Nearly 3,000 combat aircraft worth $142.4 billion will be built worldwide between 2004 and 2013, according to a Teal Group world fighter/attack aircraft production forecast released Feb. 24. The market for combat planes is making a recovery since 2002, its lowest point, when 159 aircraft worth $6.7 billion were delivered, the report says. In 2003, 246 planes worth $10.7 billion were delivered.
The U.S. Army plans to develop three new aircraft as part of the comprehensive aviation restructuring that prompted the cancellation of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, according to Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-3. The Army had planned to spend approximately $14.6 billion developing and procuring 121 Comanches from fiscal year 2004 through FY '11. With that money freed up, the service now plans to buy 796 other aircraft and an additional 801 aircraft upgrades (DAILY, Feb. 24).
TEAM MEMBER: Harris Corp. has joined the Lockheed Martin-led team competing for work on the U.S. Air Force's Space Based Radar (SBR), Lockheed Martin said Feb. 24. The USAF is expected to award two 24-month study contracts in May to continue systems definition, and to selected a prime contractor for the program in 2006. Northrop Grumman also is leading an industry team competing for the work (DAILY, Feb. 11), although it also is a partner on Lockheed Martin's team.
IL-38 BUY: India has approved the purchase of four used Ilyushin Il-38 anti submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft from Russia. An Indian defense ministry official told The DAILY that the aircraft will cost about $15 million each and will be delivered this year. The defense ministry has been negotiating with Russia to buy at least two Il-38s after losing two similar aircraft in a 2002 crash (DAILY, Oct. 3, 2002).
The U.S. Air Force has developed a multi-step approach for fixing radar problems on the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, a service document says. The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar Sensor (ASARS-2A) is to improve the reliability and maintainability of the existing ASARS-2, which provides radar imagery and is one of several sensors the U-2 is capable of carrying. But ASARS-2A has suffered from "poor image quality and maintenance problems," according to an Air Force report released to The DAILY upon request.
JHMCS WORK: Boeing will produce the fourth low-rate initial production lot of the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) for U.S. Air Force F-15s and F-16s and U.S. Navy F/A-18E/Fs under a $66 million contract, the company said Feb. 24. The program is moving into full-rate production and Boeing anticipates U.S. military orders for more than 1,500 systems.
The U.S. Navy should pause for three to six months to conduct operational testing before making the final production decision on the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), says a recent Washington research group report. "The best way for the Navy to conduct the LCS program is to do operational testing before they start procuring large numbers of ships," said Robert Work, who wrote the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) report. This would delay program authorization by a year, he said.
SUPPLYING ALTIMETERS: Goodrich Corp. will provide laser altimeters to the Boeing Co. for the X-45 Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS). The altimeters use eye-safe lasers to provide accurate altitude measurements. The work could be worth up to $15 million in revenues, Goodrich said.
The U.S. Air Force does not plan to conduct extra studies on F-15 and F-16 upgrades even though the planned replacements for both fighters recently have encountered more turbulence, a service spokesman said Feb. 23.
After two decades, six program restructurings and approximately $8 billion spent, the U.S. Army has decided to cancel the RAH-66 Comanche reconnaissance/attack helicopter program and instead purchase a variety of new aircraft and recapitalize hundreds of others, Army officials announced Feb. 23. The Comanche is the casualty of a comprehensive review of Army aviation ordered last year by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.
Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, is awaiting responses from military leaders on their unfunded priorities list as lawmakers return to work this week. Skelton spokeswoman Lara Battles told The DAILY that Skelton made the request from the services commanders a few weeks ago for spending requests not included in Bush administration's fiscal year '05 budget proposal. "Sometimes it takes a long time for it to get back to us," Battle said.
Lockheed Martin will continue development of an extended-range version of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile under a $70.8 million contract with the U.S. Air Force. "With only a few modifications to the baseline missile, we allow the Air Force to strike high-value targets from than twice the stand-off range of the baseline JASSM." Randy Bigum, vice president of Strike Weapons at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a statement.
EXPLOSION: An explosion occurred Feb. 23 at India's Solid Propellant Space Booster Plant (SPROB) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, killing six. Sources said the blast occurred when a testing motor was being filled with highly inflammable fuel. The SPROB plant is developing the solid boosters, core liquid stage and cryogenic stage for India's indigenous cryogenic engine (DAILY, June 30, 2003). Defense ministry officials refused to comment on the accident.
ANNIVERSARY: NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite has reached its first anniversary in orbit, the aerospace agency said last week. "The spacecraft and instruments have all been performing beautifully since launch, and the new solar data exceed all of our expectations," Gary Rottman, the SORCE principal investigator at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospherics and Space Physics, said in a statement.
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Struggling Czech aerospace company Aero Vodochody is laying off an additional 400 workers following a series of dismissals last year. The Feb. 20 announcement followed a mutual agreement by the Czech government and Boeing last week to end the U.S. company's strategic partnership with Aero.
Representatives of the helicopter industry are recommending to a joint Defense Department panel that the services begin a multi-year science and technology (S&T) program to lay the groundwork for a future heavy-lift helicopter.
The cancellation of the U.S. Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter is not a death knell for the U.S. Air Force's F/A-22 Raptor, even though a White House agency has linked the two programs, several sources said Feb. 23.
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - International companies will be given an opportunity to take part in a tender for state-held Czech weapons manufacturer ZVI, which was put up for sale last week in line with a government decision made last October, according to officials. ZVI, whose new 20mm Plamen (Flame) cannon is set to undergo final tests with the Czech army this week, was placed in the hands of the state-run Czech Consolidation Agency (CKA) in 2002 after its owners, the Trustfin Group, ran into serious financial difficulties.
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems has formed a strategic alliance with Israel-based Aeronautics Defense Systems that will allow it to offer Aeronautics' unmanned aerial systems technologies, including the Unmanned Multi-Application Systems (UMAS), to the U.S. market and international customers, the General Dynamics unit said last week.
SPACESHIPONE: DARPA hopes to fly experiments onboard Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne spacecraft, according to an agency official. "We're working with Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne to demonstrate that we can use it as an experiment platform," the official said. "It goes to the edge of space ... and hopefully when he flies the X Prize missions, he's going to have some telemetry experiments that we've put on there."
