Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

By Tony Osborne
The Polish government has signed off on a contract for four AW101 three-engine naval helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and search and rescue missions.
Defense

India’s only serving aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, caught fire on April 26, killing a naval officer.
Defense

HARRIS CORP. has $27.7m U.S. Air Force contract for AN/PLM-4 Radar Signal Simulator System production and repair services.

Lockheed Martin formally opened a new final assembly line for the F-16 in Greenville, South Carolina, on April 23, ending an 18-month production hiatus for the single-engine fighter.

View the Defense Market Intelligence Notes in PDF format.

By Arie Egozi
While the Israeli Air Force (IAF) is still debating whether to buy more F-35s, it is getting ready to begin operating its second F-35 squadron.
Defense

By Mark Carreau
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel is urging that neither policy makers nor NASA cut corners affecting crew safety and tech risk in the White House’s plans to accelerate a lunar return.
Defense

By Steve Trimble
The Pentagon’s Inspector General (IG) has cleared Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan of unethical behavior.
Defense

By Lee Hudson
The Pentagon is working on a process to modify Lockheed Martin F-35 afloat spares packages to match the needs of deployed aircraft by August 2020.
Defense

By Steve Trimble
A fifth EQ-4 will soon join the fleet of manned and unmanned aircraft that carry a Northrop Grumman-built comm gateway payload called the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node.
Defense

By Arie Egozi
Israeli sources say Houthi rebels in Yemen have downed a Chinese-made UAV operated by Saudi Arabia using an air-to-air missile adapted by the Iranians to be fired from the ground.
Defense

By Tony Osborne
Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), the developer of the Airlander 10 hybrid airship, has teamed with industry and academia to develop an electrical propulsion system for the aircraft.

By Michael Bruno
Raytheon leaders acknowledged a significant restructuring of their Missile Systems division April 25.
Defense

By Bradley Perrett
An helicopter assembly line owned by Airbus and Chinese state partners has begun putting together its first H135s, with deliveries due to begin this year.
Defense

By Tony Osborne
Egypt has reportedly opted to buy a fleet of AW149 twin-engine utility helos to meet its requirements for a ship-borne tactical transport and assault helo.
Defense

By Mark Carreau
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 sample return mission to the asteroid Ryugu has completed a low-altitude surveillance operation over the site where it dropped an explosive charge in early April to expose subsurface material for a planned second attempt to land and gather soil and rock.
Defense

By Steve Trimble
A Japanese-U.S. partnership has unveiled a vision for launching a family of stratospheric, solar-powered UAS to provide mobile comm and remote sensing services.

By Bradley Perrett, Guy Norris
The first test flight of a privately developed Chinese reusable space launcher hurled an experimental hypersonic waverider vehicle to a speed faster than 2,800 mph on April 23.
Space

BOEING delivered the 8th KC-46 tanker to McConnell AFB April 20.

On Tuesday afternoon in Washington, the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosts a discussion on the “Global Counterspace Landscape.”

Northrop Grumman Technical Services, Herndon, Virginia, has been awarded a $44,395,362 modification (P00040) to previously awarded contract FA8540-12-C-0004 for the production of electronic attack pods.

LOCKHEED MARTIN has $362.7m U.S. Army contract for Multiple Launch Rocket System launchers, other equipment and repair services.

The security squad protecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now is carrying a gun-like system that can disrupt the communication systems of s dxe443uspicious drones.

By Michael Bruno
Northrop on April 24 reported first-quarter 2019 sales increased 22% to $8.2 billion from $6.7 billion in the first quarter of 2018.
Defense

By Graham Warwick, Lee Hudson
The U.S. Army has awarded five other transaction authority prototype agreements for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft two months ahead of schedule.
Defense