SUPER TRIALS: The USS Jason Dunham, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, will be delivered to the U.S. Navy this summer, having recently completed its last significant milestone trial. On May 20, the 58th ship of its class finished a “super trial” — a combination builder’s and acceptance trial geared to mature ship classes. The ship is expected to be officially commissioned in November.
PARIS — Thales head Luc Vigneron says Thales remains open to resuming discussions with Safran on pooling electronics assets, provided conditions are acceptable. Thales and Safran broke off talks recently when it became clear the two companies could not identify a business case for pooling the assets, which were centered mostly on the companies’ optronics activities (Aerospace DAILY, May 13). But the French government, which has been pushing the rationalization move as a way to decrease its R&D costs, cried foul.
THINKING AHEAD: Airbus Military is pondering the future development of its light and medium families of military transport aircraft, the C-212, CN-235 and C-295. Regarding the C-212, the company is working with program partner Indonesia to drive further cost out of the light military transport, while in the medium arena it has looked at a number of options in the 16-21-ton-class turboprop aircraft, dubbed C-XX.
A request for information (RFI) from industry on how to human-rate commercial spacecraft designed to take government astronauts to the International Space Station offers considerable latitude for “tailoring” safety requirements to the new approach envisioned in NASA’s Fiscal 2011 budget request.
BENGALURU, India — The official first flight of India’s Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) is set for May 23. Designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), the light chopper had its unofficial first flight on March 29. Since then, HAL’s Helicopter Complex has test flown the aircraft as many as 20 times to check various flight parameters. The LCH is based on the Dhruv platform and features a glass cockpit.
LONDON — South African missile manufacturer Denel Dynamics is aiming for the first test firing of its A-Darter dogfight air-to-air missile from a Saab Gripen by the end of this year. Ground-launch shots of the imaging infrared-guided missile will conclude this month. The development program is scheduled for completion by mid-2012. South Africa is developing the A-Darter with support from Brazil.
The U.S. Defense Department is improving in its major weapons acquisitions, according to nonpartisan congressional auditors, but it has a ways to go to institutionalize recent reforms — and the Pentagon may still have to cut the number or size of its programs now just to meet expected budget pressures in the future.
PIECE BY PIECE: The fifth segment of an Ares I first stage was moved into the test stand at Alliant Techsystems’ (ATK) facility in Promontory, Utah, last week, in preparation for the second ground test firing of the rocket Sept. 2. Data from the test will be analyzed using last September’s ground test, as well as the results of the Ares I-X launch in October 2009, according to ATK. The Obama administration has proposed scrapping the Ares I in favor of nurturing commercial systems for transporting humans to low Earth orbit (Aerospace DAILY, May 20).
PARIS — Arianespace has been selected to launch Britain’s new Skynet 5D satellite, an Astrium-built unit set to be orbited in the first half of 2013. Together with a contract for Intelsat 17 awarded earlier this week, the Paris-based launch provider says it now has seven telecom orders so far this year, including two unannounced, and five dedicated Soyuz missions. The Intelsat 17 order was transferred from Sea Launch, which is still in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and could not meet Intelsat’s late 2010 target launch date (Aerospace DAILY, May 18).
Rolls-Royce’s Next Generation Nuclear Propulsion Plant (NGNPP) will deliver what the company calls “a step change in safety, capability and availability” for submarine propulsion. But its significance may go well beyond this application. The genesis of the NGNPP was in 2007 when the U.K. announced plans to replace Vanguard submarines. This means spending £11 billion-£14 billion ($16.8 billion-$21.4 billion) on four new subs, to be operational in the 2020s.
The latest in a series of requests for information (RFIs) from NASA under its proposed Fiscal 2011 budget lists six “flagship” space testbeds costing $400 million to $1 billion each that would push technologies needed for exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
The Pentagon needs to do a better job developing and managing acquisition contracts for expanding Afghanistan war needs than it did during the high-tempo days of the Iraqi conflict, according to a recent report by the Defense Department Inspector General (IG). “The effectiveness of contractor support of expanded U.S. operations in Afghanistan and other contingency operations could be compromised by the failure to extract and apply lessons learned from Iraq,” the May 14 report says.
HOUSTON — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the new Russian “Rassvet” module on May 20, installing filters, fans and air ducts in the compartment delivered and attached to the orbiting laboratory earlier this week by the crew of the shuttle Atlantis.
Only a month into the Australian government’s competition for new maritime helicopters and still a year away from a contract award, an interesting twist has been introduced into the battle between the Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin MH-60R and the Eurocopter NH-90. According to reports in the Australian press, the Australian government hid for 28 days the fact that it had to ground its first Eurocopter NH-90s after an aircraft suffered a catastrophic engine failure and had to limp back to base on a single engine.
LONDON — The Netherlands is looking to upgrade the software on at least 75 of its F-16s to cure some existing shortfalls and boost safety. The software upgrade to the M6.5 standard also is being made with an eye to keeping the fighter viable until the end of the decade, when the F-16 is expected to be phased out in favor of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
MOSCOW — The first of two new presidential Tupolev Tu-214PU aircraft for the Russian government logged its first flight on May 19. The Tu-214, built by the Kazan Aircraft Manufacturing Association (Gorbunov KAPO), is to serve as an airborne command center and presidential transport in cases where the existing heavy four-engine widebody Ilyushin Il-96-300PU cannot land.
HOUSTON — Atlantis astronauts Steve Bowen and Mike Good replaced bulky batteries on the International Space Station’s oldest solar module during a spacewalk on May 19, after unsnagging a power and data cable that prevented the shuttle crew from making a thorough post-launch damage inspection of the ship’s heat shielding. The seven-hour outing was the second of three spacewalks scheduled for the Atlantis crew this week.
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NASA is on the verge of releasing a request for information (RFI) from industry on commercial crew vehicles to carry its astronauts to the International Space Station, and wants to work with commercial providers on an “incremental” transition away from government-operated human spaceflight to low Earth orbit.
Despite the U.S. military’s increased focus on counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the greatest geopolitical challenges of this century may lie “slightly to the east” in the Asia-Pacific, requiring renewed commitment to that region, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) says. The U.S. should make clear that a strong, “responsible” China is welcome in the region, he said. “Our first challenge is how can our military maintain its primacy over adversaries intent not on matching our strengths but rendering them irrelevant.”
