Defense

After its December first flight, NATO’s first Alliance Ground Surveillance Global Hawk is being mated with its radar sensor for test flights in the U.S. and Europe.

Considering defense budget changes; A-10 evades retirement; United Airlines fined for treatment of disabled passengers.

Sierra Nevada Corp. will join incumbents Orbital ATK and SpaceX in NASA’s $14 billion second-round contract to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

Work on a deep-space cargo vehicle and a robotic lunar lander is included in a $1.3 billion budget request from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for fiscal 2016.

The U.S. Air Force has awarded two rocket propulsion system development contracts to Orbital ATK and SpaceX.

Members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace will vote by Feb. 10 on whether to accept the terms of a new six-year contract extension tentatively agreed to with Boeing during secret negotiations.

The German government says it has begun negotiations with Israel to purchase the Israel Aerospace Industries Heron TP medium altitude, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle.

The last Lockheed Martin S-3B Viking aircraft to serve with the U.S. Navy has been retired, ending a 42-year career with the service.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says his country likely doubled its arms exports in 2015 to €16 billion, thanks in part to sales of Dassault Aviation’s Rafale combat jet to Egypt and Qatar last year.

Japanese engineers are preparing to build a combat-engine core, following progress in materials research for the low-bypass turbofan, intended for the country’s next fighter, the F-3.

NASA’s Juno mission spacecraft, on course to maneuver into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, has become the most distant solar-powered spacecraft ever, according to an update from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency claims the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) report into the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines MH17 contains “unsubstantiated and inaccurate” conclusions.

Israel’s defense industry often seems a jump ahead of competitors. Technology leaders explain how it’s done.

Simulation is not the same as real flying, say Israeli engineers and aircrew. It can be far superior.

The big consumer electronics show in Las Vegas recently drew A&D eyeballs with chatter over autonomous cars, UAVs and the technology tie-in with the Pentagon’s Third Offset.

Most experts think future targets will be even harder to find and identify. Israel’s defense industry is getting ready.

Russia buys Su-35s; Hellfires to Iraq; EW for C-130Js; Korean Air to make military UAVs; B-52’s South Korean flyby.

Secrecy, nuclear weapons and (of course) the JSF will be talking points in the coming year.

Australia has gone public on its airborne electronic intelligence program. In ordering two adapted Gulfstream business jets, it could hardly avoid doing so.

Governments should be ready for the possibility of commercial UAV technology falling into the wrong hands, says think tank.

Most experts think future targets will be even harder to find and identify. Israel’s industry is getting ready.

The chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee says he is “disturbed at rumors” that the Obama administration might reduce the level of defense spending that Congress and the White House agreed to in a two-year budget deal late last year.

NATO’s long-running program to field a ground surveillance capability is a step closer as Northrop Grumman begins integrating the radar sensor on to the first of five RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft for the alliance.

In their quest to make the U.S. Navy surface force more lethal and dispersed, the service brass wants to get better use of its existing missile inventory, beefing up the weapons with new sensors and payloads.

Pratt & Whitney will deliver the 1,313th and final production F117-100 engine to the U.S. Air Force for its Boeing C-17 airlifter fleet later this month.