EXPERT LAUNCH: A Russian submarine-launched Volna rocket is due to loft the European Space Agency’s Experimental Reentry Testbed (Expert) next year under an 18 million euro ($25 million) full-scale development contract to Thales Alenia Space for the atmospheric reentry demonstrator.
SWITCHING RIDES: The first Hylas broadband telecommunications satellite will launch on either an Ariane 5 or Soyuz launcher, rather than a SpaceX Falcon 9 as originally planned. Avanti Communications Group and Arianespace signed the launch contract last week. Liftoff is anticipated in the second quarter of 2010. Delays in the Falcon 9 program prompted the switch.
CHINA LAKE, Calif. A mini-synthetic aperture radar (SAR)-equipped variant of Boeing-Insitu’s ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is being demonstrated for the first time in Afghanistan-like arid conditions at the Empire Challenge 09 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) exercise in California.
QDR INPUT: Combatant commanders are having more of a say in this year’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), according to Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Command. “[They] just didn’t have as significant a role in previous QDRs. [By contrast] I’ve been back [to Washington] three times for the singular purpose of participating in a two-day session chaired by the [defense] secretary and the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] chairman. I can see changes as the QDR unfolds. [Changes in] day-to-day operations in the Pacific have not been significant.
LONDON — The U.K. Ministry of Defense has contracted Miro Technology for the first phase of an integration project to link the WRAM (Work Recording & Asset Management) Online system and the health and usage monitoring system (HUMS) for the Apache Attack helicopter program operated by the British army.
REDEPLOYMENT PLANNING: House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) says the Pentagon needs to consider the equipment needs of the National Guard as it plans to redeploy troops and materiel from Iraq. In a July 24 letter to Gen. Craig McKinley, head of the National Guard Bureau, Skelton expressed concern about what will happen to the equipment deployed with National Guard units when the U.S. begins drawing down its force in Iraq and sending equipment to Afghanistan. Skelton asked McKinley for an operational assessment of U.S.
HAWKEYE UPGRADE: Northrop Grumman will upgrade six E-2C airborne early warning systems aircraft from Group II to Hawkeye 2000 configuration for Taiwan via the U.S. foreign military sales program. Work should be completed in June 2013 under the $154 million contract from U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. Taiwan has four E-2Ts and two other Hawkeyes that already are in a more advanced configuration.
After having remained mum on recent builder’s trials for the nation’s second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), General Dynamics revealed July 24 that there were challenges during testing, but they should not affect the ship’s planned delivery date.
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. has cleared two new Earth observation satellites for a twin launch next week aboard a Russian Dnepr booster. The launch, on July 29 from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will orbit Britain’s UK-DMC2 and Spain’s Deimos-1, intended to form the nucleus of SSTL’s second-generation disaster monitoring constellation (DMC).
MELBOURNE, Australia — The market for the Australian-U.S. Nulka naval decoy may be expanding by a factor of two, thanks to a prospective easing of restrictions on exports of the hovering rocket. As the system is fitted to ever-larger ships previously thought impossible to defend with decoys, there are signs that it will even go aboard the largest of all — U.S. aircraft carriers — giving them one more defense layer to add to the several that already surround them.
PARIS Better than expected sales activity in the first months of the year is allowing Saab to increase its earnings guidance for 2009, but the Swedish defense and aerospace company remains cautious about the long-term outlook. The company says that for the year, sales will increase over 2008 levels. The previous guidance was for flat sales development. Sales in the first half were up 6 percent to 11.7 billion Swedish kronor ($1.57 billion).
ITEP STEP: The U.S. Army is taking another step on the long road towards acquiring a new 3,000 shaft horsepower turboshaft to re-engine Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, issuing a request for information for the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP). This is intended to develop and qualify a powerplant demonstrated under the Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) program. General Electric, with the GE3000, and Honeywell/Pratt & Whitney, with the HPW3000, plan to run their competing AATE demonstrator engines in 2011.
GYRO TAKEAWAY: Lockheed Martin has agreed to acquire Gyrocam Systems, a privately owned supplier of gyrostabilized optical surveillance systems. Sarasota, Fla.-based Gyrocam’s vehicle mast-mounted sensors are installed on MRAPs deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the company supplies stationary and shipborne mast-mounted systems as well as airborne stabilized sensors. Terms of the transaction, expected to close this quarter, have not been disclosed.
Boeing has withdrawn its protest of the award of the next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) system space segment contract to Lockheed Martin. The spring protest to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which followed an earlier complaint late last December, sought to overturn a $1.09 billion award by NASA for two GOES-R weather satellites, plus an option for a third, issued on Dec. 10.
HICKAM AFB, Hawaii — The former commander of the Hawaii Air National Guard, who recently moved to the staff of U.S. Pacific Command, is still planning on receiving the F-22 Raptor in Hawaii, despite efforts in Washington to cap production of the stealthy Lockheed Martin fighter.
SUNSET DAYS: After two decades of service that have seen it image the equivalent of the Earth’s total surface 46 times, Europe’s Spot 2 is headed for retirement. The spacecraft, launched in 1990, will be removed from its low Earth trajectory on July 30 and left in a harmless orbit from which it will re-enter the atmosphere 25 years hence. Spot Image, which operates the satellite, can still call on Spot 5 and 4 until two new spacecraft, Spot 6 and 7, are deployed in 2012-14.
THIRD CUTTER: First lady Michelle Obama will serve as the sponsor for the Stratton, the third National Security Cutter (NSC). The keel was laid on the U.S. Coast Guard vessel on July 20 at Northrop Grumman’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., marking the start of construction. This is the first time a first lady has ever sponsored a Coast Guard cutter, this one named for Capt. Dorothy Stratton, who directed the Coast Guard’s Women’s Reserve during World War II.
SIERRA GRAND: South Korea has requested the potential $1 billion sale of eight Sikorsky MH-60S helicopters equipped for airborne mine countermeasures (AMCM). The Korean Navy has been evaluating the MH-60S and AgustaWestland AW101 for its requirement to deploy four AMCM helicopters by 2012 and four more by 2015. The MH-60S would be equipped with AQS-20A towed sonar, AES-1 laser mine detector, AQS-235 mine neutralization system, ALQ-220 magnetic/acoustic minesweeping system and the AWS-2 30mm gun firing a supercavitating projectile.
The U.S. Senate has thrown a surprise twist into the ongoing debate over pursuing a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, adopting language that could eventually block the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 in the 2010 defense budget.
Astronauts used the robotics arm on Japan’s Kibo laboratory module to install three payload packages on the lab’s new exposed facility, delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) by the space shuttle Endeavour, completing installation of the outpost’s largest research facility.
HICKAM AFB, Hawaii — The U.S. Air Force’s intelligence community is taking a new and leading role in designing war games for near-term threats. Pacific Vision, as the series is called, tries to weigh budgets — which are predicted to shrink — against what possible military foes could field, from advanced missiles to authorless cyberwar. Pacific Air Forces’ former intelligence chief, Col. Marty Neubauer (ret.), was directed to look at pressing, near-term issues and not to focus on outyear problems.
An Israeli Arrow-2 interceptor missile failed to launch during a test of the system July 22 along the West Coast of the United States. The U.S. range exceeds the size of facilities in Israel and was required for the demonstration. During the test, a long-range ballistic missile target was dropped from a C-17. Several sensors, including the Israeli Green Pine radar and the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), PAC-3 and Aegis ship-based radars, acquired the target and tracked it.
