With Western aerospace and defense (A&D) budgets increasingly being crunched, and more of the same expected for years to come, program managers in the U.S. have a new mantra to march to: “keep it sold.”
Foreign governments have been known to describe the U.S. export system in terms fit for a circus. Kevin Wolf, assistant secretary of commerce for export administration, remembers the comment this way: “You authorize the export of the elephant, but you make it difficult to get the peanuts.”
Asia-Pacific Staff (New Delhi), Robert Wall (London)
The cost of acquiring the winning aircraft for India's Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition is no longer a secret (except to the public, for now). With final MMRCA bids in for the Dassault Rafale or Eurofighter Typhoon, the offers of both European companies were opened Nov. 4 and their contents revealed for the first time to the two European rivals, as well as the Indian government's MMRCA program team, and three defense ministry officers who will spend the next 6-8 weeks boiling the offers down to a common, comparable form.
New fighters, missiles and missions are the hallmarks of the U.S. Air Force. While these still percolate in long-term plans, near-term fiscal constraints are forcing the service to craft a delicate balance between upgrading existing forces and husbanding funds for new equipment.
As airlines launch the first commercial biofuel flights in the U.S., the government is working with industry to scale up production of biomass-derived jet fuel to commercial quantities beginning in 2012. Following the lead set by carriers in Europe and Mexico, United Airlines on Nov. 7 completed a revenue flight from Houston to Chicago on a blend of 40% biofuel from algal oil and 60% conventional jet fuel. On Nov. 9, Alaska Airlines began a series of 75 flights from Seattle to Washington and Portland, Ore., on a 20% blend of biofuel from waste cooking oil.
For most European network carriers, short-haul operations have been little more than a necessary evil—needed to fill long-haul aircraft but a big drain on funds. Lufthansa is only the latest to try to surmount that situation, although there is little doubt it faces an uphill battle.
The U.S. Air Force is kicking off a series of meetings with industry in the coming weeks to outline the path for would-be competitors to break into the typically exclusive U.S. government launch sector, potentially creating a healthier and more cost-effective rocket market in the next decade. Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), has signed off on a first-ever detailed guide for certifying companies seeking to compete for U.S. government launches.
For its first 50 years, the National Reconnaissance Office's willingness to embrace risk in solving the complex technical tasks of spying from the safety of orbit earned the agency respect by a string of U.S. presidents faced with managing the Cold War. “The value of the photography alone was worth more than the cost of the whole U.S. space program,” said then-President Lyndon B. Johnson about images that are credited with helping to monitor the former Soviet military machine.
The National Reconnaissance Office builds and operates a constellation of space reconnaissance and surveillance systems second to none. Last year it completed an aggressive launch schedule deploying six systems. The organization continually invests in research and development to provide modernization to address cost, reliability and essential mission enhancements to meet stringent demands to provide timely understanding of low-signature targets with global imagery and signals collection.
“We build capabilities that our adversaries cannot imagine.” This was a common description of the National Reconnaissance Office's mission during the last century and was commonly provided to new engineers during their indoctrination briefings. The world's dangers were clear and the need to provide the country with capabilities to gather intelligence against the threats was an imperative. The hardest problems were purely technical, not budgetary, and they required innovation and creativity.
The Pentagon, contractors and defense mavens in Congress are in a state of high anxiety, and with good reason. A Nov. 23 deadline looms next week for a “Super Committee” of Congress to produce a plan to trim at least $1.2 trillion from the federal budget deficit over a decade. Automatic cuts—agreed to last summer in the budget deficit debate that almost led to an embarrassing default on treasury bonds—are a sort of meat cleaver dangling over the committee to induce the panel to use its scalpel to craft a better plan.
The Pentagon is setting up an Air-Sea Strategy Office to act as a “focusing lens” for the armed services, defense officials told reporters last week. The Navy, Air Force and Marines are the main players, but the Army is joining soon. The office's mission will be to counter growing anti-access/area denial threats in the global commons—oceans, airspace, outer space and cyberspace. “We cannot cede a single domain in order to prevail,” the officials said. Understanding the problems will help eliminate redundancy, they claim.
Despite program setbacks at Airbus (see p. 30) and Eurocopter, EADS is upping its financial projections for the full year, with stronger revenue and order bookings. The Airbus parent now expects a gross order intake of around 1,500 units, with 1,372 on the books through October. Deliveries at Airbus should be 520-530 units. EADS CFO Hans-Peter Ring also notes that A380 improvements are progressing, perhaps at a slightly better pace than thought, and he has an increased confidence for output next year.
Airbus Military is betting a connection with state-owned aerospace conglomerate Indonesian Aerospace will revive the fortunes of its tactical transport business. Indonesian Aerospace already assembles the CASA C212 and CASA CN235 under license, but the CASA C295, the largest tactical transport in Airbus Military's product range, has always been made in Spain, although that is about to change.
Reduced retirement savings accounts and depressed home values are keeping older workers on the job longer than expected, postponing a wave of retirements that could have decimated the aerospace and defense (A&D) workforce. But the generation behind them is planning for shorter careers.
Europe's next flagship space mission is hanging in the balance, but that is not the fault of the European Space Agency (ESA), which is building six new satellites to carry out the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) mission. Putting the program at risk is none other than the 27-nation EU itself, which may renege on a political commitment to fund GMES operations and maintenance in its next multiyear budget. If that happens, which is looking increasingly likely, the first GMES Sentinel satellite might never get off the ground.
USAF Gen. (ret.) Bruce Carlson, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, says in “Strike Out” (AW&ST Oct. 17, p. 32) that China's military believes in deception, which concerns him. Doesn't the U.S. military believe in deception? I would be concerned if they did not. Dianella, Western Australia
A pair of advanced-technology development projects at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center illustrates how the agency is making the transition from work that had focused on the Bush administration's back-to-the-Moon exploration approach to a more open-ended drive to advance technology readiness levels. Efforts behind the technology work that was once directed at the Constellation program's goal of planting a human outpost on the Moon have been shifted to support NASA's latest plans to push beyond low Earth orbit with human crews on an as-yet-uncharted route to Mars.
CAE said revenues for the quarter that ended Sept. 30, were $435.5 million, up 12% from a year earlier on the back of strong demand for its civil training products and services. The Canadian company's backlog is valued at $3.6 billion. President and Chief Executive Marc Parent said the company's New Core Markets segment signaled a “turning point” and is expected to generate $120 million in the next fiscal year.
The National Reconnaissance Office, a secretive intelligence agency that operates out of a posh headquarters a stone's throw from Washington Dulles International Airport, has earned its cache during its 50-year history. The agency's development of the nation's first classified imaging satellites helped to end the Cold War by revealing the Soviet Union's true military might—or lack thereof.
The 777 remains the star of the show this year for Boeing as the company is in sight of passing the record of 154 net orders received for the twin-aisle jet in 2005, says 777 General Manager Larry Loftis. As of Nov. 8, the company had recorded 132 net 777 orders. The majority are for the 365-seat 777-300ER or 777F. Loftis spoke as a 97-ft. wing spar was loaded into an automatic drilling machine at Boeing's Auburn, Wash., fabrication plant for the 1,000th airplane. A 777-300ER, it is to be delivered next March to Emirates, which boasts the largest 777 fleet, with 95.
Richard Wittington (see photo) has joined Drexel Hamilton of New York, as senior VP of research analysis for aerospace and defense. He has held executive positions in defense electronics and industrial companies, most recently for JSA Research.
