Aviation Week & Space Technology

Undeterred by the furor over LightSquared's plans for a broadband-wireless system that testing has shown will interfere with GPS receivers, Dish Network is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a similar waiver. The direct-to-home satellite TV service provider wants to use frequencies reserved for satellite signals to establish a terrestrial 4G network. Dish wants 15,000 transmitters versus LightSquared's 40,000, and in a less contentious frequency band.

LightSquared, meanwhile, is digging in its heels, blaming manufacturers of GPS receivers for poorly designed equipment that makes them susceptible to interference from the company's high-power terrestrial transmitters, which will use a frequency adjacent to the spectrum used by GPS. “The GPS industry's failure to comply with the Department of Defense's (DOD) filtering standards is the root cause of potential interference issues involving LightSquared's proposed broadband wireless network,” the company contends.

As military conflicts were heating up in the latter years of the previous decade, the Navy shifted funding focus from ship repair to buying items like helicopter components or combat vehicles, an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis of Pentagon contracting data shows. In 1999, the Navy spent or allocated 8% of the money for its top 20 programs to ship repair. By 2008, the share had fallen to 2%. Look for that trend to reverse.

For the first time in the history of the Joint Strike Fighter program, a senior Pentagon appointee has raised the question of whether one of the three versions of the Lockheed Martin F-35 should be canceled to save money. The move comes as program leaders and Pentagon cost experts are trying to prepare for a long-delayed Defense Acquisition Board review of JSF, including a comprehensive effort to establish reliable predictions of acquisition and operating costs.

It is not often that a government takes a more uncompromising line on military preparedness than the professional advisers in its defense department and forces. Yet this is exactly the situation that is playing out in Australia for the second time in five years. And this time, as previously, the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet looks like it's gaining an unexpected order while Lockheed Martin, because of the lateness of its F-35 program, runs a risk of missing contracts that it could once have counted as in the bag.

Israel's path to fielding the Joint Strike Fighter has been particularly fraught, and now—with technology and funding issues largely sorted out—the fielding schedule is under question. Israel faces another delay in deliveries of its first F-35s, currently scheduled for early 2017. Although Lockheed Martin has pledged to deliver the aircraft a year early, Pentagon officials have now told their Israeli counterparts that the first squadron will not be completed until 2019. Israel has committed to buying up to 20 F-35s.

There is no letup in Beijing's military development, particularly in higher-end activities with quality rather than mass an increasing priority, says the Pentagon in its latest annual public threat assessment of China's military and security developments. Moreover, as China tries to satisfy its ever-increasing hunger for foreign energy, it has turned to exporting everything from advanced infantry weapons to a range of increasingly sophisticated warplanes.

There is no doubt about it—the Pentagon will have to think thrice before again sending carrier groups to help out Taiwan. The bigger concern now, though, is just how much the U.S. has to be concerned with China's growing naval power in farther-flung parts of the world. As the Pentagon's newly minted “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China” and other recent publications show, China'a navy is no longer the 80-lb. weakling that can be easily bullied, especially in its own back yard.

Beijing's presence on YouTube is spiking since a portion of a televised film clip was posted that shows how a Chinese military-launched cyberattack on a U.S.-based religious sect either was or could be conducted. A veteran National Security Agency cyberwarrior who viewed the film, a documentary on the Chinese military, classified it as “very cool,” and says the apparent slip-up, which names a Chinese military university as the source of the attack, could become an embarrassment.

The war in Afghanistan may have convinced the U.K. that it needs to get its helicopter modernization program in order, but the realization did not come fast enough to ensure that the heavily tasked CH-47 Chinook fleet will be restocked before British combat troops are withdrawn in 2014.

Mounting tensions between Israel and its neighbors are adding urgency to Israel's plan to field additional Iron Dome anti-rocket systems. The problem at hand is that an increase in operational use of the system has exposed shortcomings that have led six out of 30 intercept attempts to fail in Iron Dome's second combat test. The rockets that were missed resulted in fatalities and injuries to Israeli civilians.

