Japan is risking a rapid loss of fighter engineering skills, an official review of the industry warns, while urging the government to avoid fully importing combat aircraft. Estimates of future engineering effort starkly illustrate an unspoken argument for Japan to buy and develop advanced versions of the Eurofighter Typhoon, Boeing F-15 or Boeing F/A-18E/F to fill its requirement for 50 fighters.
GO FASTER: Piasecki Aircraft is to receive $8.9 million in congressionally directed funding to complete modification and conduct high-speed flight testing of its X-49A SpeedHawk compound helicopter. The X-49 is a prototype SH-60F Seahawk fitted with Piasecki’s vectored-thrust ducted propeller and a wing. Modifications for high-speed flight include adding a supplemental powerplant, fairing the rotor and retracting the gear. Piasecki is aiming to exceed 200 knots, having reached almost 180 knots in the first phase of flying.
PARIS — Arianespace head Jean-Yves Le Gall expects 2010 to be another busy year for the Paris-based launch provider, but warns that market conditions will “again be challenging.”
Crews moved the space shuttle Endeavour from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to Launch Complex 39A on Jan. 6 in preparation for next month’s STS-130 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The six-hour trip for the shuttle stack — orbiter, external tank and two solid-rocket boosters — started at 4:13 a.m. EST. Endeavour is scheduled to lift off at 4:39 a.m. EST Feb. 7 for a 13-day orbital sortie to the ISS.
The U.S. Army has seen 400 percent growth in UAV flight hours in the past decade, according to Lt. Gen. J.D. Thurman, the Army’s deputy chief of staff, who anticipates that number, and the number of unmanned platforms flying, to continue to increase. In a bid to give all of its brigade combat teams access to unmanned capabilities, the Army has made an unprecedented move. By Fiscal 2011, a combat aviation brigade (CAB) will receive Sky Warrior Extended Range Multi-Purpose (ERMP) UAVs. Currently, all UAVs resides within dedicated units.
The U.S. Navy needs to do a better job managing its process for rapidly fielding materiel solutions to meet urgent needs in support of the operations in Southwest Asia and to ensure the safety of naval forces, the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) says. While the Navy had adequate procedures for identifying and validating urgent capability needs and was following these procedures, it still lacked internal controls in key areas, the IG says in its recent report.
AESA ACCORD: Selex Galileo and Brazil’s Atmos Sistemas have signed a memorandum of understanding covering potential collaboration on active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar technology. Selex Galileo’s Raven ES-05 AESA is on offer as part of the Saab Gripen NG package proposed for the Brazilian air force fighter competition. Besides potential collaboration on the Raven, Selex Galileo and Atmos Sistemas also are examining working together on other areas of AESA application.
DOD Presolicitations DOD Presolicitations Date of Posting Response Date Opportunity Segment Procurement Office Solicitation Code Contact E-Mail 31-Dec-09 07-Jan-10 US flag OSV to support navy testing Transportation, travel, & relocation services
CASE CLOSED: Claims that “new evidence” has come to light justifying the reopening of an inquiry into the 1994 fatal crash of a British Chinook heavy lift helicopter are being dismissed by the British Defense Ministry. The ministry says that internal documents seen by the BBC were available to the inquiry team and as such are “not new evidence.” The documents, according to the BBC, identified a number of concerns related to software reliability in the full authority digital engine control system.
LOS ANGELES — Boeing says the Jan. 6 confirmation of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) long-anticipated order for six C-17s, rather than four as previously disclosed, boosts hopes it will sustain the threatened airlifter program through 2012.
The U.S. Army hopes to complete the first phase of an analysis of alternatives (AOA) for its aerial scouting needs by April, according to Maj. Gen. James Barclay, chief of Army aviation. The service’s plans to move forward with a replacement for its aging Kiowa Warrior helicopter fleet have been on hold since the cancellation of Bell Helicopter Textron’s Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) program in October 2008. The Army launched an AOA to determine its next platform and in the meantime began extensive modifications and upgrades on all of its Kiowas.
PARIS — The European Defense Agency (EDA) has issued EADS Astrium Services a contract to determine how European defense ministries can aggregate and coordinate their commercial telecommunications satellite defense needs. The EDA was charged last year with coordinating this requirement.
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.
