The U.S. Air Force’s financial and operational future lacks “complete certitude,” but the auguries are nonetheless grim, says the chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz. In a nutshell, the budget is “likely to continue to flatten” and buying power likely to decrease, Schwartz says.
Sierra Nevada Corp. is moving into fabrication of the aeroshell structures for its planned Dream Chaser lifting-body crew vehicle, after winning NASA approval for the tooling needed to build the hardware.
HYDERABAD, India — India is developing a homegrown computer operating system (OS) to ward off hacking and data theft. V.K. Saraswat, head of India’s Defense Research Development Organization (DRDO), says that India’s new OS will significantly increase cybersecurity.
LONDON — MBDA has completed the latest test in the development program for a French-British warhead designed to improve the ability to defeat hardened, deeply buried targets. The system uses a precursor charge with a follow-through penetrator to destroy hardened bunkers, which could house command-and-control and sensitive military research facilities. The second trial, this one last month at the Biscarrosse missile test range in France, involved a sled test in which the follow-through bomb penetrated the target and exited the other end.
U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command failed to correctly administer a ship maintenance contract covering three global regions during the past four years, a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report says. “In October 2006, the Navy awarded a contract to Fincantieri Marine Systems North America (FMSNA) for ship maintenance services to be performed in Bahrain, Japan and Texas,” the IG says in its report, dated late last month. “Navy contracting officials did not properly manage this contract.”
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).