A dozen astronauts and cosmonauts from four countries face delays in their return to Earth or launchings to the International Space Station (ISS) before year-end, following the failure of a Russian Soyuz-U rocket to push 5,900 lb. of supplies to orbit Aug. 24. Loss of the Progress 44P unpiloted cargo carrier comes as NASA and its ISS partners await the development of commercial crew vehicles to backstop the Soyuz capsules that are the only route to space for station crews now that the space shuttle has stopped flying.

Managers at NASA have two weeks to find their way through a narrowing passage of potential budget cuts and cost overruns before they present their fiscal 2013 spending plan to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The Pentagon's industrial policy chief says he worries that the U.S. aerospace industry could follow in the footsteps of the domestic automobile industry by cutting corners in manufacturing, churning out inferior products and eventually losing market share to superior foreign competitors.

Turmoil in Italian financial markets notwithstanding, Avio's private equity owners may be ready to unload some or all of their stakes in the Italian engine company, with potential implications also for Finmeccanica, which has itself been rattled by the upheaval of recent weeks. Five years into its ownership of around 81% of Avio, U.K. private equity fund Cinven is trying to capitalize on the purchase and, with five years averaging 5.8% annual growth, expects to be able to reap a profit.

Helicopters have proved to be an early success story for Russia as the country strives to restore its aerospace prowess. Russian Helicopters, the holding company behind the country's rotorcraft industry, is involved with several equipment upgrades aimed at both the domestic and international market.

The notion of whether commercial hybrid airships are economically feasible will soon be put to the test.

Delta Air Lines' order for new single-aisle aircraft to renew its aging domestic fleet is almost as significant for what it omits as for what it includes. The U.S. carrier announced an order on Aug. 25 for 100 Boeing 737-900ER (extended-range) airplanes to replace its older narrowbody aircraft from the second half of 2013 through 2018—an order with an $8.5 billion list price that will make Delta the second-largest 737-900ER operator in the world, behind only Indonesia's Lion Air.

Europe's fifth-largest airline, Air Berlin, can still be saved if its leaders take rapid and decisive measures, but many doubt the carrier's currently proposed initiatives will be enough.

Just as railroads shaped 19th century ground warfare and aviation refocused combat during the last 100 years, the technology of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), the rapid introduction of cyberoperations and the proliferation of unmanned aircraft are defining combat in the 21st century. Waning is the longtime specialization of expensive platforms.

Several surprises are sure to emerge from the U.S. Air Force's next-generation, long-range bomber program, including the technological sinews attaching it to the Navy's unmanned carrier-based strike aircraft.

Classified programs now under way may lead to one of the most capable and expensive airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and airborne electronic attack (AEA) systems available to the U.S. Air Force in the 2020s. Reports from defense and industry sources, and careful analysis of USAF presentations and other documents, indicate that there is a major “black” ISR and AEA initiative going forward under special access program security rules.

Through the smokescreen surrounding development and rapid prototyping for the next generation of combat and surveillance aircraft, there have been a number of Elvis-like sightings of renowned stars from the black world of special programs. Over the last couple of decades, groups of aerospace specialists—particularly those involved with stealth, radars and unmanned aircraft—have disappeared and reappeared.

The Phantom Ray and Phantom Eye represent Boeing's two approaches to unmanned flight and are designed to impact the development of future combat aircraft. In particular, they are expected to funnel new technology into both the U.S. Air Force's next-generation, long-range-strike project and the U.S. Navy's unmanned, carrier-based surveillance and strike (Uclass) programs.

Alongside the explosive growth in unmanned air vehicle systems, a smaller segment of the ISR market has been expanding with less publicity: That is, using commercial aircraft—from personal airplanes to regional airliners and light military transports—for ISR missions. Some of these conversions are complex, involving multiple sensors, several operator stations and defensive countermeasures.