Norway and the U.K. have signed a concept agreement that will explore greater cooperation on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The accord – drawn up in London last September and signed in Oslo on March 4 – is exploring opportunities for closer engagement, particularly in the areas of pilot and technician training, possibly hinting at a joint training school for the JSF for U.K. and Norwegian personnel.
The board of aerospace and defense firm Finmeccanica has approved plans for a new organizational and operating model in a bid to return the company to profitability. The company, which is saddled with large debt and low credit ratings, says it is planning a wholesale change similar to the re-formation undertaken by EADS — which renamed itself as Airbus Group at the beginning of this year — and will focus its transformation efforts on the aerospace, defense and space sectors of the company, which will become core areas.
The introduction of the UH-72 Lakota into the U.S. Army’s flight training regime will smooth new pilot training to fly the AH-64 Apache and the UH-60 Black Hawk, senior service officials say. Speaking at Aviation Week’s Defense Technology and Requirements (DTAR) conference in Arlington, Va., Lt. Gen. William Phillips said the introduction of the twin-engine Lakota would help to reshape elements of the training regime at the Army’s training school in Fort Rucker, Ala.
A Boeing F/A-18C aircraft crashed March 1 on a training flight from the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center’s “Topgun” course at Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, Nev., the U.S. Navy reported. The crash occurred at approximately 3 p.m. PST, on the Fallon Range Training Complex., roughly 70 mi. east of NAS Fallon, the Navy says. The pilot was killed.
As the U.S. Navy was rolling out its fiscal year 2015 spending proposal — including a $1.3 billion request for more work on the second next-generation Ford-class CVN-79 carrier John F. Kennedy — the service was awarding a contract for a like amount for work on the ship.
Launch schedule issues at Cape Canaveral, including launch of a classified U.S. government spacecraft known as Clio, may force NASA to delay its long-planned first flight of the Orion deep-space crew capsule from mid-September into October. The agency says Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin still could meet the earlier launch date, currently listed as Sept. 18.
The first of Australia’s two Canberra-class assault ships is running sea trials ahead of delivery due this year. Personnel from prime contractor BAE Systems and the Royal Australian Navy are checking the operation of the ship, to be commissioned as HMAS Canberra, on a trip from Melbourne to Sydney and back. The trial “includes both platform tests as well as testing the ship’s combat and communication systems,” says Bill Salter, the head of BAE’s maritime business in Australia.
TYPHOON ROLLOUT: Alenia Aermacchi has rolled out Italy’s first Tranche 3 Eurofighter Typhoon. The company is the second Eurofighter partner to produce a Tranche 3 following BAE Systems, which rolled out and flew its first Tranche 3 Typhoon in December. The single-seat Typhoon, the 64th aircraft for the Italian air force, was rolled out in late February, but the consortium announced the milestone on March 4. It is being prepared for engine tests at Alenia Aermacchi’s facility at Turin-Caselle and will be delivered in the first half of this year.
The U.S. Air Force is expected to offer half of the 14 launches it had anticipated would be suitable for competition from 2015-2017, limiting the near-term opportunities for Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to duel with rival United Launch Alliance. The service inked a deal in January with ULA for 36-50 Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) cores over the next five years; 36 of them are guaranteed, and 14 were considered potentially open for bids.
The British army has been cleared to begin flying the Watchkeeper unmanned aerial system (UAS). The long-delayed system received its initial release to service (RTS) documentation from the U.K. Military Aviation Authority (MAA) on March 5. The document allows British army pilots to begin training flights with the system in segregated airspace over the Salisbury Plain Training Area in Southern England. The U.K. is purchasing 54 Watchkeeper air vehicles and 15 ground control stations.
Flight-simulator manufacturer CAE is to receive a C$250 million ($225 million) repayable investment from the Canadian government to support its Project Innovate program to develop new modeling and simulation technologies. Investment in the company’s research and development program, which will continue into 2020, is being made under the federal government’s Strategic Aerospace and Defense Initiative (SADI).
