The Ariane 5's successful return to flight clears the way for the European heavy-lift vehicle to proceed with the remainder of a busy schedule in 2002, including up to four more flights and a performance upgrade. The second of the scheduled flights will incorporate the upper stage from the Ariane 4 vehicle, boosting the Ariane 5's total payload capacity to 10 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).
China could prove to be the world's largest market for helicopters over the next two decades. The country will likely need more than 10,000 helicopters by 2020, with a market value of $84 billion, according to officials at the China National Aero-Technology Import&Export Corp. More conservative estimates put the need at 1,867 civil helicopters by 2013, with a value of $4.9 billion.
The business of selling communications and information systems to the Department of Defense and defense intelligence agencies will likely grow by double digits over the next 10 years, according to Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Space and Communications Co. Speaking to investors and analysts at the Salomon Smith Barney Global Industrial Manufacturing Conference 2002, Albaugh said much of his company's $10.4 billion revenues in 2001 came from work associated with government communications and information systems and missile defense.
F-16 SUPPORT: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. will support the worldwide F-16 fleet under an initial $69 million Air Force contract, effective March 1. The contract is part of Falcon 2020, a program for U.S. and international customers. Work under the program could be worth up to $12.7 billion over 23 years, according to the Air Force.
The U.S. Army is exploring whether the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) could be used to defeat a broader array of targets than planned, according to the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki. THEL, developed by TRW Inc. for the U.S. and Israel, has been successfully tested against Katyusha short-range rockets, and work has already begun to try to develop a mobile version of the laser system.
Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will try to secure funding so the Navy can buy 10 more Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets than the Bush Administration requested in its fiscal 2003 budget for the fighter/attack aircraft, according to a spokesman for the senator.
Within the first few days of the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft's science mapping mission, project scientists have detected the likely presence of significant quantities of water ice in the red planet's southern hemisphere. The presence of the ice is indicated by high quantities of hydrogen detected by Odyssey's GRS (Gamma Ray Spectrometer) instrument, which was designed to search for 20 different chemical elements on the Martian surface.
DIRECTED ENERGY: Navy deployment of directed-energy weapons will require the development of advanced vessels with electric-drive propulsion systems, according to Adm. Robert Natter, commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet. "It is very dependent upon an electric power source," Natter says, because electric-drive ships are needed to provide sufficient power to the weapons. The deployment of electric-drive ships with directed-energy weapons could occur within a decade if the project receives enough funding, he says.
EXPORT CONTROLS: The Bush Administration "strongly opposes" a House bill that would update export controls on hot-section technology for aircraft engines and other "dual-use" items that have both civilian and military uses, according to recent congressional testimony by Administration officials.
NAVY BMD: At least two important events in the U.S. development of sea-based missile defenses are slated to occur in May. First, the Missile Defense Agency and Navy plan to give Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics E.C. "Pete" Aldridge an analysis of alternatives to the recently canceled Navy Area program, which was intended to defend against missiles in their terminal phase. The program was terminated in December for exceeding legally mandated cost limits (DAILY, Dec. 18, 2001).
While new market niches in homeland security and unmanned aerial vehicles may be opening up for the Stinger missile, its largest market is still in short-range air defense, say Raytheon officials.
WASTED BANDWIDTH: As concerns escalate over growing bandwidth consumption, military leaders are hoping industry will produce innovative solutions to improve bandwidth allocation. When the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle flies, it may eventually need around 278 MHz of bandwidth, says Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Wald, the deputy chief of staff for air and space operations."When [the Global Hawk] isn't flying, the bandwidth being reserved is going to waste," he says.
When the first phase of flight tests for the Active Aeroelastic Wing (AAW) program begins at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. this June, program engineers will be allowing test aircraft to literally twist in the wind. At high speeds, all wings on high-performance aircraft bend and twist over a span of up to 10 degrees as a result of aerodynamic pressures, according to Ed Pendleton, AAW program manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
A priority for Airbus this year is to break into Boeing's market in Japan, Airbus CEO Noel Forgeard said here. "This will include significant industrial participation, for the first time," he said, giving notice that Airbus and the Japanese will disclose work-sharing agreements on the A380 superjumbo in the near future. "It's encouraging to see signs of recovery, in particular here in Asia," Forgeard said. "There's clearly an improvement in loads, and some airlines are re-introducing frequencies and destinations."
