A BAE Systems-operated Jetstream 31 is conducting sense-and-avoid trials over the Irish Sea as a U.K.-funded program to develop technologies and procedures to enable civil unmanned aircraft to operate in unrestricted airspace enters its final stages. Begun in 2006, the ₤62 million ($97 million) Astraea program is scheduled to end in March 2013 with completion of the “virtual certification” of an unmanned aircraft to fly without restrictions in all classes of airspace.
LUCKY LUKE: Luke AFB , Ariz., will be the site of the U.S. Air Force’s F-35A Lightning II pilot training center, including for foreign militaries, the service says. The base will receive 72 Joint Strike Fighters to comprise three squadrons. The selection follows a hotly contested, three-year competition. Aircraft will begin to arrive from late 2013 to mid-2014, although the exact timing will depend on production schedules.
U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND GATR Technologies Inc., Huntsville, Ala., is being awarded a $37,000,000 single-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the GATR inflatable antenna, components, technical support, and training in support of U.S. Special Operations Command. The anticipated period of performance is not to exceed five years. The place of performance is Huntsville. U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill AFB, Fla., is the contracting activity (H92222-12-D-0016).
After months of sharpening their bids and building teams, a U.S.-wide competition for the FAA to designate six sites to test UAS (unmanned aerial system) technologies in civilian airspace is about to begin. Across the country, governors, lawmakers, business development organizations, airports and companies are sharpening bid proposals that the FAA expects to issue “soon,” with an eye toward choosing the winning teams by year-end. Recent legislation requires the FAA to integrate UAS into the civilian airspace by Sept. 30, 2015.
British aerospace contractor Cobham is expanding its Latin American footprint with the opening of a subsidiary in Brazil to anchor operations in the region. Cobham this week acknowledged the startup of subsidiary Cobham do Brasil, based in Sao Paulo, to clear the way for new business for Cobham Tactical Communications and Surveillance.
Key portions of the U.S. Navy's most sophisticated electronic attack weapon are emerging from the laboratories. At least two candidate elements—a reduced-signature pod and an advanced power generating system from Northrop Grumman—are flying. The $2 billion Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) program—that would allow combat aircraft to penetrate sophisticated air defenses—is expected to be awarded to a single contractor almost exactly a year from now.
U.S. Air Force guidance that told anyone connected to F-22 Raptor operations to report any hypoxia-like symptoms likely led to a number of those reports from ground workers for the aircraft, says Maj. Gen. Charlie Lyon, Air Combat Command’s director of operations.
How do you fight off a swarm of small UAVs? Answer: With another swarm. That's the thinking behind the Aerial Battle Bots project masterminded by Timothy Chung, assistant professor of systems engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Chung is planning to stage an airborne gladiatorial contest between two fleets of 50 UAVs by 2015, to demonstrate how the swarm defense might work.
Frustrated by years of false starts, high-speed-propulsion researchers no longer find humor in the old joke that hypersonics is the future and always will be. Yet, just as shrinking budgets and moribund projects threaten the U.S. hypersonics community with that familiar feeling of deja vu, a newly announced Air Force high-speed-strike weapon offers an unexpected beacon of hope.
The Senate quietly approved two last-minute changes to the defense spending bill for fiscal 2013 aimed at boosting space-launch industries in California and Alabama. The amendments were approved as part of a package and were not publicly debated, but neither involved government funding.
Lockheed Martin plans to conduct detailed studies of an advanced hybrid wing-body transport concept under a second phase of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Revolutionary Configurations for Energy Efficiency (RCEE) program. The study is part of AFRL-led efforts to identify ways to radically reduce the amount of fuel used by the Air Force's air mobility fleet for “a severely energy-supply-constrained future scenario,” says AFRL. Reducing fuel burn has become a top priority for the U.S. Defense Department, which consumes almost 4 billion gal.
NEW DELHI — Boeing is preparing to test fly the first of the 10 C-17 heavy-lift aircraft it is building for the Indian air force (IAF) by January 2013. The major join ceremony — which integrates the forward, center and aft fuselages and the wing assembly — was held on July 31 at Boeing’s factory in Long Beach, Calif.
The increased use of helicopters in Afghanistan and other mountainous areas is changing the way the U.S. Army looks at mountain warfare. “The helicopter now allows access to terrain that was once unreachable, or that was only reachable by slow, methodical climbing,” says the most recently updated Army training guide, “Military Mountaineering,” released in July.
As any military planner hoping to introduce new capabilities knows, breaking the cost paradigm in these days of tight budgets is every bit as important as proving the technology itself.
PUSHED OUT: The NROL-36 mission to launch a classified satellite from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., for the National Reconnaissance Office has been pushed back to no earlier than Aug. 14. Col. Nina Armagno, commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 30th Space Wing, says additional time is needed to address a range instrumentation issue that prompted a launch scrub on Aug. 2. Originally, the Air Force expected to be ready to launch as early as Aug. 4. There are no problems with either the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket or the NROL-36 payload.
Centaur was conceived for scientific missions, but as the possibilities for optionally piloted aircraft (OPA) technology become more apparent, “we are actively thinking of what the next steps are,” says John Langford, president of Aurora Flight Sciences. In addition to enabling new types of missions that combine unmanned persistence with certified platforms, optional piloting could act as a bridge to the future by helping build trust in flying autonomous aircraft in the national airspace system (NAS).
Rolls-Royce and Snecma will study development of next-generation combat aircraft engines under an Anglo-French bilateral agreement led by the U.K. Defense Ministry and announced late last month. The contract calls for Rolls-Royce Snecma Ltd., a joint venture formed in 2001, to consider derivatives of existing military propulsion systems as well as the potential to develop novel engine concepts during the study, which are expected to require a little more than one year to complete.
Insitu has begun flight tests of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps' RQ-21A small tactical unmanned aircraft (Stuas). Developed from the company's Integrator commercial unmanned aircraft system, the RQ-21A made the 1-hr flight late last month from an Insitu facility in Boardman, Ore. With six months left to run in its 27-month engineering and manufacturing development contract, the program is on track, says Boeing subsidiary Insitu. Development and operational testing are scheduled to begin this month at NAS China Lake, Calif.
