An agreement with Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) will protect Elbit Systems from claims brought against the two companies by minority owners and creditors of ImageSat International, operator of Israel’s Eros imaging satellites, that could lead to billions of dollars in damages.
A Jan. 7 article on how U.S. military vehicle makers are working on weight reduction and sustaining the Pentagon’s fleets incorrectly transposed attribution for quotes from BAE’s Tony Russell and Force Protection’s Damon Walsh.
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is reporting generally lower delivery totals for 2008 compared to a year earlier. In helicopters, new-build Apaches dropped to three from a high of 17 in 2007, but Chinooks edged up to 12 from 10 in 2007. In military fixed-wing aircraft, C-17 deliveries were steady at 16 for both years. There were 14 F-15 deliveries last year compared to 12 in 2007 and 45 F/A-18E/F and EA-18Gs compared to 44 the previous year.
The biggest obstacles to launching predictable cyber attacks – with an eye to making them operational military capabilities – are the lack of digital weapons that can be used by nonspecialists and the inability to duplicate networks so that attacks and exploitation can be planned and practiced. In turn, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has just awarded seven six-month contracts totaling about $25 million as the startup funding for a National Cyber Range (NCR).
THUNDERING AHEAD: The Pakistan Aeronautical Complex is ready to begin series production of the JF-17 Thunder fighter as soon as the government gives it the go-ahead. The complex can build 50 of the aircraft a year, according to its chairman, Air Marshal Khalid Chaudhry. The JF-17 has been developed in collaboration with China, where it is called the FC-1. Chaudhry says the complex can make 75 percent of the JF-17’s avionics and 58 percent of its airframe. The engine is the Klimov RD-93 from Russia.
CONTINUED MUNITIONS: The U.S. Defense Department has awarded Boeing two contracts totaling $217.1 million for continued production of Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) tail kits and Small Diameter Bombs (SDB). The JDAM contract, $106.9 million for Lot 13 production, includes more than 4,000 tail kits for the Air Force and Navy. Boeing will deliver the kits in 2010 and 2011. The SDB contract, $110.2 million for Lot 5 production, includes more than 2,500 weapons and associated carriages for the Air Force. Deliveries are scheduled for 2010.
Many of the technology export and visa controls designed to protect U.S. national and economic security during the Cold War no longer do either task and should be streamlined by President-elect Barack Obama, according to a new report by the National Academies’ National Research Council.
ORLANDO, Fla. – NASA is preparing for the final stage of outfitting of the International Space Station (ISS), which will transition it from an assembly project to a full-fledged orbiting research laboratory. “In May 2009 we will go to six crew, which is a huge transition,” said Julie Robinson, NASA ISS project scientist. The station has gradually been built up from a 3kW, single-module structure with no permanent crew in 1998 to a 63kW, eight-module vehicle with three crew members in 2008.
MARINE VEHICLES: Oshkosh Defense has been awarded an addition to an existing contract with U.S. Marine Corps System Command for more than 425 next-generation Logistics Vehicle System Replacements (LVSR) and more than 170 add-on armor kits. The contract order, valued at $176 million, will transition the LVSR Cargo variants from low-rate initial production into full-rate production and also calls for more than 270 weapon-mount kits. The LVSR variants produced under this delivery order include cargo, wrecker and fifth-wheel trucks.
The U.S. Defense Department has failed to recognize the psychological and political importance of U.S. deterrent forces, according to a congressionally chartered commission examining the nation’s strategic posture. “Deterrence is in the eye of the beholder,” according to James Schlesinger, chairman of the Task Force on DOD Nuclear Weapons Management. Schlesinger presented the panel’s findings at the Pentagon Jan. 8.
It would be a mistake to drop development of the Ares I crew launch vehicle in favor of a human-rated Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), NASA Administrator Michael Griffin argued Jan. 8 in a detailed defense of the outgoing Bush administration’s human spaceflight policy. But he said it might be possible to close the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability by spending extra money to continue flying the space shuttle beyond 2010, and to accelerate Ares I development to make it available before 2015.
TURKISH COUGARS: Safran’s Turbomeca unit has signed a deal with the Turkish defense ministry to set up a repair and overhaul center for Maikila 1A1 turboshafts. The award, for turboshafts mounted on 50 Cougar helicopters acquired in the 1990s, covers repairs up to Level 4. The center will be located at the Eskisehir plant of Tusas Engine Industries, where all government repair work is concentrated.
Space Adventures, the Virginia firm that arranges for well-heeled tourists to fly to the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz vehicles, is booking a “VIP Launch Tour” for slightly less well-heeled tourists who want to see Charles Simonyi off on its second orbital trip.
A rare but not unprecedented “space weather Katrina” could cost the global economy $1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year afterward as society’s dependence on space and terrestrial networks that are vulnerable to solar weather continues to grow, a new federally commissioned science report says.
FROM RUSSIA: Indonesia has started taking delivery of a new tranche of advanced Sukhoi fighters. Sukhoi says two Su-30MK2s were delivered in late December from the KnAAPO production facility at Kosomolsk-on-Amur. In 2007, Indonesia agreed to buy three dual-seat Su-30MK2s and three single-seat Su-27SKMs. The third Su-30MK2 is due for handover soon, with the Su-27 deliveries scheduled to start later this year and run into 2010, according to Sukhoi.
A key provider of electronic warfare (EW) technology for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter anticipates a complicated environment when it comes to export sales of the stealthy strike aircraft.
NORTHROP REDUX: Northrop Grumman said Jan. 7 it reorganized its business into five units from seven. The company’s Integrated Systems and Space Technology units were combined to form a new Aerospace Systems sector that will be led by Gary Ervin. The Information Technology and Mission Systems units were combined to form a new Information Systems sector led by Linda Mills. Northrop also appointed Alexis Livanos as chief technology officer, a position that will focus on development of new technologies.
As the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama gets set to study possible plans for the second increment of the VH-71 presidential helicopter, contractor Lockheed Martin says the program is on schedule to have mission systems flying on the first increments by March or April.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Preliminary findings of an investigation into the August 2008 loss of NASA’s HyBOLT (hypersonic boundary layer transition) rocket-boosted experimental project suggest a software fault was to blame. HyBOLT was aimed at gathering data on transition flow physics – one of the fundamental areas of mystery in the high-speed atmospheric flight regime – but was cut short 20 seconds after liftoff from NASA’s Wallops Island, Va., test site when the ATK-provided ALV X-1 booster went out of control (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 25, 2008).
British government support to help U.K. industry secure work on the next-generation of narrow-body aircraft was high on the agenda in a Jan. 7 meeting between industry lobbyists and Peter Mandelson, the government minister for business. Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) President Alex Dorrian (and CEO of Thales UK), and SBAC Chief Executive Ian Godden met with Mandelson to “discuss the U.K.’s position...in propulsion (aero engines) and aero structures, especially wing manufacture,” according to the SBAC.
U.S. supremacy in aerospace is being threatened, according to a new study issued by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), and the organization is proposing solutions and pressing the incoming Obama administration to help.
INDIAN UPGRADES: India said it has completed the avionics upgrade of its MiG-27 aircraft. The Defense Avionics Research Establishment (DARE), under the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), claims “the effort was realized using entirely indigenous expertise at a fraction of cost.” The project was initiated in 2002 through a deal between DARE, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. and the Indian air force. The avionics system is built around a modular mission computer called the Core Avionics Computer (CAC), developed by DARE.
