NASA and ATK will join forces to accelerate the availability of commercial crew launch services to the International Space Station using the Liberty rocket, a U.S./European hybrid unveiled earlier this year (AW&ST Feb. 14, p. 34).
Russia's Express-AM4 satellite is fully functional and is sending and receiving signals following an Aug. 18 launch mishap, but the Astrium-built spacecraft remains in the same useless orbit where its Proton M/Breeze M rocket dumped it shortly after liftoff. Evert Dudok, president of Astrium Satellites of Europe, says it took about a week to locate and establish communication with the spacecraft after ground controllers and space surveillance networks lost track of it after launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
The political debate may have shifted from the deficit to jobs, but the ramifications for defense spending could be just the same, or even worse. President Barack Obama's recent addition of $447 billion in hoped-for federal deficit cuts from Congress, to pay for his jobs-creation proposal, is yet another “incremental negative for defense,” say financial analysts. Wall Street was already expecting total defense budget cuts to future spending to total $650-750 billion over the coming decade via August's Budget Control Act.
Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.) is asking the Government Accountability Office to assess the costs of completing the Lockheed Martin Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) versus sticking with Raytheon's Patriot system. The review is seen as an effort to shore up support for the missile defense program, which the Obama administration proposed to stop after its research phase ends. Germany has conducted a similar assessment and concluded it should stick with the program. (Germany and Italy are the European partners with the U.S.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which designs and operates classified U.S. satellites, is pulling back the veil of secrecy on three generations of spy cameras used since the 1960s as the NRO celebrates half a century. The systems—Eastman Kodak's KH-7/8 Gambit and Itek's KH-9 Hexagon—were part of a massive spacecraft system designed to collect electro-optical imagery of the former Soviet Union. Their exact configuration and design were hush-hush until now. Gambit was broken into two phases. The KH-7 model camera, with a 77-in.
With bad memories still fresh in their minds over the ratification fight for the New Start nuclear arms reduction pact, White House officials are preparing even more studiously for a long-promised Senate battle to ratify the 1990s-era Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). “We do not expect it will be easy or happen quickly, but we will work hard to make it happen,” says Marcie Ries, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.
Think fighting three wars simultaneously was tough? Try convincing lawmakers to negotiate entitlement and tax reform while keeping their paws off the Pentagon's war chest—and do it by the end of November. That is the position being pursued by the Pentagon and the defense industry, which are joined at the hip in fighting anything larger than the $400 billion in reductions to the military till that was dealt last April.
The U.S. Capitol has been consumed with battles over deficit reduction. But as plans for fiscal 2012 get down to specifics, a new round of battles is set to begin—over individual programs including Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and its Medium Extended Air Defense System.
Procurement costs are rising, defense budgets are shrinking, and money is being diverted from modernizing to deal with the high operational pace most NATO members are experiencing. It is a formula for disaster, but also the reality that the U.S. and European governments can no longer ignore. Both NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates have warned the bottom line could be security irrelevance if ways are not found to assure critical military capabilities.
Bubble or bonanza? The verdict is still out on which one the U.K.'s cybersecurity market will turn out to be. Industry is betting heavily on the sector, hoping cyberactivities will offset large declines in traditional defense spending.
For some time, the U.K. government's helicopter plan was described as dysfunctional merely because any other descriptor would have been unprintable. And while there are ample challenges ahead, there are signs that key elements of building a future force are falling into place.
Since production of the F-16 started in 1976, more than 4,500 of the single-engine fighters have been sold to more than 20 nations. Now, however, the decades-long production run for the fighter, once said to “sell itself” to customers globally, is facing an unfamiliar predicament: potential shutdown.
Newly developed sensor technologies are helping U.S. forces take the fight against the Taliban to bomb-making factories, where insurgents craft improvised explosive devices (IEDs), before those lethal explosives reach the streets. Using hyperspectral sensors, commanders could locate the facilities where IEDs are made, a key step toward crippling the Taliban's logistics operations and withdrawing allied forces as planned by 2014. This sensor market is also budding, a rarity in an increasingly austere budget climate.
NATO-led operations in support of rebels in Libya clearly demonstrated that where Europe has precision weapons, they can be highly effective. But the campaign also revealed that European weapon inventories are lacking in depth and breadth. France relied heavily on its AASM precision-guided munition, while the Royal Air Force used so many of its Dual-Mode Brimstones it both redeployed some from Afghanistan to the Libya campaign and asked MBDA to surge production in the second urgent operational requirement effort for the weapon.
Turkey has huge ambitions when it comes to its defense industry, including building fighters and trainers. But much time and the crossing of many stepping-stones will be required to achieve these goals. Ankara is seemingly on the right path, though, with several efforts starting to bear fruit. Last year, the country introduced the medium-altitude, long-endurance Anka unmanned aircraft, and it is taking the first big steps into the guided-missile sector with the start of Standoff Missile (SOM) flight trials.
Although open rotors offer a realistic chance of meeting lower fuel-burn requirements, they face potential hurdles to certification. To tackle these issues, researchers are finalizing preferred concepts on which to focus critical large-scale demonstration tests.
We have to start sometime. What's the point of waiting?” That idea, often heard in the Chinese aero-engine industry, probably best sums up the fatalistic attitude as the country's aviation propulsion sector, experienced mainly in making foreign machinery, sets out to take on leading Western and Russian manufacturers.
With the confirmation of a design for NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) human exploration rocket, the agency's hard-pressed spaceflight contractors finally have some information they can use to help them retain space shuttle and Constellation engineers and other workers. The skills of those employees, which come only from many years of experience, will be essential for building and flying the most powerful rocket ever built.
After years of delays, fledgling rocket company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is ready to launch NASA's first commercial cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) this fall. But that opportunity may continue to elude SpaceX for a while longer, as a recent Soyuz launch failure could prompt yet another schedule slip.
The latest crash of a Yakovlev Yak-42 will likely have serious consequences for the Russian aviation industry. To improve safety, President Dmitry Medvedev and his government plan to make the acquisition of Western aircraft easier while drastically reducing the number of airlines and overhauling the flight safety oversight system.
Delta Air Lines will not be placing any more aircraft orders for at least “the next couple of years,” President Ed Bastian says, quashing speculation that an order for smaller single-aisle aircraft remains in the offing. “We are done talking about aircraft for the near to medium term,” he says. “We are very comfortable where we sit with our fleet orders.”
AviancaTaca is making rapid progress in integration following its 2010 merger. While new processes and management teams are put in place, the airline group is also preparing for its entry into Star Alliance in May 2012.
The senior flight attendant, at the gate for an early morning Air India flight to Mumbai, stood with hands folded, eyes cast downward, the traditional welcome smile missing. Anxiety over delayed monthly salaries and their very existence in the state-run airline was evident on the faces of most of the crewmembers—anger and frustration evident in their responses to passenger requests.
Competition in Asia is set to intensify next year with several new airlines starting operations. Thai Airways International is planning to establish Thai Smile Air, a full-service short-haul carrier that will start flying in July using 174-seat Airbus A320s. Thai had planned to call the outfit Thai Wings and have it start flying earlier. It changed the name after consulting with staff.
As Airbus and Boeing weigh decisions on boosting output, they typically point to the supply chain as one of the main brakes on building more airliners. But these concerns go beyond merely overstretching the industrial capacities of the second- and third-tier manufacturers. The shape and financial health of the network also remain issues.