President Bush intends to nominate Thomas Forrest Hall to be assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs and John Leonard Helgerson to be inspector general for the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House announced Feb. 27. Hall has been the executive director and chief operating officer of the Naval Reserve Association since 1996. From 1963 to 1996, he was a U.S. Navy officer, retiring as a two-star admiral.
NASA will try to contact the long-lived Pioneer 10 spacecraft March 2 to see if its signal can still be heard three decades after its launch. Scientists operating a radio telescope at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Network in Madrid, Spain, will attempt to contact Pioneer 10, which launched in 1972 and is now 7.4 billion miles from Earth. They last established contract with the spacecraft in April 2001.
FLIGHT TEST: TRW Inc. has begun the flight testing stage for the UAV Common Automatic Recovery System, which will allow the Hunter UAV to automatically take off and land, even in zero visibility conditions, the company announced Feb. 28. The Hunter is the Army's only operational UAV.
Lockheed Martin is showing a cockpit demonstrator for the F-16 Block 60 here for the first time, and for a good reason: the company is offering the latest version of the veteran F-16 to Singapore, which is looking for a high-end fighter to complement its existing force of F-16s. It's the first time the Block 60 has been offered to a new customer since the project was launched by the United Arab Emirates in early 2000. Lockheed Martin is developing the Block 60 under a commercial-type contract with the UAE.
The Navy is planning to replenish its stockpile of precision-guided munitions in 2002 and 2003 after running short of them in Afghanistan, Adm. Robert Natter said Feb. 28. Natter, the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet, said the need for precision-guided weapons became especially apparent during Operation Enduring Freedom. "We damn near ran out in Afghanistan," Natter said to a group of defense writers. He was referring to Joint Direct Attack Munitions and 500- and 1,000-pound guided bomb units, a Navy spokesman said.
LAUNCH SET - Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will launch the second MT-SAT weather observation and air traffic control satellite next year. The $208.4 million program will be launched on the country's new H-IIA booster, not on an Ariane 4, as had been planned. After initially experiencing failures, the H-IIA's reliability has been proven after two successful launches, ministry officials said. An experimental re-entry vehicle did not separate properly from the H-IIA booster during the H-IIA's second launch on Feb.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has collected some useful suggestions on how to proceed with developing a space-based system that would use kill vehicles to knock down enemy ballistic missiles in their boost phase, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, MDA's director.
Two mapping systems jointly developed by the Air Force and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency proved useful in Afghanistan operations, according to Lt. Gen. Charles Wald, the deputy chief of staff for air and space operations. The first, called PowerScene, integrates imagery with digital terrain elevation data, Wald said Feb. 27 at a space symposium sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association.
AWARDED: Lockheed Martin executive Tom Burbage, the general manager of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, has won Flight International magazine's Aerospace Industry Personality of the Year Award, Lockheed Martin announced Feb. 28. It is given annually to the industry's leading newsmaker from the previous year. The award was presented Feb. 27 at the Aerospace Industry Awards 2002 dinner in Singapore, site of the Asian Aerospace 2002 exhibition. Lockheed Martin was awarded the System Design and Development contract for the Joint Strike Fighter last October (DAILY, Oct.
Headquartered in Washington, the Navy Network Operations Command (NNOC) is working with the fleet to provide the "first step" towards global network-centric operations, according to NNOC Commander Capt. Robert N. Whitkop. Established last year, NNOC sprang from the merger of the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Command and Navy/Marine Corps Intranet, and is the single organization responsible for operation and management of the Navy's voice, video and data networks.
Recently announced layoffs in the Boeing Space and Communications Co. (DAILY, Feb. 22) were associated with the continued integration of the former Hughes Space and Communications, which Boeing acquired about 15 months ago, according to company President and CEO Jim Albaugh.
