TRYING AGAIN: Romania’s privatization agency is making another attempt to sell off money-losing state-owned aircraft manufacturer Avione Craiova. An agreement to sell the trainer maker to Aero Vodochody of the Czech Republic fell apart last year. Italy’s Alenia Aeronautica, which has sold C-27J transports to Romania, is the only bidder this time around.
PARIS Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael says it increased net profit last year to $46 million and built its backlog to $3.2 billion, or two years worth of turnover. The state-owned company says its net profit was up 21 percent over 2007 levels on sales of $1.5 billion. Profitability would have been higher except for negative exchange rates that developed between the shekel and the dollar. In reporting full-year financial results, Rafael says its record backlog is dominated — 72 percent — by export business to the United States, Europe and Asia.
TAKING A BATH: Maine’s two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, beseeched Defense Secretary Robert Gates March 20 to fully fund a third DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer. The fiscal 2009 defense authorization act called for full funding of the third ship, but Collins and Snowe want to ensure President Barack Obama includes it in his upcoming fiscal 2010 budget request.
In preparation for the first Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) flight-test in late summer, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is planning a dry run using a dummy interceptor in mid-April.
Putting transponders on every satellite could ease the task of predicting collisions of spacecraft like the recent one between an Iridium communications satellite and a dead Russian communications satellite, says the commander of space operations for U.S. Strategic Command. Asked for his wish list of additional assets, Air Force Lt. Gen. Larry James cited more space-based monitoring systems and “putting something on every satellite that can broadcast its position and sense its environment.”
A third Sukhoi Su-35 aircraft will join the flight-test program during the second quarter, with the latest variant of the Flanker having just hit the 100th flight mark. The flight-test program has been under way for just more than 12 months. The Su-35 was first flown in February of last year, with a second aircraft joining the test program in October. The intent is to be in a position to begin deliveries — both to the Russian air force and for export — in 2011 (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 20).
DOUBLE WHAMMY: The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system scored a hit March 17 during its first salvo interceptor test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. The first of two THAAD missiles intercepted a separating, medium-range ballistic missile target. The second interceptor, launched seconds after the first, was destroyed in flight by range safety officers. Missile Defense Agency officials are hailing the demonstration as successful.
With a notional delivery date beginning in 2012, India will need to quickly evaluate responses to its surprise request for information on a further batch of advanced jet trainers (AJTs).
RENT-A-THREAT: Virginia-based Airborne Tactical Advantage has won a contract worth up to $35.2 million to provide threat simulation services to the U.S. Navy using its own fleet of ex-military fighters. ATAC operates the Mach 2-capable Israel Aircraft Industries F-21 Kfir, as well as the Hawker Hunter and McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. The contract covers almost 1,100 hours of high-subsonic and 360 hours of supersonic flying to train aircraft and ship crews to counter potential enemy electronic-warfare and electronic-attack operations.
PARIS Dassault Aviation confirms that deliveries of Rafale fighters to the French air force and navy will slow as a result of redrawn priorities in France’s new 2009-13 defense spending plan. The plan, currently awaiting parliamentary approval, is oriented towards protection of forces in the field, deep strike, force projection and ballistic missile defense. To help defray the cost of these initiatives, Cold War programs like the Rafale and Tiger helicopter will be cut back.
Boeing has kicked off work under a 30-month U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program to study a high-speed rotorcraft design called the DiscRotor. The concept promises helicopter-like hover efficiency, but speeds in excess of 350 knots in fixed-wing mode. This compares with 150 knots for a typical helicopter and 250-300 knots for a tiltrotor.
The Pentagon is downplaying President Dmitry Medvedev’s comments about boosting Russia’s military forces, saying “Russia is an independent, sovereign state perfectly entitled to a robust self-defense.”
MIGHTY WIND: U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is concerned about wind farms and the radar interference they are capable of causing. Air Force Gen. Victor Renuart Jr., NORTHCOM’s commander, tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that wind farm interference is among the challenges facing the regional command in charge of defending the homeland. “We need to identify mitigation techniques that will allow wind turbines and radars to coexist,” Renuart says. The issue is the Doppler signals generated by radar returns from rotating wind turbine blades.
SOLAR ORBITER: Three U.S. science teams will start work on instruments for the European Space Agency’s planned Solar Orbiter mission under Phase A contracts that could lead to a total of $81 million in funding from NASA’s Living With A Star program.
MAINTENANCE SAVINGS: The U.S. Navy is predicting $1.8 billion in savings over the next 20 years as a result of shipboard coatings initiatives managed by Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) Engineering for Reduced Maintenance (ERM) program. One of the initiatives calls for a new, high-solids, rapid-cure, single-coat painting process that requires less application time than current three-coat systems. Prepping and painting ship tanks and voids has traditionally been a laborious process.
MAKIN ACCEPTANCE: The Makin Island amphibious assault ship (LHD 8), which is expected to be delivered to the U.S. Navy later this year, passed its acceptance trials March 19 after three days at sea. The trials took place off the coast of Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico. All major systems and equipment were tested by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey. The Makin Island is powered by a unique system that uses two induction-type auxiliary propulsion system (APS) engines powered from the ship’s electrical grid.
AIR CHIEF: Air Marshal Pradeep Vasant Naik, presently the vice chief of the Indian air staff, has been appointed as the next chief of air staff as of May 31. He will take over from Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major. Naik was commissioned as a fighter pilot and has 3,085 hours of flying to his credit. During his nearly 40-year career, including the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, he has served in various command staff and instructional appointments. Before taking over as vice chief, he was air officer commanding-in-chief of the Allahabad-based Central Air Command.
Development of key components of the U.S. military’s beleaguered Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) will be less cash needy from here on in, claims a Boeing official responsible for the JTRS Ground Mobile Radios (GMR) program. “We definitely are on the down curve,” Boeing JTRS GMR Program Manager Ralph Moslener said March 19 during a press teleconference. Boeing organized the briefing after the recent delivery of the first two engineering development models (EDM) of the GMRs to the U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.
NUCLEAR REACTION: The British Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee is cautioning that the U.K. will have to manage challenging procurement issues if it is to deliver the country’s future nuclear deterrent on time and on budget. The U.K. needs to introduce a successor to the Vanguard class ballistic-missile submarine by around 2024.
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston Mission managers are carefully planning the space shuttle Discovery’s return from orbit to bring back some five months of biological samples from cold storage on the International Space Station (ISS) without letting them overheat.
READY TO ROAST: Lockheed Martin’s short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B has finally made it on to the hover pit at Fort Worth where it is being readied for the full-thrust powered-lift ground testing required to clear the aircraft to begin STOVL flight testing. The company expects the pit tests to take about a month, after which the propulsion system data will be analyzed and a flight readiness review conducted.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) Mar. 23 - 26 — The Aerospace Corporation’s 13th Ground System Architectures Workshop. Torrance Marriott South Bay Hotel, Torrance, Calif., For more information go to http://www.aero.org/conferences/gsaw/index.html
