Defense

The Pentagon completed the first comprehensive IOT&E for the Northrop Grumman-manufactured MQ-8C Fire Scout aboard Littoral Combat Ship USS Coronado.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is apparently running low on fuel following a successful but challenging nine years of observing stars within the Milky Way.

Italy could stop purchases of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the country’s new defense minister has warned.

The first static hot firing of the P120C rocket motor is about to take place at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, according to the ESA.

Switzerland has issued a request for proposals for its future fighter, with pricing for fleets of 30 and 40 aircraft.

Japan is seeking Aegis Ashore capability levels that are not yet available, defense ministry officials say.

Airbus is reporting progress for two missions in Solar System exploration and exoplanet characterization—the Mars Sample Return mission and the Cheops satellite.

India’s national space agency will launch at least 40 rockets into space in the next four years to shore up the country’s launch capability.

European industry needs to unite around one fighter program to compete with U.S. rivals, Airbus officials have suggested. European industry is currently producing three different fighters, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale and the Saab Gripen.

Malaysia has qualified three fighter types to receive fuel in flight from the Airbus A400M Atlas airlifter.

The Farnborough Airshow will be buzzing around the digitalization of the aerospace and defense industries. Forget composite materials and Sharklets; think blockchain and artificial intelligence.

As Airbus heads to Farnborough Airshow, it faces potentially devastating fallout of a hard Brexit and the challenges of many changes in top leadership.

Japan’s electric-aircraft consortium; AeroVironment on NASA’s Mars Helicopter; Japan’s private rocket fails; Hypersonic booster contract for Lockheed.

Money is central to many of the Joint Strike Fighter’s issues, ranging from whether to repair or replace, to clearing testing and driving down the per-unit price.

Over a dozen countries have varying needs for upgraded combat aircraft or fleet replacements, with the major OEMs in a fierce competition for their business.

The F-35 Defense Acquisition Board meeting to finalize Joint Strike Fighter follow-on development is delayed because entrance criteria needed for the meeting are incomplete.

NASA has initiated a two-phase effort leading to a possible February 2019 contract award for a second Mobile Launcher at Kennedy Space Center for the Space Launch System heavy rocket.

IHI Corp. has delivered the prototype for Japan’s fighter engine technology acquisition program to the defense ministry.

AeroVironment is helping NASA’s JPL develop an autonomous helicopter that is planned to fly over the Red Planet during the Mars 2020 rover mission.

Airbus CEO Tom Enders has accused the British government of having “no clue, or no consensus” on how to achieve Brexit without severe harm.

Britain’s aviation industry could be left in a state of near paralysis in the event of a hard Brexit, UK aerospace trade association ADS has warned.

The Abu-Dhabi-based National Search and Rescue Centre (NSRC) is the first of its kind in the UAE. Alan Warnes looks at how it came into being and what success it has had.

Singapore has declared its Rafael Spyder short-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems fully operational, seven years after they entered service.

As the 2018 Farnborough Airshow showcases the latest and greatest in aviation and aerospace, we look at some of the technologies shaping the industry’s future.

The company says it applied knowledge of advanced composite aircraft structures to develop integrated fuel tanks in a large-scale wing box test article and a full-scale wing skin pre-production validation article.