BERLIN — German transport and economics/technology ministry heads met during the ILA 2010 conference here to try to iron out differences holding up approval of the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) weather satellite system. Ministry of transport dissatisfaction with the selection of a Thales Alenia Space-led team to negotiate a contract for the space segment of the €3.3 billion ($4.4 billion) system threatens to delay the start of development. The ministry represents Germany at Eumetsat, which will own and operate MTG.
France has quietly begun operations with the hand-launched DRAC unmanned aircraft — also known as Tracker — in Afghanistan. The first of the 120 UAVs that EADS has delivered to the French army have now started to gather imagery for the intelligence squadrons of brigades deployed as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, according to industry officials. French special operations forces have been using the Elbit Skylark.
PARIS — European Space Agency (ESA) head Jean-Jacques Dordain says Europe will not embark on development of a cargo return capsule to serve the International Space Station until the ISS partners agree on common transportation requirements.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. and BERLIN — A decline of more than 20% in the value of the euro against the U.S. dollar is bolstering the competitiveness of Airbus and other European aerospace manufacturers while eroding a pricing advantage that a weak dollar has provided to Boeing and U.S. suppliers for several years.
BERLIN — Despite a pledge to cut its budget by €85 billion by 2014, the German government will maintain space and aeronautics research spending, senior government officials say.
NEW DELHI - With financial resources scarce, many Asian countries have been receptive to Boeing’s idea of forming a consortium for its C-17 heavy-lift transport aircraft similar to the one implemented by NATO, although it is likely to take a couple of years to work out the details, according to the company.
SATELLITE ORDER: Thales Alenia Space has contracted to supply a 40-transponder Ku-band satellite to Eutelsat to boost bandwidth at its 21.5 deg. E. long. position over East Africa. The spacecraft, W6A, will increase capacity at the slot 50% when it is launched in the third quarter of 2012. Intended to replace W6, launched in 1999, the satellite will be equipped with a broad beam across Europe to North Africa and Central Asia and two dedicated high-power beams for regional coverage to North Africa and the Middle East.
BERLIN — Industry managers this month are wrapping up an assessment of the Medium Extended Air Defense System’s life cycle cost, a key figure for the U.S., Germany and Italy as they mull the program’s future. The activity comes as Meads is heading to complete its system-level critical design review (CDR) in August, which will open the door to flight tests to begin in early 2012. The international team of Lockheed Martin and MBDA has already completed 75% of the system-level CDR and all the reviews of major hardware elements.
The U.S. Defense Department’s planning, programming, budget and execution (PPBE) system is out of sync with warfighting operations and the Pentagon knows it, according to an independent survey of inside officials and top executives. The American Society of Military Comptrollers sponsored consultancy Grant Thornton in surveying 1,014 civilian and uniformed members of the Defense financial community between January and April, and their conclusions were released in a May report.
TANDEM COCKPIT: Elbit Systems and Grob Aircraft AG have joined forces to develop a new tandem cockpit version of the side-by-side seating Grob G120TP turboprop trainer that is on display at ILA. “One aircraft in two seating configurations will be a true paradigm shift in the global training concept (resulting in) new standards in cost and training efficiency without having to compromise quality,” note the partners. The G 120TP features an Elbit three-screen avionics suite with a high level of mission simulation and capability for visual tactical training.
Oshkosh Defense announced on June 3 that it has received an undefinitized award valued at more than $67 million to reconfigure more than 420 MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) variants for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Work will begin in August on the program, with delivery expected between September and November 2010. Oshkosh has received awards valued at more than $5 billion for 8,079 M-ATVs — 3,448 of which have been shipped to Afghanistan — which include things like spare part kits, upgrade kits and support.
BERLIN — A deal that could be worth up to 1 billion Swiss francs (nearly US$1 billion) was signed here June 9 between EADS Defence and Security and RUAG in the latest move to help Eurofighter win the Swiss fighter competition. If fulfilled, the deal will count for nearly half the $2.2 billion in offsets Switzerland requires in its 100% industrial offset policy. Each of the three competing fighter teams has promised to exceed that number by a significant amount.
Lockheed Martin has won a $50 million U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory contract to develop an infrared surveillance sensor capable of providing at least 65 steerable video streams from an unmanned aircraft. The Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Infrared (Argus-IR) system is a follow-on to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (Darpa) Argus-IS program, under which BAE Systems has built and flown a 1.8-gigapixel electro-optical sensor pod able to downlink up to 65 “Predator-like” video streams.
BERLIN — Eurocopter and Boeing have formally joined forces to study how to meet emerging trans-Atlantic interest in a future transport helicopter (FTH).
Boeing subsidiary Insitu has provided FAA with a ScanEagle system for research to help develop recommendations for integrating unmanned aircraft into the national airspace. The system, including two ScanEagle small unmanned aircraft, has been delivered to FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, N.J., under a cooperative research and development agreement signed by Insitu.
South Korea’s space agency scrubbed its latest attempt to launch the KSLV-1 rocket June 9 when the launch-pad fire suppression system accidentally tripped, spraying about 100 tons of chemically treated water toward the waiting launch vehicle. Officials of the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said it was too soon to determine when they will try again to launch the KSLV-1 and its experimental Earth-observation satellite payload. The launch window, based on notifications to air and sea traffic, extends until June 19.
The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General (IG) has determined that the U.S. Coast Guard’s boat crew communications system (BCCS) is unreliable, placing Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSST) at risk. The BCCS is “unreliable as a communications system to support the MSST in accomplishing its maritime law enforcement and homeland security missions,” the IG says in its recent report. Of the five MSST field units the IG visited, systematic problems existed with BCCS reliability in each of them.
TOKYO — The Japanese asteroid sample return probe Hayabusa made its final scheduled trajectory maneuver June 9 to further pinpoint its June 13 landing within the southeast portion of the Woomera Prohibited Area in Australia. The spacecraft is scheduled to release a recovery capsule that may contain samples from the asteroid Itokawa, then burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule retrieval area — incorporating the effects of wind — is now officially set within an area a few tens of kilometers wide and a couple of hundred kilometers long.
After years of neglect, U.S. rotorcraft technology is to get a boost from a Pentagon research program that aims to fly a shape-changing rotor offering substantially more payload and range with significantly less noise and vibration. Three teams have been awarded contracts for the initial phase of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Mission Adaptive Rotor (MAR). Program managers plan to fly an adaptive rotor by 2018 to ready the technology for the next U.S. military rotorcraft program.
By the end of July, the U.S. Army may finally be ready to release its formal request for proposals (RFP) for the Common Infrared Countermeasures (Circm) system, a process that has been in a holding pattern for months. What had been announced as a mid-March release date for the RFP was delayed until the end of July, according to an announcement made by the Army at an industry day in late May. The draft RFP has been released already and competitors are preparing their offerings.
The tough economy and its effect on U.S. Navy programs extends beyond the boundaries of the U.S., Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said June 9 in an address at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “Our excellence in all areas of combat and operational capacity, in our presence and our partnerships, comes at a cost,” Mabus said. “And the costs keep rising.” Ensuring affordability is not a new goal for the Secretary of the Navy, he noted, but the difference now is that the economic environment “confronts not just our own country, but every country across the globe.”
