Iraq has sent its first payment to the U.S. for the purchase of 18 F-16 Block 52 fighters for 2014-15 deliveries, a major step toward rebuilding the country's air force. The buy adds roughly one more year of work for Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth assembly facility, which has been producing 18 aircraft per year.
Forecast International says 1,877 light military rotorcraft will be built between now and 2020, with production estimated at $24 billion in 2011 dollars. Growth will continue through 2012, but then yearly production “will enter a period of gradual, though erratic, decline through the 2018-19 timeframe.” The U.S.-based consultancy projects production will total 193 units this year and 215 next year, dropping to 186 in 2013. It then increases to 204 by 2015, but dips to about 165 in each of 2018 and 2019. Production in 2020 is projected at 185 units.
Russia's UTair Aviation has formally signed an order for seven Boeing 737-900ERs and 33 737-800s. In its Sept. 27 web listing, Boeing added seven 777 orders to its list of unidentified customers. Boeing's orders now total 425 for 2011.
ICBC Financial Leasing Co. of Beijing has signed the largest order by a Chinese financial leasing company to date: for CFM56-5B engines to power 22 Airbus A320-series aircraft. The firm order includes three spares, CFM International says. Deliveries begin next year.
Deals with Air Lease Corp. and Nordic Aviation Capital have helped propel ATR to a record order backlog of 275 aircraft. ATR has now booked 145 firm orders for 2011 and taken options for 72 more aircraft. Nordic is buying 10 ATR 72-600s and two further -500s; it also took options for another 10 -600s. ALC's deal for two -600s adds to the 10 aircraft ordered last year.
Scientists are expressing disbelief at inaction by the U.S. government to accept an offer of more than $1 billion from Europe to collaborate on a Mars sample-return mission. Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2011 meeting, Stanford University professor and NASA adviser Scott Hubbard says the funding issue threatens the start of the project, which is aimed at a Mars landing in 2018. “The European Space Agency is willing to put up €850 million to collaborate with us.
The softness of the small satellite launch market has forced Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to suspend production of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle pending a market review in early 2012. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell says, “We haven't abandoned it, but we are looking to address the market in a more cost-effective way. . . . However, with Falcon 1, we sold very few vehicles through 2010.” Meanwhile, the company will focus on development of its larger Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers, she says.
Cessna Aircraft has launched the Citation M2 to succeed the CJ1+ light business jet. With room for up to six passengers, the $4.2 million Citation M2 has a maximum cruise speed of 741 kph (463 mph) and a range of 2,408 km (1,505 mi). The M2 features Garmin G3000 avionics and an all-new cabin design and is powered by two Fadec-controlled Williams FJ44-1AP-21 turbofan engines.
China's Tiangong 1 orbital laboratory, launched on Sept. 29, will serve as a docking target for three missions during the coming two years, as China continues to take measured steps in its manned space program. For the moment, the greatest goal of the program is placing a 60-metric-ton space station in orbit by 2020, although Chinese space scientists hope to launch lunar missions. The next three missions for Shenzhou capsules—Shenzhou 8, 9 and 10—will each aim at mating with Tiangong 1.
Energy is becoming an obsession for the U.S. military—whether it is energy security, to reduce its dependence on imported oil; or energy efficiency, to offset rising operating costs driven by fuel prices. Energy considerations are increasingly finding their way into the requirements for both the acquisition and upgrade of aircraft and could soon be elevated to the list of key performance parameters for new platforms in development.
Scientists studying the flow of freshwater as a clue to how the Earth's climate is changing are pleased with the first ocean-surface salinity map produced by the U.S./Argentine Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft. “Aquarius's salinity data are showing much higher quality than we expected to see this early in the mission,” says Gary Lagerloef of Earth & Space Research in Seattle, the mission's principal investigator.
