NEW DLEHI — British military firm BAE Systems will pay £6.5 million ($10 million) in damages to India for supplying defective components and fixtures for Hawk Mk-132 advanced jet trainers to state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), which delayed delivery of the aircraft to the Indian air force (IAF).
NRO RETRY: The U.S. Air Force is eyeing Sept. 6 for the rescheduled launch of the National Reconnaissance Office’s latest classified satellite, NROL-36. Originally targeted for an Aug. 2 liftoff from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., the flight had to be postponed while engineers worked through a range instrumentation issue. The fixes for the range issues should be tested and certified by the end of this month, according to Atlas V rocket maker United Launch Alliance.
AIR FORCE BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems, Nashua, N.H., is being awarded a $25,000,000 multiple award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for sustainment of Viper memory loader verifier and enhanced diagnostic aid support equipment. The location of the performance is BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems, Nashua, N.H., and at the BAE Electronics Facility, Fort Worth. The work is to be completed by Aug. 6, 2016. The 748 SCMG/PKBB is the contracting activity (FA8251-12-D-0003). NAVY
TEL AVIV — Israeli intelligence sources told local media here over the weekend that highly lethal Russian weapons have appeared in the latest Syrian fighting in Aleppo. Analysts believe that these were recently delivered from Russia.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Aug. 14 is scheduled to consider a claim by Pilatus Aircraft that it is owed at least $1 million in royalty money by Hawker Beechcraft for the production of the Pilatus-designed airframe used for the T-6/AT-6 military trainer.
SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil — Embraer is positioning itself to secure the lion’s share of the billions in defense deals that Brazil has looming on the horizon, which could put it on the path to becoming one of the world’s top defense firms. Contracts up for grabs include Sisfron, a $6 billion integrated border monitoring system that Brazil’s army is implementing to protect the country’s land borders. Brazil has borders with 10 different countries totaling nearly 17,000 km (10,600 mi.).
T-50 AESA: Russian fighter producer Sukhoi has begun flight tests of a T-50 prototype equipped with active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. The AESA, developed by Tikhomirov NIIP, is installed on the third prototype of the so-called fifth-generation fighter. This aircraft made its first flight on Nov. 22, 2011, in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in Russia’s Far East, then it flew to Zhukovsky, near Moscow, where the radar installation took place.
Nearly $1 billion added to Raytheon's contract to build a new, larger SM-3 interceptor cooperatively with Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is expected to carry the program through to its initial flight test in preparation for deployment in 2018.
The U.S. Air Force may have canceled its persistent-surveillance airship, but the U.S. Army has kept the faith, and Northrop Grumman’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) made its delayed first flight this week.
Small backpack-carried UAVs with still cameras can create large-area, three-dimensional digital maps with better resolution than satellite imagery, and in far less time than traditional techniques. That is the lesson of a just-completed series of tests at a 13,000-ft.-elevation archaeological site in Peru—and researchers say the same technology could be used for crisis management and disaster relief.
The U.S. Naval Surface Warfare (NSWC) Dahlgren Division is becoming a major center for chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) warfare agent detection work. The Navy has transferred all CBR detection services from Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, located in Indiana, to Dahlgren, Va., which provides technical, engineering, test, evaluation, maintenance and logistics support to the fleet after installing the CBR detection systems.
Unmanned-aircraft avionics maker Procerus Technologies was acquired by Lockheed Martin in January, launched development of a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) UAS in March and flew the small quadcopter daily at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's show here.
