Overall sales in the aerospace industry rose 8% in 2004, jumping from $148.9 billion in 2003 to $161 billion, the Aerospace Industries Association said Dec. 8. At the end of last year AIA predicted only a $1 billion increase in overall sales from 2003, but instead it was $12 billion and could go higher still, AIA President and CEO John Douglass said at the AIA's annual year-end review and forecast luncheon. "We are clearly headed in the right direction," Douglass said.
A study of options to modernize the U.S. Air Force tanker fleet may have entered its final stages. RAND Corp., which the Defense Department hired to do the analysis of alternatives (AOA), submitted its report to DOD late Dec. 7, a department spokeswoman said Dec. 8.
Lockheed Martin is taking several steps to overcome reliability problems with its Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), a company official said Dec. 7. The company is pushing even many of its smaller suppliers to adopt more stringent quality review processes and Lockheed Martin representatives plan to follow up with regular inspections, said Randy Bigum, Lockheed Martin vice president of strike weapons.
SAAB SYSTEMS: Saab Aerosystems has bought four Silicon Graphics (SGI) Onyx 350 visualization systems to be the core hardware for its new Planning, Evaluation, Training, Rehearsal and Analysis (PETRA) simulator for the Gripen fighter, SGI said Dec. 7. SGI is to ship two Onyx 350 systems to Saab in December and two more in the third quarter of 2005. Saab expects to have the first PETRA system ready by April, SGI said. Two of the PETRAs will be sold to the Swedish Defense Material Administration, one will go to Hungary and one will go to the Czech Republic.
RESCHEDULED: Arianespace has rescheduled the launch of the Helios IIA spacecraft for Dec. 18, which will allow time for the replacement of a subassembly in the Ariane 5 rocket. The launch will take place at 11:26 Eastern time from the company's launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. The decision was made to postpone the launch after a similar subassembly failed during a ground test.
Russia is moving to dominate the Latin American defense market, Forecast International Inc. analyst Tom Baranauskas wrote in a report issued Dec. 7. "Helicopter sales have proved to be the wedge, and Russia is working energetically to further increase its share, with particular emphasis on aircraft and weapons," he wrote. "Russia's sales strength lies in its willingness to engage in barter deals to finance arms sales."
The U.S. Air Force plans to consolidate three headquarters organizations handling information technology into a single directorate for networks and warfighting integration, the service announced Dec. 7. Warfighting Integration, Chief Information Officer and Communications Operations will be reorganized into Networks & Warfighting Integration-Chief Information Officer to "best integrate current and emerging technologies with warfighting operations," the Air Force said.
The U.S. Department of Defense still doesn't have total awareness and control of its $70 billion worth of spare parts and other inventory, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Dec. 7. The DOD wanted to achieve total asset visibility (TAV) by this year, but didn't make it, GAO said. "DOD did not achieve its goal because existing inventory systems continue to lack the ability to share data on a near real-time basis for all inventory segments," the report says.
L-3 Communications MAS (Canada) Inc. will provide in-service support for the 28 Sikorsky H-92 Cyclone helicopters Canada plans to buy, the company said Dec. 6. The contract is expected to be worth more than C$800 million ($664 million) over two decades, L-3 said. Sikorsky won the contract to replace Canada's fleet of Sea King helicopters this summer (DAILY, Aug. 2).
France has ordered 59 additional Rafale combat aircraft, bringing the aircraft's total to 120, Thales said Dec. 7. Thales supplies electronic systems for the Dassault Aviation-built fighter, including its navigation and attack system, electronic scanning radar, Spectra electronic warfare system, identification friend or foe system and others.
Soldiers' "boots on the ground" and human intelligence are vital to win urban warfare, a Future Combat Systems engineer says. "The Army is still a soldier-centric force. If we didn't need boots on the ground, we'd be the Air Force or the Navy," Patrick Murphy, chief engineer for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's PM Unit of Action Technologies, said Dec. 7 at a conference on "Future Ground Forces in the Urban Battlefield" in Arlington, Va.
Northrop Grumman is developing and testing a new harbor defense system to identify and track potential threats to harbors, the company said Dec. 7. The company recently held a demonstration of the system, named Centurion, for U.S. Navy officials at the Naval Base Ventura County, Calif. Using commercial systems, including underwater fiber-optic sonar sensors, a marine radar and shipboard identification systems, Centurion was able to detect and track surface vehicles and divers using battery-powered underwater propulsion.
The U.S. Air Force's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle program is grappling with a series of design challenges, according to the Government Accountability Office. Development of a defensive subsystem has been delayed and may be dropped due to weight constraints in the air vehicle, the GAO said in a report released Dec. 6 (DAILY, Dec. 7). The GAO also said the RQ-4B, the newer, larger version of Global Hawk, is not expected to have room for growth when it carries a signals intelligence payload. The new payload weighs more than planned.
EDO DIVIDEND: EDO Corp.'s board of directors has declared a cash dividend on its common stock of three cents per share. The dividend is payable on Jan. 7 to shareholders of record as of Dec. 17, the company said.
Portugal's government has rejected an appeal from Patria that it be allowed to compete in a tender for armored vehicles, the Finnish company said Dec. 6. Patria was excluded last month because of what the government said was late delivery of its best and final offer, but appealed the decision, saying it was within the time limits and that the government did not follow its own rules. Patria said it expects to be able to compete again with its Armored Modular Vehicle (AMV) if other competitors don't offer equipment that meets Portugal's needs.
ANOTHER C-40A: The Boeing Co. will provide one C-40A Clipper aircraft to the U.S. Navy under a $63.3 million contract modification, the Department of Defense said Dec. 6. The work is to be performed mostly in Seattle and completed in May 2006. Boeing is delivering Clippers to the U.S. Naval Reserve to replace aging C-9B Skytrain aircraft, and delivered the seventh one last month (DAILY, Nov. 23).
CAMERA DELIVERED: Boulder, Colo.-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has delivered a High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, designed to take detailed color pictures of Mars' surface, to Lockheed Martin Space Systems for installation in the Lockheed Martin-built Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Ball Aerospace said Dec. 6. The camera's cost was not disclosed. Ball Aerospace, under contract with the University of Arizona, designed, built and tested the HiRISE camera.
NASA is considering shifting the near-term focus of its Prometheus nuclear power and propulsion technology program away from the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission to alternative applications that might be achieved sooner. Begun as NASA's Nuclear Systems Initiative, the Prometheus program is developing space nuclear power and propulsion technology to cut interplanetary trip times and increase the power available to spacecraft.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has determined that a warning device on the Airborne Laser (ABL) gave a faulty reading when it indicated there was an air pressure problem inside the aircraft during a recent flight, an MDA spokesman said Dec. 7.
ANNIVERSARY: Pratt & Whitney celebrated the 30th anniversary of the delivery of the first production F100 engine on Dec. 7 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The F100 powers in-service F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft in 21 countries. More than 6,900 engines have been produced and more than 16 million flight hours logged, the company said.