A new “Global Exploration Road Map” developed by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group offers two 25-year human pathways to Mars, one through an “asteroid-next” approach favored by President Barack Obama and the other through a “Moon-next” gateway. The competing strategies won support from 10 space agencies meeting in Kyoto, Japan, on Aug. 30. Five years in the making, the road map does not come with a price tag. Nor does it require binding agreements from existing participants, or exclude newcomers, including the noticeably absent China.
Eutelsat controllers are checking out the Atlantic Bird-7 satellite after Sea Launch AG lofted it atop a Zenit-3SL rocket from its floating platform in the Pacific on Sept. 24. The mission was the first for the Bern, Switzerland-based company since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2009. The rocket delivered the EADS Astrium-built communications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. Eutelsat reported partial deployment of the satellite's solar array within 3 hr. of separation.
California super-entrepreneur Elon Musk of PayPal, Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies fame is no naif when it comes to the ways of Washington. Wielding one of the bigger megaphones in town—a luncheon address at the National Press Club—he used the opportunity last week to zing a rhetorical missile at the military-industrial complex.
Look for the Obama administration to try to ramp up foreign military sales and financing to Southeast Asia. Washington hopes to make military aid do for it in that region what it did in the Middle East. “Our funding helps tie a country's security sector to the United States, creating strong strategic and financial incentives for the recipient countries to maintain close relations,” says Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
With All Nippon Airways (ANA) in possession of the first 787-8, Boeing is upbeat about taking the first steps in its next big challenge—a production ramp-up—but hesitates about when the industry's first composite jet will begin to pay off. Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO James Albaugh says production rates will notch up to 2.5 airplanes per month from the current two in November and reach 3.5 per month in “late winter or early spring.”
As aircraft designers focus on airframe and system integration, Boeing says that modifications to the 787's flight control system (FCS) provided it with a bonus in performance improvements that helped to avoid further structural redesign and delays.
Three years of Boeing 787 delays should have provided ample time for airlines and their maintenance organizations to ready themselves for the new generation of aircraft. Reality looks quite different, though.
Robert Wall (London), Amy Svitak (Paris), Amy Butler (Washington)
Europe will never match the U.S.'s passion for missile defense; but step-by-step, Washington's NATO partners are moving to build up capacities that could augment and expand the shield the Pentagon is creating. Progress will be slow and incremental, though, and—in terms of budget expenditure—will remain a mere fraction of what the U.S. commits to the mission area.
As Lockheed Martin readies for the imminent start of shipboard trials with the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, test pilots have given high marks to the jet's vertical-landing handling characteristics, though they caution that more work is needed to mitigate the effects of hot gas reingestion.
Two South African aerospace and defense companies have unveiled a new attack and reconnaissance aircraft, designed to be smaller and less costly than any other current manned, weapon-carrying type. In addition to providing armed overwatch for counter-insurgency, peacekeeping or border security operations, it is being touted as a fully autonomous and more versatile substitute for unmanned air systems.
L-3 Communications is hoping to spin up interest from U.S. and international customers in a new tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft concept based on demonstrations of its Spydr prototype.
When India did not shortlist either of the U.S. fighter offerings in its large Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft competition, questions began to swirl about whether something was amiss with the defense industrial relationship between the two sides. But it appears that U.S. industry still has access to this growth market. The latest sign is that after seven months of on-again/off-again talks, India's effort to reengine more than 100 of its Sepecat Jaguar strike aircraft is finally moving forward with indications that Honeywell will land the deal.
The need to put more effort into sustaining aging equipment and the introduction of platforms with new support schemes should make the near-term outlook bright for military maintenance, repair and overhaul organizations. But the fiscal reality in Europe and the U.S. is such that those two trends are merely compounding a gloomy budget picture and darkening the prospects for industry.
EADS is facing crucial decisions over its ownership structure now that Germany's government must decide within weeks about how to best protect its interests in Europe's largest aerospace company. According to industry sources, Daimler AG is losing patience in the slow-moving process to sell at least part of its stake as planned. It could, those sources say, decide to float its shares on the stock exchange if no other investor is found by the end of the year.
