With the recent acceptance trials by Mobile Landing Platform (MLP-2) USNS John Glenn, U.S. Navy officials are boasting of MLP capabilities and the need to get the ships into service. The Glenn finished its acceptance trials earlier this year off the coast near the General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) shipyard in San Diego, as the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (Insurv) tested the vessel and its equipment to demonstrate and evaluate the performance of all of the ship’s major systems.
LONDON — The U.K. is to provide Eurofighter Typhoons to support the Baltic Air Policing mission in Lithuania for the first time. The move, announced by U.K. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond in Parliament on March 17, will see several Eurofighter Typhoons deploy to Siauliai air base in April, where they will join Polish air force fighters also deployed for the operation.
CHINESE TRAINERS: Avic subsidiary Hongdu Aviation Industry Group will build a 1.225 billion yuan ($198 million) factory for manufacturing parts of trainer aircraft in its home city, Nanchang. Completion of the 208,000-sq.-meter (2.2 million-sq.-ft.) plant is due in three years, local media report, citing approvals from the Nanchang government. Hongdu is one of two trainer specialists in Avic’s defense subsidiary, Avic Aviation Techniques. The other is Guizhou Aircraft. Some of the trainer parts will be made under contract, presumably for Guizhou.
Investigators probing the loss of a U.S. Air Force Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker in Kyrgyzstan last year have concluded that component failure and a lack of crew experience were key factors in the aircraft’s loss. Three air force personnel died when “Shell 77” crashed just 11 min. after takeoff from Manas International Airport. The aircraft, which had arrived at the base only 12 hr. before as an airframe swap, had taken off to support coalition air operations over Afghanistan.
LONDON — Helibras, the Brazilian arm of Airbus Helicopters, has delivered the first upgraded AS565 Panther helicopters back to the country’s army. Two AS565 Panther K2s were handed back to the Brazilian army on March 13. These aircraft will be evaluated by the army’s aviation command (AvEx) in mission operations, and if the evaluations “prove favorable” according to Helibras officials, then AvEx will contract Helibras to upgrade the remaining 32 aircraft through 2021.
The U.S. remains unequivocal about its number-one funding and development priority now and for coming years: replacement ships for its SSBN Ohio-class ballistic nuclear-missile fleet. But despite the effort and focus, Navy officials say, the program remains at risk.
THE PENTAGON — For now the 11 U.S. Navy cruisers slated to be “laid up” pending major upgrades can conduct limited missile defense, but the ships need the improvements to remain relevant, U.S. Navy officials say. “If they don’t get modernized, they’ll become obsolete,” says Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. The ships now “can still go out with a carrier and still do air defense,” he told reporters March 11, but they would be unable to do ballistic missile defense (BMD), which is an increasingly important mission for such vessels.
The Defense Department should give Congress more information about its regional missile defense plans and programs, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says. GAO also questions the Pentagon’s acquisition approach for the regional ballistic missile defense (BMD) of Europe, called the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), in its March 14 report.
Textron Friday closed on its acquisition of Beechcraft Corp. parent Beech Holdings, and said that with the deal complete it will combine Cessna, Beech and Hawker operations in a new segment—Textron Aviation—led by Cessna CEO Scott Ernest. Beech CEO Bill Boisture will not continue on in the new company, a Beech spokesman confirmed.
The U.S. Navy awarded deals worth a total of about $1.4 billion this month for DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class ships that will augment the service’s destroyer fleet and ballistic missile defense (BMD) abilities. The fiscal 2014 deals fall under previously awarded fiscal 2013-2017 multiyear procurement (MYP) contracts. The Navy awarded General Dynamics Bath Iron Works (BIW) a $642.6 million modification to its existing fixed-price incentive firm target (FPIF) contract to exercise options for the destroyer’s construction.
LONDON — Russian state-owned helicopter consortium Russian Helicopters increased revenues by 10% in 2013 despite delivering fewer helicopters during the year. The company, which is owned by state-funded Rostec, recorded revenues of 138.3 billion rubles ($3.76 billion), up from 125.75 billion rubles in 2012. Profits were up slightly, 1.3%, to 9.47 billion rubles ($260 million), with the company delivering 275 helicopters in 2013 compared with 290 in 2012.
Russia is gaining on America’s dominance of military sales globally, and in one measure Moscow has become the prime provider of weapons to the Indian imports market (the world’s largest), according to the latest analysis from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). According to the Swedish defense think tank, the five largest suppliers of global arms exports during 2009–13—responsible for a combined three-quarters of all exports—were the U.S. with 29%, Russia at 27%, Germany at 7%, China at 6% and France with 5%.
The Pentagon is increasingly looking at first-tier subcontractors and their deals with prime providers of major weapons and systems, and all of them are being judged on what they do to lower costs for the Defense Department, according to Shay Assad, director of defense pricing and acquisition policy.
SHIP CONSTRUCTION: The U.S. Navy has awarded Bath Iron Works, of Bath, Maine, a $642,583,946 contract modification to exercise options for the construction of a DDG 51 class ship, the Pentagon announced March 14. The modification also provides $79,400,000 in advanced procurement funding for fiscal 2016-2017 ships. The work is expected to be completed by July 2023. Contract funds in the amount of $100 million will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity.
The political situation in the Ukraine may force the U.S. to rethink its airborne supply route into Afghanistan, as well as Russian-built rocket engines used for space launches, Pentagon leaders say.
Russia is taking lessons from NASA’s aeronautics and Europe’s Clean Sky programs in structuring its new civil aviation research effort, to begin in 2016. With $6 billion in government funding over 10 years to 2025, the National Aeronautical R&D Plan will be similar in scale to NASA’s aeronautics program, which runs at around $550 million a year. An overview of the plan was provided by Sergey Chernyshev, executive director of the TsAGI aero-hydrodynamic research institute, at the Greener Aviation 2014 conference in Brussels on Mar. 11.
One of the rare women executives in the male-dominated business of missiles, Veronique Cham-Meilhac, vice president of ballistic missile defense at MBDA, sees her job primarily as protecting people. A frequent speaker at conferences and seminars, she explains this complex subject in straightforward terms, as she did recently for European Defense Editor Christina Mackenzie. Veronique Cham-Meilhac
Empowered by modern technology, artillery is regaining its fabled punch after being diminished by the evolution of aerial attack and missiles. The introduction of precision strike, driven by guided missiles, had threatened to eliminate artillery from the battlefield. However, advances in such areas as high-g-resistant electronics, durable guidance systems and miniature servos have endowed artillery with advanced capabilities.
