Berlin – Details are expected to emerge this week of a joint venture between EADS and Boeing to capture work for Germany’s next-generation heavy-lift helicopter program. EADS is displaying its joint concept with Boeing , including diagrams of a proposed tandem-rotor design and a full-scale cross section of the proposed cabin for the aircraft. It looks much like an enlarged CH-47 Chinook, built by Boeing . It is likely that Boeing’s contribution to this design would be providing the tandem-rotor technology and dynamics of the aircraft.
The congressional compromise to keep the government running from the end of the fiscal year until next March stipulates that a weather satellite program should remain on schedule and blocks the Air Force from its plan to retire aircraft. The bill supports the Obama administration’s request for $88.5 billion in war funding.
When it comes to survival of the fittest in the most extreme conditions, few military groups can match the reputation of the U.S. Navy Seals. One of the most important tools in a Seal’s survival kit is a handheld GPS device, according to “The U.S. Navy Seal Survival Handbook,” recently released for review. “The GPS is just so convenient,” Don Mann, a former Seal team member, trainer and book co-author, tells Aviation Week. “In many people’s minds, the map and compass [are] obsolete.”
If Iran is bombed to slow its nuclear development program, the actual targets would be a mix of uranium-enrichment and reactor facilities, ballistic missile cantonments and mobile launchers, radar surveillance sites and air bases.
The leaders of major U.S. defense companies remain largely undecided about whether to issue layoff notices before the Nov. 6 elections because of federal budget cuts that could take place in January. In late June, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote to the nation’s top defense executives asking them how their companies would be impacted by the $1 trillion across-the-board budget reduction scheduled to take place unless Congress changes the current law. Over the summer, his office has been collecting the responses and released them Sept. 10.
As the U.S. Navy invests more resources into the development of its unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), the service is seeking quicker information processing and increasing autonomy, according to a recent Defense Science Board report.
PARIS — French defense equipment agency DGA has ordered a pair of studies from private industry on developing a successor to the Syracuse 3 military communications satellite system, the results of which are expected to support defense program decisions as the administration of President Francois Hollande updates the country’s defense and security strategy in the coming months.
With another Zumwalt-class destroyer design contract it its pocket, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer program office is steaming ahead with the planned three-ship fleet. The Navy brass is touting Zumwalt program success that contrasts sharply with missed budgets and deadlines that have marked other new-ship programs such as the Littoral Combat Ship or LPD-17-class dock ships.
The U.S. Air Force is starting a key, three-month Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) of the stealthy F-35A at Eglin AFB, Fla., in preparation for the planned — and much awaited — start of formal pilot and maintainer training there early next year.
With scores of lawmakers retiring, and others who have lost primary elections or will be voted out of office come November, the congressional committees dealing with aerospace and defense issues are in line for changes. Resolution of who will lead next year is a long way off, but here is a look at who is leaving and some of the potential replacements. House Appropriations
CHILL TEST: Results of a cold-temperature hot-fire test have qualified a new fixed nozzle for ATK’s GEM-60 strap-on solid-fuel booster for the United Launch Alliance Delta IV, as ATK continues to upgrade the 12-year-old design. In a test Sept. 6 at the ATK facility in Promontory, Utah, the 53-ft.-long GEM-60 was chilled to a core temperature of 30F before the 90-sec. burn, which generated about 270,000 lb. of thrust. In addition to qualifying the new fixed nozzle for flight, the test results validated the low-temperature performance of the new nozzle insulation.
Syria is not in any jeopardy of near-term intervention by NATO, says the organization’s number two official, although he notes that alliance member air forces have restocked their supplies of precision-guided munitions since the conflict in Libya, where shortages became a concern. “There has been a rebuilding process,” says Alex Vershbow, NATO’s deputy secretary general and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia. “Countries took measures to ensure they [will not] run out. There is recognition that we have to be prepared for the next [intervention].”
Australia is stretching out the construction of three air defense destroyers, aiming to preserve skills without adding to the cost of the Navantia-designed, Hobart-class ships. The first of the Aegis-equipped ships, HMAS Hobart, is now due for delivery in March 2016, 16 months after the previous target and nine years after construction contracts were signed. The Royal Australian Navy should receive HMAS Brisbane by September 2017 and HMAS Sydney in March 2019, Defense Minister Stephen Smith says.
If in fact the Obama administration’s ambitious reform of controls on U.S. exports is almost ready to be rolled out, it is coming at a time filled with uncertainties and distractions.
The U.S. Navy this week formalized key ship specifications for the U.S.’s Ohio-class ballistic submarine replacement and the related U.K. successor programs. Rear Adm. Thomas Eccles, chief engineer and deputy commander at Naval Sea Systems Command’s (Navsea) Naval Systems Engineering Directorate, and Capt. William Brougham, Ohio replacement program manager, have signed the “Ohio Replacement First Article Quad Pack Ship Specification” document, marking a major construction milestone.
Honeywell has signed a $735 million contract to supply F124-GA-200 turbofan engines for Israel’s new fleet of 30 Alenia Aermacchi M-346 advanced jet trainers. Israel’s purchase of the F124-powered M-346 comes as defense departments in numerous countries including the U.S. are evaluating new training platforms to simulate the latest fighter aircraft such as the F-22, F-35, Eurofighter, Gripen and Rafale.
The U.S. military services are finding the procurement of unmanned systems particularly challenging because of problems defining requirements and developing software, according to the Defense Science Board (DSB).