THE PENTAGON — The U.S. Army would reduce the number of combat aviation brigades, eliminate the Kiowa scout helicopter program and buy more Lakota Light Utility helicopters as part of a broad transformation of its aviation strategy over the next five years, officials explained on March 5. Army plans also call for pairing MQ-1 Gray Eagle and RQ-7 Shadow UAVs with AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to perform the Kiowa’s scouting mission.
THE PENTAGON — The Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program may be on its way out, but the U.S. Army is still building, buying and developing replacements for a variety of ground vehicles. The Army’s $121 billion base budget request for fiscal 2015 announced on March 4 includes $1.83 billion for ground mobility vehicles, down slightly from the $1.85 billion approved by Congress in December, when it passed a budget deal that capped defense spending at $496 billion for fiscal 2015.
THE PENTAGON — In its fiscal 2015 budget request, the U.S. Air Force is cutting $2.1 billion in funding through 2019 for the seventh and eighth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites, considering mothballing a weather satellite before it even gets to orbit and is slipping GPS III deliveries. These are some of the changes in the Air Force’s $5.26 billion request for space research and development and procurement for 2015-19, a budget with little wiggle room due to congressionally mandated spending limits.
THE PENTAGON — The Pentagon is planning yet another upgrade to address shortcomings in the Raytheon Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), the hit-to-kill mechanism required for the Defense Department to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. Problems with the EKV are at the root of at least two of three failed intercept attempts in the past five years. The kill vehicles were designed as prototypes and pressed into service by the George W. Bush administration as a response to a perceived threat from North Korea.
Sikorsky and the Turkish government have finally sealed a long-awaited helicopter production deal that will see Turkish industry building 300 Black Hawk helicopters for domestic and international use. Signing of the $3.5 billion Turkish Utility Helicopter Program (TUHP) was announced by Turkey’s Undersecretary for Defense Industries, Murad Bayar, on Feb. 21 during a ceremony at Konya air base. However, his department, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM), did not announce details of the deal until this week.
LOS ANGELES — Boeing’s Maritime Surveillance Aircraft (MSA) demonstrator, a modified Bombardier Challenger 604 business jet, has been flown to Boeing’s Yuma, Ariz., facility for initial certification flight tests following extensive conversion work by Ontario, Canada-based Field Aviation.
The U.S. Coast Guard is continuing to fund acquisition and improvement programs for its aircraft and ships despite an overall cut in its proposed fiscal 2015 spending plan. The fiscal 2015 plan of about $9.8 billion is about $418 million, or 4.1%, less than the enacted fiscal 2014 spending plan of about $10.2 billion.
THE PENTAGON — The fiscal 2015 baseline budget request for the U.S. Navy, announced March 4, is $148 billion, compared to the $156 billion 2014 request, which was whittled down to $150 billion by the Budget Control Act and its mandatory sequestration spending cuts.
THE PENTAGON — Spending constraints imposed on the defense budget, capped by Congress at $496 billion for fiscal 2015, have forced the U.S. Army to re-examine its aviation structures, officials told a Pentagon budget briefing on March 4. The Army is asking Congress for $5.10 billion for aircraft and aviation equipment, compared to the $5.02 billion sought in fiscal 2014 and the $4.76 billion approved by Congress in December.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Two of the recent intercept failures by the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system were due to “fairly simple” issues, says U.S. Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency. Syring is “disappointed” with Boeing’s performance in flight testing the GMD system; the last successful GMD intercept took place in December 2008. The next was expected this spring, but is now set for June. He spoke March 4 at Aviation Week’s Defense Technologies and Requirements conference in Arlington, Va.
THE PENTAGON — Thanks to the U.S. Navy’s continued focus on ballistic missile defense (BMD), as well as its need to develop a stronger coastal presence, investments in its DDG destroyers and Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) are driving the service’s surface-ship funding in its fiscal 2015 budget proposal. Anchoring the BMD missions is the development of Aegis combat system improvement on DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The fiscal 2015 plan requests $2.8 billion for two Burkes as part of the fiscal 2013-17 multi-year procurement (MYP) for the ships.
