The U.S. Marine Corps recently released a study on the turn of the Sunni tribes in Anbar, Iraq, against al Qaeda beginning in 2007, and the paper is gaining attention for both its approach and its message, purposeful or not. In a departure from usual U.S. reviews, the Marine study — “Al-Anbar Awakening: Iraqi Perspectives From Insurgency to Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2004-2009” — is from the local perspective and it makes some blunt assessments of the insurgency, including who caused it and what fixed it.
PARIS — France’s defense budget for 2010 is €32.1 billion ($46.7 billion), 2.6 percent less than in 2009. Despite lower spending, new equipment is a priority, as laid out in the defense white paper of June 2008. The 2010 budget will, moreover, meet spending requirements of the six-year (2009-14) military program law, which stresses equipment, reorganization and better conditions for personnel.
The Pentagon’s frenzy to field more unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to support ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has sparked an unintended challenge for the Air Force: paying for and producing the manpower to operate the systems.
The Vietnamese government says Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has given the green light for construction of a second telecom satellite, Vinasat 2, to be launched in 2012.
WHITE TAIL: While the U.S. Air Force plans for space launch technology improvements, Lt. Gen. Larry James, 14th Air Force commander, says he also is exploring how to improve management of the flow of launches, including the possible introduction of a “white tail” concept. “In the past, you have handcrafted a booster for every satellite, especially some of the more complex birds that we have launched. The desire would be not to do that, but to have a standard booster that a satellite can go on late in the flow,” James says.
CYBER READY: The 24th U.S. Air Force, the service’s newest numbered force for cyber operations, has been declared “ready” after a major command readiness assessment by an Air Force Space Command inspector general team. A service statement Jan. 4 said the goal was to evaluate the force’s ability to conduct Air Force network operations, as well as command and control of the service’s network. “While this is great news for the entire 24th Air Force team, they know this is just another key step on the path to operational readiness,” said Maj. Gen.
ITT Corp. on Jan. 5 announced a restructuring of its defense business that is designed to provide end-to-end products — including services and hardware — to Pentagon and intelligence customers rather than merely selling specific hardware. The new division, which represents areas with about $6.5 billion in annual sales, will include three components:
LONDON — No one believes there is any likelihood that the U.K. Defense Ministry will survive the next budget round without cuts, and few can find easy cuts to make. Some treasured projects, programs and capabilities are going to get the ax. At the root of the problem is that in Fiscal 2009-10, the government planned to borrow £175 billion ($285 billion), 12 percent of GDP, the most since World War II. As of November, this was raised to £200 billion, and forecasts suggest that the final total could exceed £220-230 billion.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has moved a step closer to the first flight of its Falcon 9 medium-lift launch vehicle with a 329-second test of its single-engine upper stage, mimicking the burn that will be required to put the company’s planned Dragon cargo vehicle in orbit. That clears the way for the stage to be shipped from the SpaceX test site in Texas to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., by the end of January for integration with the nine-engine Falcon 9 first stage on the path to a launch.
As 2009 drew to a close last week, the news media were full of articles lamenting the stock market’s “lost decade.” The tumultuous ’00s were far from a lost cause for aerospace and defense stocks, however. Shares in many aerospace and defense (A&D) companies doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in value.
The U.S. Marine Corps has rolled out a new weapon in combat: the 62-ton Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV), a tracked, armored vehicle that can clear a lane through mine fields, expose and detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and plow a path though obstacles.
SHARE ALIKE: It was not a failure to collect intelligence that almost led to a disaster in the Christmas Day airline bomb plot, according to President Barack Obama, but rather a failure to share the information properly and act on it. Addressing reporters Jan. 5, Obama acknowledged that the U.S.
NOW AVAILABLE: The team at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility has completed repairs aboard the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon five days earlier than scheduled. The push to finish early was driven by an upcoming Board of Inspection and Survey visit planned for February, according to the U.S. Navy. Work aboard the Chung-Hoon included deck resurfacing and repairs, updating the Vertical Launch System, corrosion inspections and stack preservation and antennae repairs.
PARIS — There is growing concern at Airbus that talks between A400M buyers to renegotiate the firm-fixed price development and production contract may not come to a successful conclusion.
The U.S. Army is hustling to make up a 50-aircraft deficit of Chinook CH-47Fs that looks to stretch until fiscal 2013, according to outgoing Army program manager Col. Newman Shufflebarger. “These are very scarce assets, especially in theater,” Shufflebarger told reporters at a Boeing luncheon near Washington Jan. 5. “We’re ramping up to meet those needs.” Chinook F-model production is at about 2.5 aircraft per month, Shufflebarger said, and the goal is to increase to 3.5 aircraft per month next year.
Bidders for Sweden’s armored wheeled vehicle program for at least 113 vehicles have until midnight on March 9 to provide their submissions to FMV, the country’s defense procurement agency. In releasing its request for quotations, the Swedish government says plans call for a contract to be signed in the second quarter. An initial operational capability for a reduced battalion-sized unit with 91 vehicles should be in hand by early 2014, FMV stipulates, or 54 months after contract award.
PARIS — The British government has finalized the purchase of its seventh Boeing C-17 transport. The decision to go forward with the aircraft purchase came last month as part of a wider budget alignment that included £900 million ($1.45 billion) in additional outlays, with a heavy portion going to troop transport, including the purchase of 22 CH-47 Chinooks. The purchase price was not disclosed. The Royal Air Force (RAF) has ambitions for at least one more of the strategic transports.
The U.S. Army’s newest iteration of its modernization plan has cleared a hurdle with the recent approval to begin Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) of the program’s first increment. A Milestone C production review by the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) on Dec. 22 resulted in the LRIP decision. The Increment 1 package will include a network integration kit, small unmanned ground vehicle, Class I unmanned aerial vehicle, unattended ground sensor and the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 31, 2009).
The U.S. government is embarking on a comprehensive, 20-year program worth as much as $700 million per year to procure commercial satellite bandwidth and services to support the Defense Dept. and state and local agencies, including law enforcement offices.
EARLY DELIVERY: The U.S. Navy took delivery of its newest attack submarine, PCU New Mexico, from Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding on Dec. 29, four months ahead of schedule. New Mexico is the sixth Virginia-class submarine and the third delivered by Northrop Grumman. The two submarines delivered prior to New Mexico took 82 and 71 months to complete, while construction of the New Mexico was completed in 70 months. The early delivery keeps the submarine on track for a 60-month construction span by the end of the Block II contract, according to the Navy.
U.S. Strategic Command has officially assumed oversight of a program designed to better coordinate space situational awareness data with satellite owners and operators. With the new oversight, Stratcom officials will now “incorporate sharing of these products and services into its daily operations,” according to a command announcement. The Commercial and Foreign Entities (CFE) program began as a pilot project in 2004. It allows for registered users to access space surveillance data provided by the U.S. government on the space-track.org Web site.
PARIS — The first NFH90 maritime helicopter is now in the hands of the Netherlands military, the lead customer for the rotorcraft, but the system is still not ready for operational use. Development of the NFH90 has been plagued by problems with a range of systems, including the maritime search radar and tactical navigation system. Those issues have led to repeated adjustments to the project’s schedule.
