SLIP SHOWING: President Barack Obama’s reworked defense budget for fiscal 2010 may not come out next month as promised. A missile defense advocate with good Pentagon contacts says he’s hearing the delivery date could slip to May. The Obama administration was expected to deliver its version of the Defense Dept. budget request on April 21, but there is starting to be some buzz that allocating the money may take longer than planned.
PUSHING NANOSATS: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is investigating a small, liquid propellant vehicle for nanosatellite launches, President Jim Maser says. The company will turn to ARDE of Carlstadt, N.J., a pressure vessel and propellant tank specialist that it acquired last November, for help in the research and development effort. Maser characterized the effort as part of a growth-through-innovation drive, but said it is too preliminary to describe in detail. He indicated it would apply generally to small satellites.
FUEL DROP: An inquiry board is investigating what prompted a U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot to drop fuel tanks while flying over the Italian countryside March 24 before attempting a successful emergency landing at the Aviano Air Force Base in northeastern Italy. The pilot apparently experienced engine troubles almost immediately after takeoff, which occurred at 2:57 p.m. local time. The pilot decided to lighten the aircraft and jettisoned the fuel tanks. The Falcon was flying over the village of Tamai Brugnera, 15 miles south of Aviano.
ACTIVE AGREEMENT: Saab and Selex Galileo have signed a heads of agreement covering the integration of an active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar for the Gripen NG, aimed initially at the bid for Brazil’s fighter program. The radar will be based on Selex Galileo’s Vixen AESA family. A Selex radar could also be put forward as part of Saab’s bid for India’s fighter procurement. Described as the “beginning of a long-term collaboration,” the agreement with Selex involves Saab Aerosystems and Saab Microwave Systems.
The Defense Department is facing critical gaps in its acquisition work force, potentially affecting its national security mission, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
SEATTLE Boeing’s P-8A Poseidon is to make its first flight in the second quarter of this year. Four aircraft are on the assembly line, and three of those will ramp up the test flight program in 2009-’10. One of the aircraft will move to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., in the fall. The first unit is to be operational in 2013.
NEW DELHI The Indian air force is submitting its Flight Evaluation report on the candidate aircraft for its Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) to the Indian defense ministry, as the 126-aircraft acquisition nears its field trial phase. After the ministry gives its blessing, the air force will invite vendors to start field trials in India, which are expected to begin at the end of June or beginning of July, and should take eight-nine months.
THE SHOW: The U.S. Air Force has cleared the F-22 Raptor to fly daily during flight demonstrations at the Paris Air Show this June. Show organizers revealed in a briefing in Washington that two F-22s will take part in the international showcase of the defense and aerospace industry. One of the two aircraft will be maintained on static display. Other U.S. military aircraft confirmed to fly at the event include the F-18, F-16, C-130 and the C-17. The Paris Air Show, which started 100 years ago, has once again sold out its chalets and exhibition space.
The U.S. Army’s top acquisition officer and the program manager for its most ambitious modernization program — the $160 billion Future Combat Systems — pulled out of a scheduled House Armed Services Committee hearing appearance March 26.
Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threw their support behind Christopher Hill, who currently serves as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, as the Obama administration’s nominee to be the next American ambassador to Iraq during a hearing on Capitol Hill March 25.
CUBE SATS: Lockheed Martin will fund $450,000 in research and development projects at the University of Florida this year to develop and launch five miniature satellites. The satellites will be used to investigate technological advances such as miniaturized, space-hardened GPS electronics and state-of-the-art intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. Lockheed Martin will also perform payload data analysis for these satellite missions. The CubeSats, built in the shape of a cube with four-inch sides, will operate on power equivalent to a cell phone.
China’s conventional and nuclear missile arsenal continues to grow in quality and quantity, according to the Pentagon’s latest assessment of Beijing’s military developments.
The U.S. Army improperly moved billions of dollars to help pay for security force operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, possibly wasting money, a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report says. The Army’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) improperly transferred appropriated funds from the Army’s accounts into the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Trust Fund, the IG says in its March 24 report.
PARIS Iraq has signed a deal with the French government to buy 24 Eurocopter EC635 transport helicopters. The €360 million deal was inked March 26 between French Defense Minister Herve Morin and Iraq Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi during his visit here.
The next likely Pentagon acquisition chief offered no proverbial fireworks at his Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) nomination hearing March 26, but Ashton Carter’s appearance served to underpin what has become a reinvigorated acquisition reform movement in the Defense Department.
Sikorsky says the recent airworthiness directive issued by FAA following the fatal crash of an S-92 off the Canadian coast should have no bearing on the variant the company is offering for the U.S. Air Force’s combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) replacement aircraft. “This Emergency Airworthiness Directive (AD) is prompted by the failure of two main gearbox filter bowl assembly mounting studs that were found broken during a fatal accident investigation in Canada,” FAA said.
Although the Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) consortium is in its nascent stages, there is already talk of expanding the NATO pooled aircraft ownership program beyond the current order of three C-17s. Three Boeing C-17 airlifters will be based at Papa Air Base in Hungary, to “give nations strategic lift that they otherwise couldn’t afford,” Gen. Roger Brady, chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe, told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington March 26. “I think people are going to fall in love with this capability.”
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston International Space Station (ISS) flight controllers here are turning their attention from the STS-119/15A mission of the space shuttle Discovery, which ended March 25 with a “$100 billion photograph,” to the arrival of the station’s next crew on March 28. Soyuz TMA-14/18S launched at 7:49 a.m. EDT March 26 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with ISS Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka, Flight Engineer Michael Barratt and two-time space tourist Charles Simonyi, setting up a docking at 9:14 a.m. EDT March 28.
Early informal reports to senior U.S. Air Force officials said that the Lockheed Martin pilot flying the F-22 that crashed north of Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., did not eject from the aircraft. One of those notified says a security blanket was quickly dropped over the incident and no more unofficial reports have been received. The Air Force has 134 F-22s in its inventory.
NPOESS AUDIT: Northrop Grumman has completed the Critical Design Audit of the Space Segment for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Since last March, 85 detailed technical reviews were conducted, with more than 100 customer community reviewers evaluating the depth and maturity of the Space Segment’s design elements, culminating in the recent 10-day audit. NPOESS’ next major review is the system-wide Critical Design Review, scheduled for late April.
EAGER EATR: Elbit Systems is joining project leader Robotic Technology and the University of Maryland for commercialization of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) effort to develop an Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR). EATR is supposed to develop an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle capable of foraging — i.e., finding and consuming its own fuel.
Launch of the U.S. Air Force’s first Space-Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite aboard a Minotaur rocket has slipped as engineers try to ensure that the flight does not suffer the same fate as NASA’s Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO). The Block 10 SBSS launch, which had been expected to take place in April or May, is now likely to slip to July, according to Craig Cooning, CEO of Boeing Satellite Systems International.
