STILL INTELLIGENT: While the Christmas Day airline bomb plot highlighted flaws and needed improvements in the U.S. intelligence community’s coordination, it did not expose weakness in the concepts of intelligence reform, the director of national intelligence (DNI) says. Retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair’s comments came late Jan. 7 after several days of news reports and public discussions questioning whether post-9/11 changes — like the creation of the DNI — have helped or hurt.
NAME CHANGE: Boeing says a reorganization and leadership changes in its Integrated Defense Systems unit will “reposition the company for growth in the current business environment.” Effective immediately, the unit will be called Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDSS) in response to anticipated “flattening defense budgets and shifting customer priorities,” according to BDSS President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
STARTING OVER: Republican senators and their occasional ally Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, warn President Barack Obama they might not support a follow-on deal to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) unless he commits to improvements in nuclear infrastructure and possibly even a new nuclear-warhead design.
BERLIN German defense expenditures in 2010 are unchanged from 2009. The previous coalition government, led by the Christian Democrats, approved a €31.1 billion ($45.2 billion) budget, an annual allocation that is expected to remain at this level until 2013. Although defense spending is not growing, troops on deployment have increased to 7,600 from 7,100 in November 2008, and efforts are under way to modernize their equipment.
ROTARY VISION: The U.K. is considering modifying surplus AgustaWestland Merlin Mk1 helicopters as the basis of a replacement airborne search and control (ASAC) platform for the navy’s current Sea King Mk7, which is due to be withdrawn from service in 2016. A decision on whether to pursue converting spare Merlin Mk1s for the ASAC role is “subject to the [Strategic] Defense Review and investment approval,” Bill Rammell, the minister for the armed forces, told Parliament last week.
SWEET HOME: The U.S. Army plans to relocate the headquarters of its Army Contracting and Expeditionary Contracting commands from Fort Belvoir, Va., to Redstone Arsenal, Ala., by August 2011. Both contracting commands will co-locate with Army Materiel and Army Security Assistance commands, which are landing there under the 2005 base realignment and closure process (BRAC).
NEW FLECHETTE: In the first time the U.S. Navy Department has produced a new flechette warhead since the Vietnam War, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR is introducing a new design for use by Marine Corps helicopters in Afghanistan. Vietnam-era flechette warheads — smaller munitions used against personnel and light-armored targets — were near depletion and becoming unreliable, officials say, so they have tapped General Dynamics for the 149 Mod 0 Flechette Warhead.
BIG DAY: Aerospace & defense companies are tallying up their sales and earnings as they prepare to issue their fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 results later this month. Boeing, General Dynamics and United Technologies should roll out their earnings on Jan. 27. But Wall Street analysts will be really busy the next day, when Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L-3 Communications, Goodrich, Rockwell Collins and Teledyne Technologies are all expected to report. “January 28th,” says Jefferies & Co. analyst Howard A. Rubel, “is as crowded as a security line at an airport.”
Engineers at Johnson Space Center (JSC) have scheduled four days of testing with three different versions of NASA’s planned new spacesuit to begin melding the suit with the Orion crew exploration vehicle that is also under development there.
NEW DELHI — India’s Defense Ministry has sent a letter of request to the U.S. government for 10 Boeing C-17 strategic airlifters, via the foreign military sales (FMS) process. Boeing’s Jan. 8 statement follows immediately after the United Arab Emirates announcement of plans to purchase six C-17 Globemaster IIIs. The U.S has been in discussions with the Indian government and Boeing recently completed a series of C-17 demonstration flights in India. In November 2009 the U.S. Air Force flew the C-17 in Agra in a joint lift exercise.
NEVATIM AIR FORCE BASE, Israel — The Israeli Air Force is fielding an eighth KC-707 refueler and starting to push upgrades to the remaining fleet to bolster its strike capabilities at a time when military planners are focusing on how they might carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, if called on to do so. Israel Aerospace Industries has transformed the 707 airliner into the tanker under a $23 million contract awarded last year.
PARIS — Fearful about the prospect of job losses, one of Airbus’s primary labor groups in France is urging governments to sustain the A400M military airlifter program. The labor group Force Ouvriere warns of “catastrophic consequences” if the program were terminated. It notes that 8,000 people are already working on the project, and the long-term jobs at risk could number 40,000 over the life of the program.
The first CH-47D — newly modified with a laser defense system — has been saved during an attack by multiple infrared-guided missiles, U.S. Army officials say. “We had a success in a complex situation where a Chinook was engaged by multiple IR manpads [infrared man-portable anti-aircraft missiles] ,” says U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ray Pickering, product manager for infrared countermeasures (IRCM).
AUTO ID: The U.S. Coast Guard and Northrop Grumman have completed the critical design review of the core data exchange capability, which will serve as the foundation for a nationwide Automatic Identification System (AIS). The milestone demonstrates that design maturity has reached the point where it can proceed to full-scale fabrication, assembly, integration and test, according to officials and executives.
DESIGN REVIEW: Sikorsky Aircraft Corp announced that a recent Integration Design Review of its heavy-lift helicopter, the CH-53K, has paved the way for a Critical Design Review in 2010. In November, Sikorsky hosted a two-day meeting with members of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Technical Review Board and the NAVAIR/Sikorsky CH-53K team.
The European Commission (EC) is opting to dual-source the construction and launch of its Galileo satellite navigation satellites, and to acquire the spacecraft in competitive batches, as is done with the U.S. Global Positioning System. The Commission selected a team led by OHB System of Germany to build a first batch of 14 full-operating-capability (FOC) satellites for the system, which will allow Europe to provide global high-precision, guaranteed-performance timing and position location services to complement those supplied by GPS.
ENGAGE!: The short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35B engaged its lift system in flight for the first time on Jan. 7 during a test sortie from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. Test pilot Graham Tomlinson engaged the shaft-driven lift fan at 5,000 feet and 210 knots, slowed to 180 knots, then accelerated to 210 knots and converted back to conventional-flight mode. The Stovl propulsion system was engaged for 14 minutes. On subsequent flights the aircraft will fly progressively slower, hover and eventually land vertically.
The United Arab Emirates has been exploring commercial financing options for its substantial military outlays, with Waha Capital saying it has now closed a $1.8 billion debt deal to cover the purchase of C-17 transports and A330-200 multi-role tanker/transports. The Dubai-based financing institution says the capital will cover all six C-17s the UAE signed for this week (Aerospace DAILY, Jan., 7) as well as three A330 tankers.
Controllers at California Institute of Technology are calibrating NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, after commanding its telescope cover to open and using it to capture a first-light image of about 3,000 stars in the constellation Carina. “Right now we are busy matching the rate of the scan mirror to the rate of the spacecraft, so we will capture sharp pictures as our telescope sweeps across the sky,” stated William Irace of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the mission project manager, in releasing the first-light image.
OmniGlobe Networks, a Montreal-based provider of very small aperture terminals and voice over Internet protocol services, says it is in advanced discussions with several suppliers to buy, launch and operate a Ka-band satellite to serve remote and rural areas in Canada. The satellite, Canuk-1, is to be launched in the third quarter of 2013. OmniGlobe declines to say how much it plans to spend on the satellite, which will be medium-sized.
LONDON, PARIS — A British conservative government would revisit Royal Air Force (RAF) transport and fast jet aircraft basing plans — and intended closures — including a move to consolidate all U.K. fixed-wing airlift at one hub.
MOSCOW — Russian defense spending for 2010 is 1.25 trillion rubles ($43 billion), 3.4 percent more than 2009. The budget share going to defense in 2010 is 12.7 percent, up marginally from 12.2 percent the year before.
