Work on a new bomber may have been underway at Northrop Grumman since 2005, when Northrop Grumman X-47 program manager Scott Winship mentioned that the company had proposed to the U.S. Air Force an X-47C with very long endurance, a 10,000-pound-plus weapon load and a 172-foot wingspan — the same as a B-2. The proposal was a response to Air Force interest in a bigger version of the then-ongoing Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) project.
ROME — By Dec. 22 the state-owned Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) will pay Finmeccanica around 172 million euros ($246 million) to buy the company’s 3 percent stake in chip builder STMicroelectronics. The value of the STM shares has been freefalling as a result of the recession, which hit the electronics sector badly. In prior years, STM shares traded at 70 euros each; the selling price agreed to by Finmeccanica and CDP on Dec. 17 is 5.1 euros per share.
FOLLOWING FRANCE: Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Marion Blakey hopes U.S. lawmakers will take note of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposed $50 billion high-tech stimulus when they consider job-creation proposals. Sarkozy’s plan would earmark $9.3 billion for industrial initiatives, benefitting new aeronautics and space projects in Europe. “This makes a great deal of sense,” Blakey tells Aviation Week. “It is certainly the direction we hope the Congress will go when they come back and look at the jobs issue after the new year.” The U.S.
KEEPING TIME: The European Space Agency and French space agency CNES have concluded an agreement to deploy a high-accuracy atomic clock on the International Space Station next year. The clock, Pharao (Projet d’Horloge Atomique par Refroidissement d’Atomes en Orbite), is to be attached to the outside of the station’s Columbus laboratory and combined with another clock, the Space Hydrogen Maser, to form the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES).
The Aerospace Industries Association’s (AIA) latest annual forecast illustrates how huge order backlogs have shielded large segments of aerospace and defense (A&D) from the global economic downturn. But for this late-cycle industry, the next two years may make 2009 seem like the good old days.
EXOMARS PLANS: The European Space Agency (ESA) council has given a final okay to a plan to split the ExoMars exploration mission into two separate missions, in cooperation with NASA. One will be a lander/orbit system to be launched in 2016, the other, a lander/rover system to follow two years later. Both would be launched by the U.S. The council agreed to make 850 million euros ($1.2 billion) available immediately for the European part of the undertaking, and to add 150 million euros at a later date, primarily for operations.
The U.S. Army recently completed its first networked operational tests pairing the developmental Common Controller device with equipment currently in use by soldiers in theater. The Army said the new network capability will prove critical in inaccessible rural areas. The so-called Common Controller and Man-packable Network Interoperability and Network Evaluation Experiment represented the first connection of the Common Controller with Land Warrior equipment.
LOOSE ENDS: Indian government officials and representatives from a consortium led by Raytheon will meet in January to resolve certification issues with the Gagan satellite-based navigation system, and hope to finalize the roadmap for the system, including deployment of six reference stations to complement eight already built, at the end of next year. Once the results of these demonstrations have been modeled, the system can move toward full operational deployment, which is expected by December 2013, officials say.
OVERSIGHT SURGE: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a former state auditor who made a reputation trying to do the same in Washington, is questioning the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the departments of Defense and State whether adequate mechanisms for oversight of contracts in Afghanistan are in place and if the lessons learned in Iraq are being applied to the war there.
NEW OWNERSHIP: SES is the new owner of Protostar 2, a telecom satellite put on the block earlier this year by Protostar, an Asia-Pacific satcom startup currently in Chapter 11. The Luxembourg operator paid $185 million in cash at auction for the Boeing built spacecraft, which carries 22 Ku- and 10 S-band transponders. SES plans to integrate the satellite, launched in May, into the fleet of its World Skies unit.
Iran has launched another missile described as faster and longer-range than others in the country’s military inventory, and officials there claim it is able to evade air defenses through stealth or maneuvering. “[Defense secretary Robert Gates] has seen the intelligence on this latest launch, which, by our count, was on [Dec.] 15th,” says Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. It appears to have been another test shot of the Sejil-2, whose capabilities are getting mixed reviews.
WARSAW PACT: U.S. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher and Polish Undersecretary of Defense Stanislaw Komorowski last week signed a long-expected deal between the NATO allies governing U.S. armed forces in Poland. The bilateral Status of Forces Agreement, signed in Warsaw, will supplement the multilateral NATO Status of Forces Agreement signed in 1951, according to the U.S. State Dept. “This agreement will facilitate a range of mutually agreed activities, including joint training and exercises, deployments of U.S.
SCRUBBED: Arianespace is studying a last-minute anomaly that scrubbed the Helios 2B military reconnaissance satellite launch set for Dec. 17. The problem halted the countdown to an instantaneous launch window, forcing the scrub. The spacecraft and Ariane 5 launch vehicle were safed at the pad and remained in stand-by mode for an early retry, Arianespace said.
The 2010 Joint Operating Environment (JOE) report from the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) will focus more on the economy than previous years’ reports, with a look at “what we think the debt will look like, or how it will affect the joint force commander in the future,” says Rear Adm. Lawrence Rice, director of strategy and policy (J5) at JFCOM.
Eight months after the U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced a renewed interest in technologies for “early intercept” of ballistic missiles, plans are beginning to take shape with a focus on the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for ballistic missile target tracking. Requirements are not yet firm for this capability, but several architecture studies under way will provide data on how the agency will proceed and where it plans to put its funding in the forthcoming budgets.
MOSCOW — Russia replenished its Glonass satellite navigation system with three more spacecraft launched onboard a Proton M with a DM upper stage on Dec. 14. The launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan brings the constellation to 19 working satellites, with two down for maintenance and another waiting to be deorbited.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is refining some advanced concepts for the SM-3 interceptor to attack intercontinental ballistic missiles. These include designs for lighter weight kill vehicles, and possibly a new propulsion system for the kill vehicle as well as the missile’s upper stage.
GOES ACCEPTED: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has accepted GOES-14 into service following its June 27 launch. The Boeing-built spacecraft was called GOES-O before acceptance. The third in the Boeing series, GOES-P, was shipped Dec. 16 to Cape Canaveral for launch from Space Complex 37 on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV early next year.
DESIGNER FUEL: A $49.5 million U.S. Air Force grant to develop advanced jet fuels and combustion technologies has been awarded to the University of Dayton Research Institute. Work under the six-year cooperative grant from the Air Force Research Laboratory will focus on new technology and improvements to existing technologies “that will not only meet the demands of evolving aircraft systems, but will do so with minimal environmental impact,” says Dilip Ballal, head of UDRI’s Energy and Environmental division and director of the von Ohain Fuels and Combustion Center.
Scientists working with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) are using known distances at the Apollo landing sites to calibrate the orbiter’s narrow-angle cameras for future mapping, as early results from the spacecraft’s instruments are starting to come in.
LONDON — The British government will give the go-ahead for the acquisition of three RC-135V/W Rivet Joint aircraft in early January, pending finance department approval. The aircraft are to replace the electronic intelligence capability currently provided by the Royal Air Force’s two remaining Nimrod R1 aircraft. A third R1 was withdrawn from service recently, rather than fund the required major servicing.
VIETNAM BUYS: Vietnam will buy eight Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighters and six Project 636 submarines from Russia, according to the country’s prime minister and a Russian news report. Prime Minister Ngyuen Tan Dung confirms that his country is buying warplanes and submarines from Russia. Interfax news agency separately identifies the precise equipment and numbers, adding that a further 12 of the Sukhois might be ordered. The submarines, code-named Kilo by NATO, will be delivered at a rate of one a year, Interfax says.
