NEW DELHI India’s parliament has passed two anti-terrorism bills — to shore up the anti-crime Unlawful Activities Act and form a new National Investigation Agency (NIA) — clearing the way for them to be sent to the Upper House for final approval. The NIA will be headed by a director general appointed by the federal government. The bill will apply to citizens of India and overseas and provide for the investigation of other terror-related offenses with special courts.
The U.S. Air Force is developing requirements for the next upgrade of the F-22 Raptor following the decision to equip the fighter with a stealthy datalink under development for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. “The F-22 program has begun the weapon system requirements development phase of Increment 3.2, which includes Multifunction Advanced Data Link [MADL] capability,” Lockheed Martin says.
HUMMING BIRD: Boeing announced Dec. 18 its A160 Turbine (A160T) Hummingbird unmanned rotorcraft has achieved two milestones: using its two-speed transmission to change gears in flight and passing the 100 flight-hour threshold. According to the company, shifting gears in flight is the final step in realizing the potential of the aircraft’s optimum speed rotor (OSR) technology and expanding the flight envelope at higher speeds and gross weights. The gear-change flight took place Nov. 25 and the100 flight-hour mark was passed Nov. 20.
PARIS The French government is eyeing part of a multibillion dollar bailout plan to accelerate deployment of urgently needed weapon systems and to keep beleaguered sectors of France’s defense industry afloat.
PATRIOT ORDER: Raytheon has been awarded a not-to-exceed $3.3 billion order to provide advanced Patriot air and missile defense capability, whole life support and training for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The U.S. government approved the Foreign Military Sale of Patriot Config-3 capabilities including Patriot GEM-T and Lockheed Martin PAC-3 missiles, and Raytheon and teammate Lockheed worked for a year with the UAE government to close the deal. With the order, the UAE joins 11 other countries that use the Patriot missile.
ONE MORE: MicroSat Systems, which is building 18 Orbcomm satellites, will be lead spacecraft integrator for the “mystery” entrant in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, which revealed itself on Dec. 18 to be a U.S.-based group of academic, aerospace and business interests that calls itself Next Giant Leap. Team members include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Draper Laboratory, which has supported the Apollo, shuttle and space station programs, will spearhead landing operations.
SONAR AWARD: The U.S. Navy has awarded ITT Corp. a $33.2 million contract to produce sonar transducers for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, Ind. Under the contract, ITT Electronic Systems will produce AN/SQS-53C Unit 717 Sonar Transducer Array shipsets, a key component of the Navy’s AN/SQQ-89 (V) Surface Ship Undersea Warfare combat system. The combined system enables submarines to search, detect, classify and localize underwater targets.
PARIS French armaments agency DGA says it awarded the team of Thales Airborne Systems and DCNS a three-year, $29 million deal to show the ability of vertical take-off and landing unmanned aircraft (VTUAV) to perform automatic takeoff and landing aboard ships, in all weather and meeting stringent surveillance demands.
COUGAR PROTECTION: Force Protection Industries Inc. received two contract awards worth $30 million from U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command for 188 Cougar Exterior Ballistic Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) kits. Force Protection’s add-on armor package is the first of its kits awarded a contract by the Marine Corps. Delivery of the kits is scheduled for this month and early 2009.
ARMORED SURVIVAL: U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has developed a new aircrew armored survival vest (ASV) for helicopter and nonfighter aircraft crew. NAVAIR’s Human System Division designed the ASV in three sizes to fit a range of body types and will reduce bulk, weight and heat stressors commonly encountered by helicopter aircrew flying for six or more hours on combat missions, NAVAIR says. The vest is constructed from a material called Halo-Tech, which is as fire-retardant as Nomex and more durable.
Negotiations for development of a new NASA spacesuit are expected to resume soon now that the two teams competing to do the work have joined forces. Exploration Systems & Technology (EST), a joint venture of Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover, will not submit another bid for the Constellation Space Suit System (CSSS), and instead will join the team headed by Oceaneering International, Inc., to build the next-generation modular spacesuit.
