LONDON — The Germany military expects to deploy its Mantis counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) system to Afghanistan in 2012. The air force, which is taking over responsibility for that mission area next year, will deploy the system to protect the German base in Kunduz. Mantis should become operational in 2011. The German government has ordered two C-RAMs from Rheinmetall, which is an evolution of the Skyshield system.
ISR DOWN: As U.K. government officials plan to retire the country’s five new Raytheon-built, Sentinel R-1 radar, ground-surveillance aircraft under the Strategic Defense and Security Review, some suggest the Lockheed Martin F-35. But one U.S. insider disputes the notion. “The notion that the F-35 can provide the coverage [and endurance] that Sentinel can is the product of a staffer who has no idea of physics and the capabilities of either aircraft,” says a U.S.-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance specialist with insight into the program.
METEOR TEST: The Swedish defense armaments agency, FMV, notes that the eighth Meteor missile firing was recently completed from a Gripen during trials at the Vidsel test range in the north of the country. “The purpose of the test was to verify the model on separation of the missile from the aircraft. The impact from the missile exhaust plume on the aircraft engine was also studied,” according to FMV. The datalink’s performance also was verified. The test shot completes the second phase of Sweden’s effort to integrate Meteor on Gripen.
LUNAR ICE: New findings from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) confirm the presence of water ice in both the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions as well as areas that receive occasional sunlight. Analysis of data captured by LRO and LCROSS when the latter mission purposely crashed its spent Centaur upper stage into the Moon’s Cabeus crater shows that volatiles including methane, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide made up more than 20% of the resulting impact plume.
LONDON — The French government is in the final stages of awarding a contract for integration of the MBDA Meteor ramjet powered air-to-air missile on the Rafale strike fighter, according to a French defense ministry official. France would be the second country to pay to integrate the weapon onto its combat aircraft, following Sweden, which recently made the decision to do so on the JAS-39 Gripen.
LONDON — Airbus CEO Tom Enders is applauding the British government for its willingness to go through with sweeping budget cuts unveiled in recent days. “I’d like to salute the courage of your government for such deep cuts,” he tells the U.K.’s Aviation Club. “The decisions made on equipment cannot be translated into an anti-aerospace policy.”
Testing for Virgin Galactic’s planned commercial suborbital spaceflight service extends beyond expanding the flight envelopes of SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft — the company has been “testing” its first group of customers, some 370 people from 35 countries who have paid or put down deposits for the $200,000 ride.
MOSCOW — Russian technicians are running electrical checks on the Soyuz TMA-20 capsule at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, after replacing its descent module as a precaution against damage it may have sustained in a rail mishap en route to the launch site. A state commission decided to substitute the descent module from Soyuz TMA-21, which was essentially ready for shipment, after workers found the original module’s shipping container had been damaged during the trip from Moscow.
LONDON — The full financial impact on BAE Systems of the U.K. government spending review is not yet known, but the company says it is expecting only “relatively modest adjustments to its overall financial outlook from these changes.” Still, the Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) is “expected to result in some reduction in growth in 2010,” the company says in an interim management statement issued Oct. 21.
BEIJING — Japan plans to increase its submarine fleet to 24 boats from the current 18, Kyodo News reports. The larger submarine force will increase the country’s capacity to maintain patrols in nearby water, especially the East China Sea, the news agency reports amid a period of unusually tense relations with China. The country will do this by extending the operational lives of its submarines, which have traditionally been kept short to hold down the size of the fleet while maintaining a building rate of one a year.
NEW DELHI — Eurocopter’s new subsidiary in New Delhi is part of its strategy to step up sales and marketing efforts in India. Established Oct. 20, the New Delhi location is Eurocopter’s tenth subsidiary in Asia. Eurocopter also has signed an agreement to establish a joint maintenance, repair and overhaul venture in Mumbai with Indian government-owned Pawan Hans Helicopters. The MRO should be operational by the end of 2011.
The U.S. Marine Corps is about to get leaner, according to Lt. Gen. George Flynn, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, who says the service is planning on ditching 10,000 of the current 42,000 tactical vehicles it has in its fleet. The Marines have some tough decisions to make when it comes to their ground vehicle fleet. The biggest involves the beleaguered Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), the $2.5 billion, decades-long effort to replace the Amphibious Assault Vehicle.
BENGALURU, India — Indian officials see the offset provision in its future defense contracts as an ideal vehicle to forge partnerships with U.S. industries, establishing a long-term supply chain not only for the country but for global markets. This was the general tone prevailing at the one-day, high-level meeting in Bengalaru between U.S. defense buyers and suppliers and various Indian aerospace companies organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in India (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 20).
ABL FIZZLES: Another attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile using the Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Test Bed failed Oct. 21 when the system did not transition from tracking the target missile’s rocket plume to active tracking. The megawatt-class chemical laser was not fired, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency says. MDA says it is also investigating the “intermittent performance” of a valve in the laser system. A Sept. 1 attempt to shoot down a liquid-fueled missile was terminated early when corrupted beam-control software steered the laser off center. The first test on Feb.
News from the cyber front has been universally bad for the last several years, but there is now hope of progress “in the next several months,” as the U.S. Defense Department rolls out its plans for organizing its cyber operations, says Robert Butler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. “We have a strategy moving forward and a series of operating concepts under consideration that will come together inside a planning and progressing discussion over the next several months,” Butler says.
LONDON — The British government’s Comprehensive Spending Review specifies a £35.7 billion ($56 billion) defense topline spending budget for fiscal years 2010-2011, with slight increases in the coming two years before a reversal again sets in.
LONDON — The Polish defense ministry is evaluating upgrades to its Su-22 and MiG-29 force to sustain its fighter inventory even as it looks to field a new trainer that also would take on light fighter roles. Decisions on the Su-22 are most acute, since the first of the aircraft will reach the end of its service life in 2014. The near-term plan is to add 200 flight hours, or two years of operational life. This would allow delaying a decision on what to do next until 2016, says Tadeusz Pieciukiewicz, a ministry representative.
YEAR OFF: A major government information technology (IT) trade organization in Washington is predicting overall U.S. defense spending will drop from more than $700 billion per year now to $633 billion by Fiscal 2021. Moreover, accounting for expected inflation over the decade, the annual defense budget will have plummeted $512 billion in constant Fiscal 2011 dollars — close to the equivalent of a one-year baseline budget now, excluding war costs.
LOS ANGELES — The General Electric/Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team is designing a minor change to the spacer between the F136’s fan and vane to prevent a repeat of the failure that abruptly stopped tests of the alternate Joint Strike Fighter engine on Sept. 23.
Boeing is due to deliver three more F/A-18Fs to the Royal Australian Air Force in December, which includes the first with the wiring to be upgraded into an electronic-attack aircraft.
