An Aug. 26 Aerospace DAILY story gave the wrong number of bands in which the Global Hawk collects electro-optical and infrared intelligence. The correct number is two, including one panchromatic and one midwave infrared.
TACTICAL EXPANSION: Oshkosh Defense’s newest manufacturing facility is up and running in Killeen, Texas, next door to Ft. Hood, the largest U.S. Army installation in the country. The 230,000-square-foot facility will manufacture aftermarket components for the Oshkosh Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT). The Killeen facility includes office space as well as state-of-the-art welding equipment, paint booths and ovens. The layout of the plant floor is configurable for flexible manufacturing lines.
Boeing has formally offered the F/A-18E/F to Denmark after successfully persuading Copenhagen to include the Super Hornet in its new combat aircraft competition. The F/A-18E/F will now be evaluated against the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Saab Gripen NG, with a decision expected by the end of 2009.
A Wall Street analyst believes a steep decline in the stock price of Textron Inc. – parent of Bell Helicopter, Textron Systems and Cessna Aircraft – could open the door for an opportunistic bidder to acquire the industrial conglomerate and sell it off in pieces.
GUIDED ROCKETS: Lockheed Martin has received a $61 million follow-on contract for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) Unitary rockets. Deliveries begin in May 2010 and conclude in July of that year. GMLRS are supposed to provide the U.S. Army and Marine Corps and U.K. military forces with an all-weather, precision-strike, artillery rocket system effective against counter-fire, air defense, light materiel and personnel targets.
Lockheed Martin has offered Brazil a tailored version of the F-16 instead of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter originally specified in the request for information (RFI) issued in July, a move that suggests the U.S. is not quite ready to offer its latest fighter beyond the JSF partner nations and close allies.
TWO TRIDENTS: With the Aug. 25 launch of two Trident II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missiles (FMBs), the U.S. Navy is celebrating 124 consecutive successful test launches since 1989. It is a record Trident II builder Lockheed Martin says is unmatched by any other large ballistic missile or space launch vehicle. The Navy launched the unarmed Trident IIs from the submerged submarine USS Louisiana (SSBN 743) in the Pacific Ocean. The missiles were launched as part of a Follow-on Commander’s Evaluation Test.
DUTCH UAV: The Royal Netherlands Army says it needs to field five short-range, tactical unmanned aircraft to support its military operations in Afghanistan. At this point, the Dutch Defense Materiel Organization is asking companies to express their interest in a potential acquisition program. The goal is to have UAVs available for operational use around March 2009 under full lease, including personnel and equipment. The service goal is to have 180 hours of imagery provided per month.
The U.S. must address several strategic challenges to national security in the upcoming 2009 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), to shape defense strategy, planning and force structure over the next 20 years.
Boeing has signed a five-year procurement contract, potentially worth $4.3 billion, to produce up to 215 CH-47F Chinook heavy lift helicopters for the U.S. Army. This first multiyear contract for the modernized F-model Chinook will save more than $449 million over annual procurement, according to Jack Dougherty, Boeing vice president for H-47 programs.
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee has turned down an $11 million reprogramming request for funds from the U.S. Army, putting numerous Joint Heavy Lift aircraft contracts on hold. “We’re trying to get this reversed,” said Jack Tansey, public affairs officer at the Army Aviation Technology Directorate (AATD). “We’ve got 11 contracts on hold.”
The recent fighting within the former Soviet Union shows that weapons like the F-22 Raptor are far from Cold War relics, says a recent Teal Group report, which calls for the Pentagon to re-evaluate its position on the aircraft. “As this is written, Russia’s invasion of Georgia is providing a rude wakeup call to anyone expecting to spend the next 50 years hunting guerillas and terrorists,” the report says. The report puts the onus on Defense Secretary Robert Gates and what it says is a lame U.S. Air Force.
The U.S. Navy plans to restart operational testing for the airborne mine countermeasures (AMCM) package of the MH-60S in one year, slipping by 20 months plans to achieve initial operational testing in July 2008.
NASA has released the first image from its latest space observatory, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), and given it a new name. GLAST will now be known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, after Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, whose pioneering work serves as the foundation for understanding many of the astrophysical phenomena the telescope will observe.
Initial launch pad checks of the space shuttle Atlantis for its mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope should be getting under way during the first week of September, pending the resolution of orbiter/external tank umbilical mating difficulties. Atlantis was to roll out to Launch Complex 39A as early as Aug. 30. But United Space Alliance technicians had difficulty extracting a jammed ground support system bolt used to initially align the hydrogen umbilical side of the tank’s massive rigging structure with the orbiter’s belly.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) is hailing its $97 million contract to develop the U.S. Navy’s Multi-Stage Supersonic Target (MSST) as a “strategic win,” positioning the company to enter what it sees as a growing market for target systems. The MSST will replicate the Russian Novator 3M-54E Klub two-stage anti-ship missile, the NATO code-named SS-N-27 Sizzler.
JLTV REPROGRAM: The House Appropriations defense subcommittee has approved a $60 million reprogramming increase for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). The money will support the Defense Acquisition Executive’s decision to change from a two-contractor to a minimum three-contractor award.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense will ask parliament for 95 billion yen to upgrade 22 F-15Js and buy parts for a further 38 in the budget year that begins April 1, 2009. The move was foreshadowed as an interim response to U.S. refusal to sell Japan – or any ally – the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, which has delayed the order for and introduction of a new advanced fighter.
LONDON – British defense technology company Qinetiq is aiming to fly another design iteration of its Zephyr high-altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) within the next 12 months. The revised design will have a new wing section and a slightly different wing plan-form. Wind tunnel and subscale demonstration flights are already under way. The modifications are intended to help the UAV meet its endurance design goal of staying aloft up to three months.
The U.S. military is facing an era of discontinuity, forced to choose between devoting resources to the current fight and investing in novel technologies to meet future challenges, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) released last week.
HIGH ALERT: Lockheed Martin said it has successfully applied its Human Alerting and Interruption Logistics-Surface Ship (HAIL-SS) system to the newly commissioned USS Sterett (DDG 104). HAIL-SS is supposed to help sailors handle high rates of alerts and interruptions without too much distraction, as well as mediate between human users and the various mechanisms that generate alerts in increasingly complex combat systems like Sterett’s Aegis platform. Lockheed hopes to work it further into the U.S.
The German and the Netherlands defense ministries have set up a partnership to jointly work toward improving the survivability of their ships by reducing their signatures. A recent agreement between the two countries calls for the establishment of the Center for Ship Signature Management. The German defense armaments agency, BWB, says the cooperation will help not just with information sharing, but also with a shortage of skilled technical personnel. Moreover, the agency hopes to expand the knowledge base for ship signature management.
