SENTRY SUSTAIN: The U.K. is replacing the planned midlife update of its Boeing E-3D Sentry aircraft, Project Eagle, with a less ambitions program to address areas of obsolescence, known as Sentry Sustain. Eagle funding didn’t make the cut in Planning Round (PR) 09, with the midlife upgrade to the E-3D not deemed to be an immediate operational need. Sentry Sustain is aimed at dealing with issues on some of the mission systems kits, and also on the communications.
A July 10 story on testing of the GE38 turboshaft engine misstated the number of engines on the CH-53K. The heavy-lift helicopter features three engines.
HOLLOMAN UNMANNED: Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. has been confirmed as the location for the U.S. Air Force’s second formal training unit for MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft. Announcing the decision, the New Mexico congressional delegation says the base will receive 10 MQ-1s and five MQ-9s this year, with another 12 Predators and 11 Reapers following in 2010. MQ-1/9 training is now conducted at Creech Air Force Base, Ariz., but is planned eventually to be consolidated at Holloman.
INDIA MOVE: Canadian simulator manufacturer CAE has renamed its Indian subsidiary — formerly Macmet Technologies, acquired in July 2007 — as it steps up investment in the country. Now named CAE India, the Bangalore-based company is building Do 228 and MiG-21M training devices for the Indian air force and developing tank and missile simulators.
The Obama administration is making its mark with a desire to reduce nuclear weaponry, but it is running up against more help than it wants on Capitol Hill, with the White House now trying to defend its fiscal 2010 request for a major legacy U.S. nuclear bomb.
MISSILE DEFENSE: The U.S. Navy recently awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to perform concept studies for the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), a scalable solid-state radar suite for future surface combatants. AMDR is composed of an S-band radar, an X-band radar and a Radar Suite Controller (RSC). Naval Sea Systems Command recently awarded $10 million to Northrop and $9.9 million to Lockheed Martin for the studies. AMDR will provide volume search, tracking and missile communications.
Australian researchers are beginning a second series of flight trials of a system to automatically manage the separation of unmanned and manned aircraft. The Smart Skies project includes researchers from Boeing, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
Australia expects to take delivery in November of the first two of six Boeing Wedgetails it has ordered, but the 737-based airborne warning and control aircraft will not yet, by then, deliver full operational capability. In fact, the Wedgetails may never fully meet the contract specification. The Royal Australian Air Force says it hopes to achieve 95 percent of that performance, although it does not say how that will be measured.
LONDON — Britain is planning to decide on its next-generation electronic intelligence aircraft by the end of the year, with BAE Systems management considering a revised proposal for the program. The successor to the R1 — a program a senior defense ministry official says Britain remains committed to — potentially pits the RC-135 Rivet Joint against most likely a BAE Systems Nimrod MRA4-based platform. The official maintains there will be no gap in capability, and suggests the plan is that the R1 will remain in service until its replacement enters operation.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — NATO’s first Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) Boeing C-17 could make its initial operational sortie into Afghanistan on behalf of the 12 Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) partner nations as early as the end of this month.
The Pentagon could begin to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles suitable to track ballistic missiles early in flight into the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) layered system within two years, says agency director U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) says it could rapidly stand up an expendable space shuttle main engine (SSME) if the Obama administration decides to use a shuttle-derived throwaway heavy lifter as an alternative to the Ares I crew launch vehicle.
The U.S. Navy is inspecting 566 of 622 F/A-18A-D Hornets after cracks were found in horizontal stabilizer actuator support fittings. Though no mishaps have occurred, these support “bootstraps” are critical safety-of-flight items; failure could lead to a pilot losing control of the horizontal stabilizer, which is a primary control surface. The cracked bootstraps resulted largely from missing fasteners, Navy officials say. Each F/A-18A-D must have its bootstraps inspected within the next 25 flight hours, according to the Navy’s safety bulletin.
VH-71 LAYOFFS: Lockheed Martin has announced a mass layoff in upstate New York after the Pentagon terminated its bedeviled program to provide new helicopters for the president. “Today, we are notifying approximately 600 colleagues that their positions will be eliminated as a result of the decision to terminate the VH-71 presidential helicopter program,” a company statement said July 14. Under the state’s Workers Adjustment Retraining Notification Act, affected employees will receive 90 days of continued pay and benefits.
F-22 FIGHT: Opponents and supporters of proposed legislation to cap procurement of F-22 Raptors at 187 aircraft debated the issue in advance of an expected vote on the measure July 15. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said the planned shutdown “is budget driven pure and simple.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), co-sponsor of the measure to stop production, argued that diverting the money to more Raptors is unnecessary and will force the Pentagon to cut needed funding elsewhere.
Controllers are checking out RazakSAT, a Malaysian Earth-observation spacecraft, after a SpaceX Falcon 1 launch vehicle sent it into orbit late July 13 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was the second successful launch in five tries for the privately financed Falcon 1, and the first with an operational payload. The vehicle’s first successful mission carried a dummy spacecraft.
More than a decade since the U.S. Army Materiel Command began its Logistics Modernization Program (LMP), the service has officially opened the doors to the Army Logistics University in Fort Lee, Va. The university will host more than 32,000 students annually, offering a curriculum of training and sustainment simulation for the military, civilians and multinational students.
SPACE FENCE: The U.S. Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman the first phase of a $30 million fixed-price contract to develop a global space surveillance ground radar system. The new S-Band Space Fence is part of DOD’s effort to track and detect resident space objects, which consist of thousands of pieces of “space debris” as well as commercial and military satellites. Space Fence will replace the current VHF Air Force Space Surveillance System built in 1961.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported a steady increase in DOD supplemental war funding over the past seven years, rising from $200 million in fiscal 2001 to $162.4 billion in FY ’08.
The first of the Airbus A330 EADS aircraft being converted into tankers for the U.K. is now at the company’s Getafe facility outside Madrid, where the real work of making it into a refueling aircraft will begin. The aircraft is one of 14 Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft due to start entering service with the Royal Air Force in 2011 under a complex private finance initiative run by the so-called AirTanker Consortium.
U.S. doubts are surfacing in reaction to an independent report out of Moscow that contends aviation losses during the conflict with Georgia were twice that reported by Russian Federation Air Force (RFAF) officials last year. U.S. intelligence analysts say they are suspicious of a new analysis written by the editors of Moscow Defense Brief, published by the Center for Analysis of Strategy and Technology (CAST).
