A pair of Lockheed Martin F-35Cs have successfully completed their first series of arrested landings and catapult takeoffs from the carrier USS Nimitz this month, marking the start of the developmental test program for the U.S. Navy’s first stealthy piloted aircraft.
Recent developments in the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter program have convinced some analysts that the nearly $400 billion multirole stealth jet has seen its worst days. For instance, a key credit-rating analyst covering the Western aerospace and defense industry says the eighth low-rate initial production contract for the F-35 signals definitive long-term viability of the program after years of doubts.
The so-called Third Offset, a new Pentagon strategy for pursuing and developing military technologies to overcome the likes of China and Russia, could accordingly provide a blueprint for industry to focus on and make business moves such as acquisitions, divestitures and research spending. Advance technologies highlighted by defense officials in recent years include hypersonic weapons; unmanned; cyber; long-range strike; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; “big data,” and “cloud” computing.
China’s Xiaofei testbed collected this image of the Moon’s far side, with the Earth beyond, on Oct. 28 during a lunar loop-around flight aimed at validating the reentry technology for the Chang’e-5 sample-return mission scheduled to launch as early as 2017.
Manohar Parrikar, a graduate in metallurgical engineering, has become the new defense minister of India, which is in the midst of a $100 billion military modernization program. Parrikar, who replaces part-time Defense Minister Arun Jaitley, is faced with the onerous task of expediting the country’s pending defense deals as the new right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party government in India, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, tries to establish a speedier acquisition system.
A Chinese airlifter as big as the Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules will go into service in the 2020s if the factory behind the project, Shaanxi Aircraft, is given a go-ahead, as expected.
While the SpaceShipTwo crash investigation continues, the full impact on the vehicle’s design and operations, as well as the effect on Virgin Galactic’s schedule, remains unclear.
“We carried nearly a quarter more [long-haul] passengers compared to last year while increasing our load factor and revenue per seat,” CEO Christoph Mueller says. “We target further profitable growth of our long-haul business into 2015.” Aer Lingus’s long-haul revenues rose 34% in the three months through September compared to the same period last year, while short-haul revenue rose 5.5%.
Three words best describe a suite of new software tools Honeywell is building for its Primus Epic integrated flight decks: seamless situational awareness.
New launch and recovery system is designed to enable a beyond-line-of-sight, multi-intelligence unmanned aircraft, with 10-12-hr. time on station at 500 nm, to be independent of runways and flight decks.
Unmanned developments: “ambulance drone” prototyped; solar-powered, optionally piloted SunStar; Airbus VTOL UAS heads to sea; TaxiBot cleared for service trials; UAS testing expands in Wales.
Six years after its reorganization into specialist subsidiaries, Avic is handling a wide range of civil aircraft programs, with a remarkable number of mostly secretive engine developments also coming into view. It still has challenges, however, beginning with its sheer size: it has 400,000 employees, many working in fields unrelated to building aircraft.
Images of its display from the upcoming Zhuhai air show demonstrate an uncanny resemblance to another famous supersonic ASCM, the Mach 2.8-3.0 Russian-Indian BrahMos. Both share the distinctive cone-inlet air intake, a two-stage structure and similar dimensions.
Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to re-engine its Antares launch vehicle and use one or two alternate launch vehicles initially to meet its International Space Station resupply commitments to NASA after last week’s launch failure.
