EVAC SENSORS: FLIR Systems, Inc. will provide the U.S. Army with $12.4 million worth of its Star SAFIRE II stabilized multi-sensor systems to be deployed on UH-60 helicopters in support of medical evacuation operations. The new order adds to the 200-plus Star SAFIRE systems already deployed on UH/HH-60 Medevac helicopters. Work on the delivery order will be completed within the next 12 months, according to FLIR.
HOUSTON — Discovery’s astronauts attached the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo to the International Space Station early April 8, after hoisting the big cargo container from the shuttle’s cargo bay with the orbital laboratory’s robot arm. They floated into Leonardo, which was filled with six tons of scientific research equipment and other supplies, just before 8 a.m. EDT. The gear will be unloaded over the next week.
The U.S. Navy is upgrading its Consolidated Automated Support System with an electronic version (eCASS), which could save the service nearly $2 billion over the next decade or so. The CASS test equipment was designed in the 1980s and finished production in 2003, Program Manager Capt. Mike Belcher tells Aviation Week. “The real benefit of moving to a new system is a reduction in ownership costs,” he says. “We estimated it would cost $2 billion to continue to maintain CASS through 2022.”
LONDON — Airbus Military on April 8 completed the first flight of MSN002, the second A400M airlifter to join the flight test campaign that kicked off in December. MSN002 is the first A400M not to be fitted with the optional refueling probe. The aircraft completed a 4-hour-50-minute flight from the Seville, Spain, airport collocated with the A400M final assembly site. The flight occurred a few weeks later than planned. The heavily instrumented aircraft will be used for aircraft performance and TP400D engine-certification activities.
Proposed work assignments under NASA’s turnabout Fiscal 2011 budget request would spread the agency’s five-year, $6-billion total budget increase — and the new jobs that may go with it — across the agency’s 10 field centers. In announcing the field center work assignments, Administrator Charles Bolden said April 8 the specific effects on public and private-sector jobs remains to be seen, but he suggested that the $6 billion in additional NASA spending over the current five-year budget runout will translate into more space workers.
DARK WIND: Although offshore wind turbines provide clean energy to the U.K., they also create blind spots in radar defenses. The London Times Online reports that the U.K. Defense Ministry has signed a deal with Lockheed Martin for the installation of a TPS-77 radar system at Remote Radar Head Trimingham in the fall to protect a new offshore wind farm with 88 turbines. Although Lockheed Martin would not discuss the contract, a company official confirmed the radar will be manufactured in Syracuse, N.Y.
After completing an 80-flight test phase that proved the tailless flying-wing X-48B could be controlled safely at low airspeed, NASA expects to fly a modified version of the Boeing blended wing-body demonstrator in about a year to test a revised configuration and additional capabilities. The X-48C has the vertical tails moved inboard and fuselage extended aft to shield the noise from two turbofan engines, which will replace the three turbojets powering the subscale, unmanned X-48B.
LANGLEY AFB, Va. — Improved fifth- and new sixth-generation manned and unmanned aircraft are being designed with wide-area optical and electronic surveillance, explosive and nonexplosive weapons and an intricate view of the surrounding networks that might affect them. Also part of the advanced fight formula will be communications, including command and control, that can function even when under network attack.
LIVE WARHEAD: Lockheed Martin’s Hellfire R-model missile recently flew its first live warhead test. The so-called Romeo missile, an AGM 114R Hellfire II, features a multi-purpose warhead that allows pilots the flexibility to select their warhead variant and engage a broad range of targets currently covered by multiple Hellfire models. The proof-of-principle flight test featured a lock-on-after-launch engagement of a stationary target board at 1.6 miles.
Darmstadt, Germany — Scientists soon will be able to access more precise and comprehensive data on sea and land ice, which is invaluable for the study of seasonal weather and climate change, following the April 8 launch of Europe’s CryoSat-2. The €75 million ($100 million) spacecraft, built by EADS Astrium, lifted off successfully aboard a Dnepr booster from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:37 p.m. Central European Time.
DRUG BUST: A U.S. Navy Fire Scout made its first drug bust April 3 off the deck of the USS McInerney. The MQ-8B Vertical Take-off and Landing UAV (VTUAV) launched for a regular test flight when the ship acquired a suspected narcotics “go-fast” boat on its radar. The Mission Payload Operator completed testing and received permission to pursue the boat. The Fire Scout monitored the boat for three hours, feeding real-time video back to the McInerney. The U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment eventually moved in and seized about 60 kilos of cocaine.
SAME SUCCESS: The Northern Virginia Post of the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) has selected Janice Tuchman, editor in chief of Engineering News Record (ENR), as the winner of its 5th Annual Award for Journalism in Recognition of Architecture or Engineering Achievement. ENR and Aviation Week are both owned by the McGraw-Hill Companies. Under Tuchman’s tenure, the ENR team won four Jesse H. Neal business journalism awards in 2008.
HOUSTON — The Discovery astronauts overcame a failed rendezvous radar to dock with the International Space Station early April 7, two days into a resupply mission intended to equip the orbiting laboratory for operations well beyond the scheduled retirement of NASA’s shuttle fleet late this year. The linkup allowed the shuttle crew to quickly transmit recorded imagery from a day-old damage scan of the shuttle’s heat shielding to imagery analysis experts in Mission Control here.
LONDON — The way forward for the Netherlands on the specific structure of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter involvement is not expected to crystallize until midyear. With a caretaker government operating in the country and the Pentagon in the midst of restructuring the F-35 program, Dutch Defense State Secretary Jack de Vries signaled to lawmakers that a number of issues will remain in flux for several months. Chief among those is determining the actual average procurement unit cost and the life-cycle costs projected for the F-35.
LONDON — The British military continues to increase its use of industry for depth maintenance of fixed and rotary wing platforms, with Tornado GR4 strike aircraft and WAH-64 Apache attack helicopter projects reaching milestones on April 7.
Already struggling with an inadequate supply of talent, the aerospace and defense industry finds itself competing with commercial information-technology providers — and even its own customers — for graduates to fill job openings in the growing cybersecurity field. “There’s a great need for young talent, but availability does not match demand,” says Charlie Croom, Lockheed Martin vice president for cybersecurity solutions.
JSF AVIONICS: Lockheed Martin has flown the first F-35 equipped with mission-system avionics. Aircraft BF-4 is equipped with the APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar, electronic warfare and communication/navigation/identification systems and integrated core processor loaded with the initial Block 0.5 mission-system software. Electro-optical targeting and distributed-aperture sensors will be added later.
PARIS — French aerospace and defense companies expect to sharply boost investment outlays this year as they prepare for an expected rebound from the crisis that has affected the industry.
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems division in Ridley Park, Penn., is ramping up production and personnel to meet U.S. and international demand for its CH-47F Chinook helicopter, according to the company’s new vice president of H-47 programs, Leanne Caret. The factory increased production from three to four aircraft per month in March, “and we’re going to six [per month] in mid-2012,” Caret tells Aviation Week. “In parallel, we’re reconstructing a factory around our workforce.”
LONDON — Pilatus Aircraft says that order intake in 2010 continues to be “sluggish,” making it only the latest of several business aircraft makers to report the crisis is far from over. “We have not yet seen the back of the global financial and economic crisis,” the company said in releasing its 2009 results, adding that “we must now focus our attention on security sales of the PC12NG this year and next.”
