NAVAL AIR STATION LEMOORE, Calif. — Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) crews are ramping up flight training and practicing air-refueling exercises here at Naval Air Station Lemoore, in readiness for ferrying the country’s first Boeing F/A-18Fs across the Pacific by the end of the month.
LONDON — Britain will pursue the acquisition of a “niche fleet” of medium helicopters, eventually, to replace the Royal Air Force’s Pumas toward the middle of next decade, officials have indicated. A nearer-term Puma replacement had been one element of the Defense Ministry’s Future Medium Helicopter program, which was finally abandoned as part of a yet-again revised helicopter acquisition strategy announced in December 2009.
BEIJING — China is studying the design of a Moon rocket in the class of the Saturn V, as the Obama administration proposes canceling the U.S. successor to the Apollo launcher, Ares V. The country also is developing another new rocket, the “medium thrust” Long March 7, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology says. This new launcher joins the Long March 5 heavy rocket and the Long March 6, which was mentioned last year and is now defined as a “small-thrust” launcher. Long March 5, 6 and 7 will form a family of rockets, it says.
COLUMBUS, Miss. — U.S. Army aviation leadership has discovered 22 capability gaps it wants to address in light of discoveries it made during a recent analysis. According to Col. Brian Diaz, with TRADOC Capabilities Management, the Army is briefing senior leaders on the results of Aviation Study II and the associated analysis. “We’re still milling through it to make sure we got it right,” he said, adding that the full report would be unveiled in April.
CASH FLOW: Appearing before the Iraq Inquiry March 5, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown rejected any suggestion of cash constraints having been imposed on the U.K. Defense Ministry in buying equipment to support the British involvement in the operation. Brown, who was the finance minister at the time of the war, told the inquiry that if the military asked for funding for equipment for the operation, then the money was made available.
LONDON — The seven partner countries buying the Airbus Military A400M and industrial lead EADS have come to terms over how to handle several billion euros in cost overruns on the military transport aircraft. Governments will inject €2 billion ($2.7 billion) more into the program and provide €1.5 billion that would be recouped on future exports. To help EADS, pre-delivery payments also will be accelerated through 2014.
The U.S. Navy’s Next-generation Jammer (NGJ) is slated for operations in 2018, and depending on the winning design, it is expected to allow the ability to invade enemy networks from the air, according to industry sources with insight to the effort. NGJ is expected to have the software to generate a data stream and place within it wave forms and algorithms that can see what is going on inside that network and, at some point, take over control of the network if desired, or perhaps just rest there, relaying data to friendly forces.
NUCLEAR POSTURE: The world still awaits the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, once expected Feb. 1, but a few things already are known: it will entail cuts to the nuclear arsenal, and it could redefine how such weapons would be used. But the details of those policies are what matter, and the details apparently are what’s holding up the review, now expected by April. Numerous think tanks suggest a heated debate is still going on over whether there should be a new nuclear policy declaration. Options include everything from declaring the U.S.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has set a May 18 launch date for its Venus Climate Orbiter, dubbed Akatsuki, on the 17th mission for the Mitsubishi H-IIA medium-lift booster from the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. After a six-month transit, the spacecraft, first known as Planet C, will explore the Venusian atmosphere from highly elliptical orbits of 300 x 80,000 kilometers (185 x 50,000 miles). The orbits will be inclined 172-deg. and take 30 hours to complete.
LONDON — Finmeccanica has announced better than expected 2009 results, showing a marked improvement in all key parameters and giving managers confidence that 2010 will confirm substantially stable or slightly improved performance despite the slow economic recovery and market conditions.
Scaled Composites has begun preparatory flight testing of the White Knight Two launch aircraft equipped with the pylon that will be used to carry Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spacecraft to its launch point around 50,000 feet.
NASA is planning to launch its replacement for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) climate monitoring spacecraft in February 2013, while keeping the rebuilt spacecraft as close to the original as possible. The first OCO was lost during launch on Feb. 24, 2009, when the fairing on its Taurus XL launch vehicle failed to properly separate after liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. (Aerospace DAILY, July 20). Orbital Sciences built both the OCO spacecraft and the Taurus, and will build the OCO replacement as well.
Boeing’s so-called NewGen Tanker, a 767-based design for the U.S. Air Force KC-X competition, will feature a new refueling boom and a flight deck based on the 787 commercial transport. Company officials announced March 4 that the aircraft will be based on a 767, but they declined to identify the 767 variant. An artist’s concept of the design appears to point to a 767-200.
After SES and Eutelsat, it’s Telesat’s turn to post solid results for 2009, demonstrating that the fixed satellite service (FSS) sector is showing no signs of wavering from economic stress.
The U.S. Air Force has checked the third Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) spacecraft into service after completing its in-orbit testing. Its Dec. 5 launch on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV completes the first block of the broadband constellation that Boeing is building to replace the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS). Each WGS has about as many capabilities as the 10-satellite DSCS combined.
NEW YORK — The U.S. Defense Dept. is aggressively pursuing alternative energy programs that can provide stable and cost-effective power for numerous operations.
One of the U.K. Royal Air Force’s (RAF) newest command centers has no aircraft, boasts a staff of just 20 and operates from a windowless bunker in the heart of the U.K. Yet it is a key component in an increasingly vital international effort to survey, map and understand the largest and arguably most complex battle zone of all.
Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens is taking personal responsibility for the company’s poor performance on the multinational Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, and he says he plans to keep his top program executive, Dan Crowley, in place.
ROME — An Iranian affiliated organization involved in smuggling dual-use equipment toward Iran has been dissolved following combined action by the counter-proliferation arm of the Italian external intelligence service AISE and the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) police and border control force.
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has successfully completed a set of rigorous actuator tests, which agency managers hope is a sign that the problem-plagued rover mission has finally turned a corner. “The great news last weekend is that the final actuator that we were having problems with has passed its two-times life test,” Associate Administrator for Science Ed Weiler said during a Space Foundation breakfast in Washington March 4. “So — knock wood — the actuator problem on MSL, which has been the biggest problem, seems to be behind us.”
YAOGAN LAUNCH: The ninth spacecraft in China’s Yaogan series of remote sensing satellites will be launched within days. The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern province of Gansu says a Long March 4C rocket will be used for the launch of Yaogan 9. The Yaogan group is growing rapidly. Two were launched in December.
A National Academies panel is recommending NASA beef up funding for its suborbital research program and assign a suborbital lead who would report to the agency’s associate administrator for science.
FIDAE ON: The massive earthquake that rocked Chile in late February will not prevent the country’s major air show from going on as scheduled, organizers announced March 3. The show will run March 23-28 at Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport. Unofficial reports from Chile indicated the show’s site escaped damage even though the airport’s passenger terminal and infrastructure were badly hit.