Michael Griffin should continue as NASA administrator, at least until President-elect Barack Obama sorts out his space policy agenda, the chairman of a key House authorizing committee said Dec. 18. “I have recommended that, at a minimum, he be kept during the transition period,” House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said, adding that he was also recommending that Griffin “be considered” to be kept on beyond that.
The U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on the status of its prepositioned materiel and equipment should be more comprehensive to help keep Congress aware of potential logistical issues, congressional auditors say in a new report. Although DOD provides a single annual report, there are variations in information coming from the armed services because of the differences in the configuration of their prepositioned stocks, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says.
MUSHROOMING OPPOSITION: Emboldened by Democrat Barack Obama’s U.S. presidential win, anti-nuclear weapons activists and lobby groups in Washington are ramping up their calls for cutting the nation’s strategic stockpile and killing the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).
Fidelity Technologies Corp. announced Dec. 16 that it has received a $5.5 million contract to build 50 Call For Fire Trainers (CFFT) simulators for the U.S. Army and Army National Guard. The training simulator is used to instruct forward observers in methods for calling for fire missions through the use of three-dimensional battlefield simulation that is programmed to keep the trainee, as well as friendly and enemy forces, in motion.
THINK AGAIN: An analyst at the Lexington Institute is praising House members for openly disapproving the U.S. Army’s plan to cut billions from its M-1 Abrams tank upgrade and Stryker wheeled combat vehicle programs. Funding had been cut back in the Army’s Program Objective Memorandum (POM) for fiscal 2010-2015, with vehicles losing $222.5 million in funding in FY ’10, with cuts peaking the following year at $737.7 million. Total cuts to Stryker procurement during the POM horizon total $1.3 billion (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 1).
Lockheed Martin has been notified by NASA to stop work on GOES-R, because Boeing has filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the Dec. 2 $1.09 billion satellite award.
An article on Dutch unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) plans misidentified the system The Netherlands is looking to lease (Aerospace Daily, Dec. 15). The service will be provided by QinetiQ, using a UAV provided by Israel’s Aeronautics Defense Systems.
PARIS – The A400M program has reached an important milestone with the first flight of the TP400 turboprop engine on its C-130K test bed. The flight took place at Marshall Aerospace’s Cambridge, England, facility, with takeoff at 10:44 a.m. local time Dec. 17 and landing at 11:59 a.m. The aircraft reached a top speed of 165 knots and an altitude of 8,000 feet.
The U.S. military is exploring other options for expanding the coverage of its missile defense system if negotiations on locating a third ground-based interceptor site in Poland are not continued under President-elect Barack Obama. “We are in discussions with the MDA [Missile Defense Agency] on alternatives if the discussions in Europe do not continue,” said Air Force Gen. Victor Renuart Jr., head of both the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command.
European and Chinese-German teams have joined the race for the Google Lunar X Prize, the $30 million competition to land a vehicle on the moon, travel 500 meters and show it all with transmitted pictures by Dec. 31, 2012. The Euroluna team is led by Palle Haastrup, founder and president of the European Lunar Exploration Association. It plans to use commercial off-the-shelf technologies to build a lander called Romit.
DROP IT: The ability to hit a stationary target with an air-dropped mortar has been demonstrated by General Dynamics (GD) using a GPS guidance kit that replaces the fuze in existing 81mm mortar rounds. The U.S. Army-sponsored trials are intended to demonstrate a low-cost weapon that can be fielded rapidly on tactical unmanned air vehicles. GD’s nose-mounted Roll Controlled Fixed Canard guidance kit includes the fuze, flight controls and GPS navigation.
NASA managers have concluded they don’t need an active damping system in the aft skirt of the Ares I first stage to prevent dangerous vibrations from rattling the crew of the Orion crew exploration vehicle on top, and will use a passive system instead.
