LONDON — Germany is still assessing whether it needs to cut its A400M military transport aircraft buy, but the U.K.’s decision to trim its purchase effectively limits the scope of a German reduction. What is more, Berlin is still trying to figure out how to buy its commitment of 60 of the military transports.
The U.S. Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” goal grabbed a bit more attention March 31 when President Barack Obama used a so-called “Green Hornet” as a backdrop to his announcement on offshore drilling.
MINI ME: The U.S. Air Force recently received an “operationally significant quantity” of Raytheon’s Miniature Air Launched Decoy (MALD), according to the company. MALD is a modular, air-launched, programmable flight vehicle weighing less than 300 pounds with a range of about 500 nautical miles. MALD is currently integrated on the B-52 and F-16 and can be certified on any aircraft with a 14-inch suspension carriage, according to the company. Raytheon says it hopes to deliver a jamming variant of the MALD to the Air Force in 2012.
Triumph Group’s move to acquire Vought Aircraft Industries Inc. from Carlyle Group for $1.4 billion in stock and cash is certainly bold. The transaction, which is expected to close in July, would propel Triumph up the aerospace supply chain in one big step, bolstering its core aircraft systems and aftermarket services business with a major aerostructures provider for the Boeing 747-8, 777 and C-17, and Airbus A320 and A340.
The first flight of the U.S. Marine Corps’ heavy lifter CH-53K helicopter has slipped two years to 2013, while its initial operational capability (IOC) has slid three years to 2018, officials have confirmed to AVIATION WEEK.
As recognition grows that cyber-attacks are a threat to national and economic security, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is looking to a future in which all systems must be designed, tested and certified for security. Darpa’s contribution to the U.S. government’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative to protect federal networks is to build the National Cyber Range, an automated and instrumented site for large-scale testing to assess the readiness of cybersecurity technologies and systems.
HARTFORD, Conn. — Pratt & Whitney will continue to fight support of a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, President David Hess says. “The customers who might use a second engine don’t want it — they don’t want to spend the money,” he says. “I take the same position as the taxpayer. It will take another $2.9 billion over the next five to six years to complete development of a second engine.”
PARIS — Telesat of Canada says it has signed up an anchor customer that will enable it to purchase and launch a new direct-to-home spacecraft. The customer, Canadian digital TV service provider Shaw Direct, will lease 16 extended Ku-band transponders for the full, 15-year life of the new satellite, which will be inserted at a slot at 107.3 W. Long. The spacecraft, to be called Anik G1, will be ordered in the second quarter and is expected to be launched in the second half of 2012.
GENOA, Italy — The Italian ministry of defense is increasing the pressure on both the U.S. government and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter prime contractor Lockheed Martin to win better terms for technology transfer and local industry involvement.
TANKER EXTENSION: The Pentagon is willing to extend the deadline for bids for the U.S. Air Force KC-X to July 9, giving industry another 60 days to prepare proposals. The move comes as EADS has leaked its interest in bidding for the beleaguered aerial refueling tanker program against Boeing. Although EADS had indicated it wanted 90 more days to bid, “We consider 60 days to be reasonable in this case,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said late March 31. The Air Force will compress its bid evaluation period, so it can still award the contract this fall as planned.
The U.S. Air Force is proposing to take over management of the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2) and integrate it into a global network of air operations centers (AOCs), Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz says. Schwartz says other services are interested in managing the system once it is transferred from MDA for operational use, and this decision will likely be made among senior uniformed officials on the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.
It would be in the interest of taxpayers to allow EADS North America an extension of the U.S. Air Force’s due date for KC-135 replacement bids if the company is serious about entering the competition, Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz says.
The Pentagon is still discussing what tactical unmanned aircraft to provide the Pakistani military, and the outcome of the talks could lead to a change in the original plan to deliver 12 Textron AAI Shadow UAVs.
NASA’s abandonment of the Constellation program represents a “change in approach and philosophy,” but not a change to the ultimate goal of sending human explorers into the Solar System, according to the agency’s number two exploration official. The Obama administration plans to terminate the Constellation program, including the Ares launch vehicles and Orion spacecraft being developed for a lunar return, in favor of a multipronged effort aimed at enabling technologies for future deep-space exploration.
GENOA, Italy — The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) plans to start operating its second Alenia Aeronautica ATR-42 MP maritime patrol aircraft, which will be based at Benin City AB, 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Lagos. The second ATR-42 was delivered March 29. The order for two of the aircraft, worth $73 million, was announced in 2006 but signed in March 2007 and called for the delivery of both aircraft by the end of 2009. The first one was delivered in December.
LONDON — Procurement problems at the core of the decision-making process on one of the U.K.’s largest private finance initiative (PFI) projects — the Defense Ministry’s Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) — are laid bare in a report by the government’s finance watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO).
BENGALURU, India — India’s human spaceflight program is funded for a four-year development-and-trial effort that will build and fly an unmanned capsule to test its crew environmental control and life-support system (ECLSS) and launch-escape system, says K. Radhakrisnan, the new chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
PUBLIC OFFERING: ViaSat plans to issue 5.5 million shares of common stock to help fund the rollout of its 125-Gbps high-speed Internet satellite. ViaSat-1 is to be orbited in early 2011 to provide additional capacity for broadband operator WildBlue Communications, which was acquired by ViaSat in December, and prepare for future growth. About 2.5 million shares are to be sold by ViaSat.
INDIAN CYBERSECURITY: The Indian government recently passed laws beefing up the country’s data-privacy regulations in an effort to combat increasing cybersecurity threats, according to Sachin Pilot, the minister of state for the Technology and Communication ministry. Plans are in the works for India to collaborate with the U.S. on cybersecurity, he says. “Indian companies have global clients and must show that India has the capacity to prevent cyber-attacks,” Pilot says.
When the Defense Department releases its annual Selected Acquisition Reports early next month, the U.S. Army’s Apache AH-64D Block III program will be cited as having breached the Nunn-McCurdy statute. The report will be presented to Congress in the first week of April, according to a source close to the program. At issue are 56 new-build aircraft, the inclusion of which in the baseline program caused the cost overrun.
WE HEAR YOU: Washington has received suggestions from Japan on relocating the U.S. Marine Corps air base in Okinawa, and U.S. diplomats and defense leaders are reviewing the offer, a State Department spokesman told reporters at the agency’s headquarters. “We haven’t changed our position, but obviously, we indicated we would listen to the Japanese current thinking on the subject,” State’s Philip J. “P.J.” Crowley said March 29.
The new U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty does not cover conventional weapons, which is why it will not inhibit proposed prompt global strike (PGS) capabilities or even missile defenses, a key U.S. diplomat told Washington reporters March 29.
