TANKER TINKERING: Northrop Grumman/EADS is re-evaluating its original plan to link its A330-based U.S. Air Force tanker offering with the plum of assembling A330-200F freighters at its tanker assembly site in Mobile, Ala., in light of the current economic climate. The recession has depressed demand for the aircraft, affecting the economics of such a plan, says Domingo Urena, managing director of the newly formed Airbus military unit.
SEVILLE, Spain Sorting out the future for the A400M military airlifter may take most of the year, even if customers commit this summer to continuing with the program. A critical milestone is fast approaching for the TP400D turboprop’s full-authority digital engine control (Fadec) software: Its initial flight-test is scheduled for this month. The Fadec software has become the pacing item for the airlifter’s first flight, owing to problems with attaining the needed civil certification with the European Aviation Safety Agency.
The U.S. Navy unrolled its budget request for fiscal 2010 on May 7, featuring a topline of $156.4 billion, including $4.18 billion for a new Virginia-class submarine. “There is an initiative within the department to get the cost of the Virginia-class down to $2 billion per boat,” said briefer Rear Adm. J.T. Blake, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget. “There is tremendous pressure on the system to drive the cost down.” The change in price could occur by FY ’12, Blake said.
NASA is running out of plutonium-238, the nuclear-weapons byproduct it uses to generate electricity for spacecraft that venture beyond the range of solar energy, and a National Research Council (NRC) panel recommends the U.S. government restart production to enable deep-space exploration to continue. “The day of reckoning has arrived,” states the report by the Radioisotope Power Systems Committee of the NRC’s Space Studies Board. “NASA is already making mission-limiting decisions based on the short supply of [Pu-238].”
PROCEED: Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. will build the first two spacecraft in the next series of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R), after its $1.09 billion contract with NOAA and NASA was modified. Boeing protested the award on Dec. 2, 2008, and the two government agencies said May 7 the contract was re-awarded after “a series of corrective actions were implemented” and the contract reevaluated. Launch of the first satellite is scheduled for 2015.
U.S. Army aviation will head to Capitol Hill to ask for $5.3 billion in fiscal 2010 procurement money for its aircraft programs. The uptick in operations in Afghanistan is driving demand for helicopter pilots and platforms. The Army is asking for $1.26 billion for 79 UH-60 Black Hawks under the multiyear program and another $99 million for advance procurement. Another four Black Hawks are requested under Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding (previously referred to as the supplemental) for $74.3 million.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) fiscal 2010 budget request shows a shift away from midcourse engagement alternatives and toward a new “ascent phase” capability. This underpins a strategy toward defending against ballistic missiles from rogue threats or nation states such as Iran and North Korea.
PROGRESS FLIES: The latest unmanned Russian supply vehicle for the International Space Station, ISS Progress 33, launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:37 p.m. EDT, reaching its preliminary orbit and deploying its solar arrays and antennas nine minutes later. The spacecraft is due to dock at the station’s Pirs compartment at 3:23 p.m. May 12, at which point the Expedition 19 crew will begin unloading its 2.5 tons of food, fuel and supplies. ISS Progress 32 undocked from the station May 6 at 11:18 a.m. filled with trash and other discarded items.
The Obama administration is asking for $9.95 billion for the U.S. Coast Guard for fiscal 2010, including funding for two HC-144A medium range Maritime Patrol Aircraft, according to the Homeland Security Department’s budget request.
For all the statements about the importance of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) ahead of the U.S. defense budget’s release, details of where the almost $2 billion in additional fiscal 2010 ISR funding will be spent remain scarce. One of the biggest pieces is the U.S. Army’s General Atomics MQ-1C Sky Warrior unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The 2010 request includes $651 million for three full systems — $401 million for 24 aircraft in the base budget and $250 million for another 12 in the “overseas contingency operations” supplemental budget.
Kongsberg has begun development of the Joint Strike Missile (JSM) under a NOK166 million ($25.6 million) contract from the Norwegian Defense Procurement Division. JSM is proposed as an anti-ship and land-attack missile for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The contract covers the 18-month first phase of the program, under which the Norwegian company will develop and test changes to its in-production Naval Strike Missile (NSM) required to produce the air-launched JSM.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was not in the room when the Pentagon unveiled its first budget request under the Obama administration on May 7, but he did not need to be, as his fingerprints are all over its themes of reform and unconventional warfare, as well as its omissions.
The U.S. Army is requesting a fiscal 2010 base budget of $142 billion — $2 billion more than the service’s FY ’09 request — even though there are some big cuts on the ground vehicle side of the ledger. The biggest cut, of course, comes in the form of the eight variants of the Future Combat Systems (FCS) Manned Ground Vehicle fleet that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already revealed would be dropped (Aerospace DAILY, April 7).
TACTICAL TERMINAL: Sagem says the French army has field-tested a new tactical terminal intended to allow ground troops and forward observers to directly receive and transmit images acquired by sensors on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The unit, known as ERS-RVT (for End Reception Station-Remote Video Terminal), comprises a terminal and man-portable transmitter/receiver designed to supply real-time high-resolution displays of geo-referenced images and digital maps. It also provides feedback from previous missions along with threat assessments.
Aerojet has shipped the first solid-fuel jettison motor for NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range, N.M., for the Pad Abort-1 test later this year. The jettison motor is one of three used in the event of a launch abort at altitudes up to 300,000 feet. ATK makes the other two motors — one for the abort itself and a second to control the vehicle’s attitude. In an emergency, those two are used to separate the Orion crew capsule from the Ares I launcher and maintain control.
President Obama’s long-term plan for human spaceflight will have an asterisk next to it until the end of the summer at the earliest, while a panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine reviews it at the request of the White House. Augustine, the 73-year-old former CEO of Lockheed Martin, will lead a mixed panel of NASA insiders and outside experts to review the Bush-era “Vision for Space Exploration” adopted after the Columbia accident in 2003.
ATOMIC FUTURE: “The conditions that might make possible the global elimination of nuclear weapons are not present today and their creation would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order,” according to the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. “As long as nuclear dangers remain, the U.S.
The U.S. Air Force will try again the night of May 7 to launch the TacSat-3 satellite for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory on a Minotaur 1 vehicle from NASA’s Wallop’s Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Launch of the $60 million satellite and its trio of experimental payloads — as well as two piggyback satellites — was to have come at 8 p.m. EDT May 5, but rain and low clouds barred the liftoff. Mission managers are hoping for better weather for a launch window that opens at 8 p.m. May 7 and extends until 11 p.m.
U.S. Navy officials are crafting an incremental upgrade plan for their developmental Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) drone that will allow it to operate in areas where increasingly vital satellite communications are denied.
Aurora Flight Sciences is preparing to fly a prototype solar-powered unmanned aircraft as a step toward development of an ultra-long-endurance surveillance platform. The 114-foot-wingspan SunLight Eagle is expected to fly early next week at New Mexico State University’s unmanned aircraft system flight-test center in Las Cruces, Aurora President John Langford says.
