Capitol Hill will be pushing for funding to go with the Fiscal 2011 reauthorization bill for the space agency that President Barack Obama signed into law Oct. 11. Enactment of the three-year, $58.4-billion authorization measure marks a hard-won compromise between the White House, which initially wanted to hand off U.S. human access to space to the private sector, and members of Congress with a strong need to buffer their constituents from the employment effects of the White House plan.
NEW DELHI — Russian Navigation Information Systems (NIS)-Glonass will sign a 50-50 joint venture agreement with Antrix Corporation by the end of October to market NIS satellite-based services in India, AVIATION WEEK has learned. Antrix is the marketing arm of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The terms of the joint venture are not known.
HOUSTON — The Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft carrying Russians Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka and American Scott Kelly docked smoothly with the International Space Station late on Oct. 9, restoring the orbital lab to a full complement of six crewmembers. The linkup with the Poisk module occurred with the Soyuz spacecraft operating in automated mode at 8:01 p.m. EDT. TMA-01M is the first Soyuz equipped with a digital flight computer for improved guidance and navigation and multi-colored instrument displays.
AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., Seattle, Wash., was awarded an $11,399,257 contract which will design, develop, integrate and test a new radar target data processor and transmitter as part of the Next Generation Identification Friend or Foe 40/45 system development and demonstration phase. At this time, the entire amount has been obligated. ESC/HBSKI, Hanscom AFB, Mass., is the contracting activity (F19628-01-D-0016 0058 02).
Questions over the need for the U.S. Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle continue to spark concerns, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). “The Navy and the Marines envision that future conflicts will require a ‘persistent presence in littoral areas’ characterized by land-based anti-ship cruise missiles, mines, and small, fast suicide boats,” the CRS notes in its September report.
PARIS — Lightsquared, the U.S. mobile satellite service operator that plans to roll out a coast-to-coast hybrid wireless network in partnership with Nokia Siemens, has announced the slate of suppliers that will work with Nokia to build the terrestrial segment. Lightsquared is controlled by Harbinger Capital Partners.
ARMY AAI Corp., Hunt Valley, Md., was awarded on Sept. 24 a $70,715,213 contract for the purchase of 142 laser designator payloads and 61 bore sight tools in support of the Shadow unmanned aircraft system. The work is to be performed in Hunt Valley, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 31, 2010. One bid was solicited with one bid received. AMCOM Contracting Center, CCAM-AR-A, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-08-C-0023). AIR FORCE
MOSCOW — Sukhoi says it will deliver the first Su-35S multirole fighter to the Russian air force by the end of the year. Last year the Russian military ordered a batch of 48 fighters with the deliveries to be completed by 2015. On Oct. 11, Sukhoi reported that the first production Su-35S is already in final assembly at the KnAAPO facility in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, with preparations underway for flight testing.
SMART LAUNCHER: Japan’s next-generation launch vehicle for scientific payloads will be designed to launch five days after stacking, using the latest in intelligent avionics for autonomous checkout with oversight from controllers using laptop computers. According to information presented at the 61st International Astronautical Congress in Prague, the planned Epsilon rocket will have only two-thirds of the lift capacity of the M-V launcher it will replace, but will be able to orbit its 1,200-kg. (2,640-lb.) payloads for about a third the cost of the M-V.
NEW DELHI — India is looking at fitting its Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighters with Russian Phazotron Zhuk-AE active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars. The X-band radar can track 30 aerial targets in the track-while-scan mode and engage six targets simultaneously in attack mode. By 2018, the Indian air force inventory is expected to comprise around 300 Su-30MKIs.
