DARK CLOUDS: Problems with deliveries on the NH90 helicopter and Airbus A380 are going to hurt Stork earnings this year, and it may be until 2009 that a full recovery will materialize, the company says in its first quarter earnings report. Operating income for the first three months was 25 million euros, up slightly from the 2006 result. The aerospace sector will have a negative contribution for the year. For its aerospace industry operation, "the dark clouds have certainly not yet cleared away," Stork CEO Sjoerd Vollebregt said.
Having completed activation of the Pentagon's first wing dedicated to unmanned aerial vehicle operations - the 432nd -- the Air Force is continuing its hunt for greater and more effective bandwidth. The growth of UAVs is putting an increasing strain on bandwidth resources, said Col. Charlie Bartlett, the Air Force deputy director for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.
Britain's long-awaited Type 45 anti-air warfare destroyers are on the way, with the first-of-class ship, HMS Daring, due to enter service in 2009. Meanwhile, VT Shipbuilding announced May 2 that it has successfully delivered the bow section of the third Type 45, the future HMS Diamond, to the Govan shipyard in Glasgow, Scotland, which is owned by Type 45 prime contractor BAE Systems.
COMM SAT: Telenor has awarded a contract to Thales Alenia Space to build a new communications satellite, Thor 6, for high-power direct-to-home TV applications. The 36 transponder Ku-band spacecraft, to enter service in mid-2009, will serve the Nordic countries and Central and Eastern Europe. It was the first telecom sat award for the manufacturer since it was taken over by Thales. It followed an award for a first Global Monitoring for Environment and Security spacecraft, Sentinel-1, on April 18.
The House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee is recommending Congress cut the boost-phase Airborne Laser missile defense effort by $400 million, re-evaluate nuclear weapons policy while slowing the Reliable Replacement Warhead, (RRW) and bar the Pentagon from deploying Trident nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles as converted, conventional prompt global strike weapons.
The refitted 44,570-ton Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov - renamed INS Vikramaditya - will be delivered to India's navy in early 2009. The navy has denied media reports that Russian shipbuilders had grossly miscalculated cabling required for the ship by almost four times, provisioning for 700 km as against a requirement of 2,400 km. This would have pushed the ship's delivery back to 2010.
CANADIAN MRAPS: Force Protection Inc. said May 1 it received an $8.9 million contract for its Buffalo and Cougar mine-protected vehicles for the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command. The U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command will administer the contract under a Foreign Military Sales deal. The order, which marks the first contract between Canada and the company, calls for five Buffalos and five Cougars, spares, training and field-service representatives. The vehicles are scheduled to arrive starting by August.
SPI3D AWARD: The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded General Atomics of San Diego a $7 million cost-plus-award-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Standoff Precision Identification in 3 Dimensions (SPI3D) program. The effort strives to develop a high-resolution, three-dimensional imaging system, and is supposed to wrap up by April 2008.
RADIO SYSTEMS: Harris Corp.'s RF Communications Division of Rochester, N.Y., has been awarded a $422 million contract for the procurement of Improved Special Operation Forces High-Frequency Multi-Band Radio Systems, the Defense Department said May 1. The systems are in support of the Special Operations Acquisition and Logistics, Intelligence and Information Systems, Program Management of Command, Control and Communications Office. The work will be performed in Rochester.
A scheduled June 8 launch of space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to the International Space Station appears increasingly fragile as the vehicle's rollout to Launch Complex 39A has slipped a week to about May 12.
About 830 aerospace and maritime companies are expected to take part in the biennial Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition 2007 (LIMA '07) from Dec. 4-8 in Langkawi, Malaysia. The aerospace part of the event will be held at the Mahsuri International Exhibition Center, while Awana Porto Malai is the venue for the maritime section.
Enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have made their mobility a key skill, so U.S. military leaders have documented a need for greater capability to attack moving targets and are moving forward with programs to adapt existing weapons, officials said recently.
The U.S. Navy will host NATO representatives at Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, on May 15-17 for a formal demonstration of the Mine Warfare and Environmental Decision Aids Library (MEDAL), a software suite that helps plan mine countermeasures (MCM). "MEDAL is a big success story for mine warfare," says Cmdr. George Saroch, director of Command and Control, Mine Warfare Program Office. "It is enabling our strategic shift to organic mine warfare -- the ability to rapidly provide MCM capability to an area of operations."
The U.S. Air Force's long-range strike aircraft set to be deployed by 2018 will be subsonic and manned, said Brig. Gen. Mark Matthews, director of plans and programs, headquarters, Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Va. But it would be wrong to characterize the aircraft as being entirely devoid of current technology, Matthews said May 1 during a panel discussion "Return of the Bomber: The Future of Long Range Strike," presented by the Eaker Institute, the research arm of the Air Force Association (AFA).
EFV SDD: The U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command has awarded General Dynamics Land Systems a $43.8 million contract for Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) spare parts and systems for developmental testing. The contract is a modification to the existing systems development and demonstration award and follows another for $144 million provided earlier this year as the company tries to fix high-profile problems with the program (DAILY, March 21).
In his day job, William C. Livingstone is a solar astronomer at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, specializing in sunspot magnetism and other topics. But he's also an amateur photographer, with what is perhaps a natural inclination to point his camera at the sky.
The U.S. Air Force plans to increase its Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) combat air patrols to 16 from the current 12, service officials said May 1 when they announced the activation of the 432nd Wing - the first wing dedicated for UAVs and related operations. By 2010, the Air Force wants to be running 21 combat air patrols with the UAVs, Air Force officials said in a teleconference from Creech Air Force Base, Nev., the wing's home base.
Engineers at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) are dissecting their data after running a specially equipped RL-10 rocket engine at 10 percent of its full 13,000-pound thrust in a series of tests aimed at using the venerable cryogenic engine for the descent stage of NASA's planned lunar lander. PWR uses a bypass valve to route hydrogen around the turbopump that feeds propellant into the combustion chamber, slowing the turbomachinery to throttle the engine back, says Chris Moore, who runs the exploration advanced technology program at NASA headquarters.
C-5M AWARD: The U.S. Air Force is awarding Lockheed Martin a $23 million contract for advance procurement of long lead items for Lot 1 of the low-rate initial production for the C-5M Reliability Enhancements and Re-engining program. The Air Force both solicited and closed negotiations last month, the Defense Department said. Air Force officials continue to say that they will not be able to pay for new Boeing C-17s without relief from the legislative requirement to continue upgrading its oldest C-5 transports, a program that is running into cost increases.
Raytheon said April 30 that the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded it a multiyear, potentially $14.4 million contract to develop an improved composite material for infrared windows and missile domes.
