With fewer dollars available for new programs, the Pentagon is at a pivot point for its multibillion air- and spaceborne intelligence collection portfolio.
FARNBOROUGH — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who leads a state long known for its aerospace presence, is hoping for a rebound after Boeing’s recent departure from the state.
City and state officials in Alabama are still celebrating Airbus's decision to build an A320 final assembly line in Mobile. By any measure, the planned $600 million industrial facility will be a big stimulus to the local economy. It also will add to the southeastern U.S.'s emergence as a major hub for aerospace manufacturing. What may not be apparent yet, however, is how much the supplier base across North America could share in that bonanza.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) JULY 16 — 24th Annual Greater Washington Aviation Open, "the regions largest Aviation Golf Charity," Lansdown Golf Resort near Leesburg, Va. For more information contact [email protected] or go to www.gwao.org JULY 26 - 28 — NewSpace 2012, "The Space Frontier Foundation's Annual Conference," Moffett Field, Calif. For more information go to spacefrontier.org/ns12registration/
Shock, disbelief, dismay, distrust. Stages of grief? No, these adjectives sum up the reaction to the news that Hawker Beechcraft has agreed to sell itself to a Chinese manufacturer for about $1.8 billion (see p. 40). It remains to be seen whether the property will actually change hands, although there is no reason at this point to doubt it will. Nonetheless, the announcement stunned aerospace professionals.
France carried out its first full test firing of the MdCN (missile de croisiere naval) equipped with an infrared seeker at the Biscarrosse test range in southwestern France July 9, simulating full-up engagement of the MBDA-built naval cruise missile in a frigate configuration.
Now that the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has secured the tactical and strategic airlift that it wanted, its next procurement is of VIP air transportation.
The plot is thickening once again as the U.S. Air Force continues its troubled quest to field a Light Air Support (LAS) aircraft for use in Afghanistan. Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer and U.S. aerospace giant Boeing have joined forces to provide a combined A-29 Super Tucano offering to the Air Force for its next round of bidding on the program.
Deal would leave the defense business — which in recent years has been Hawker Beechcraft’s most lucrative — as either a standalone operation or to be sold separately.
Rafael, Israel's leading missile development center, continues to work quietly on an air-to-air derivative of the Stunner interceptor—to be designated Python 6, or the Future Advanced Air-to-Air Missile (FAAM). The Stunner is a surface-to-air weapon being developed in partnership with Raytheon for Israel's David's Sling air and missile defense system. The Python 6 has been chronicled for almost a decade.
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are expected to out-spend each of their sister services roughly two-to-one on Electronic Warfare (EW) programs during the next decade. In a 10-year period starting in fiscal 2008 and ending fiscal 2017 the Navy and Marines have spent or are slated to spend a cumulative total of about $21.9 billion, based on a database provided by Avascent’s 050, an online market analysis toolkit for global defense programs.
Not only are Brazil and other countries interested in F-18s, but foreign militaries also are eyeing some of the console improvements being featured on the latest proposed Super Hornets.
FARNBOROUGH — Alenia Aermacchi and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) are planning to begin testing the first MC-27J multimission C-27J airlifter — outfitted with a 30mm cannon for the gunship role — this fall. The test campaign comes as the manufacturer works to carve out more market share for the tactical airlifter in the wake of a U.S. Air Force decision earlier this year to walk away from it and shelve brand new hardware owing to budget pressure.
FARNBOROUGH — Europrop International (EPI) is confident that an issue with the TP400 engines that prevented the Airbus A400M from flying at the Farnborough air show will be solved promptly, and will not threaten the military airlifter’s scheduled 2013 entry-into-service. In the days prior to the show, a diagnostic system detected metallic chips in one of the engines on MSN006, the first production-standard A400M appearing at Farnborough. The debris indicated deterioration on one of the unit’s roller bearings, says Europrop president Simon Henley.
DARPA DIRECTOR: Pentagon acquisition and technology chief Frank Kendall has appointed Arati Prabhakar as the 20th director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, starting July 30. Prabhakar served a seven-year tour through Darpa starting in 1986, first as a program manager and then director of the Microelectronics Technology Office. In 1993 she was President Bill Clinton’s director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, before heading to Silicon Valley in 1997 to work for industry. Prabhakar received an M.S.E.E. and a Ph.D.
As the U.S. moves to strengthen defenses of digital networks and assets, agreeing on standards for cybersecurity will prove more difficult than reaching a consensus on privacy and information sharing, the head of the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency (NSA) believes.
FARNBOROUGH — With politicians not even close to a deal that would avert an automatic $1 trillion reduction in government spending at the start of next year — about half of that targeted at the Pentagon — state and local officials are aggressively courting the commercial aircraft and supply chain business, where the outlook is much brighter.
A U.S. Navy team tested communication software for the Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program aboard the aircraft carrier CVN-75 USS Harry S. Truman this month during its sea trials. The UCAS-D program, based at Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) at NAS Patuxent River, Md., is designed to demonstrate the ability of the unmanned, autonomous X-47B UAV to launch from and land safely on an aircraft carrier.
GRIPEN PARTNERSHIP: Collaboration between Sweden and Switzerland on the new JAS 39E/F version of the Saab Gripen fighter is expected to firm up in August with the signature of a framework agreement between Swiss defense procurement agency Armasuisse and Sweden’s defense export organization. That follows the signature of a ministerial-level letter of intent in Switzerland on June 29. On the same day, Saab hosted a business-to-business meeting to start the process of placing offset work in Switzerland, in advance of a formal development contract that is expected in 2014.
FARNBOROUGH — Lockheed Martin has flown a small unmanned aircraft for 48 hr. using laser power beaming as the company works to grow its presence in the UAV market. The test took place in a wind tunnel and involved Lockheed’s hand-launched, battery-powered Stalker UAV and LaserMotive’s power beaming system. Stalker has an endurance of 2 hr. on battery power alone. In 2011, Lockheed flew an “extreme endurance” version able to stay aloft for more than 8 hr. on combined propane fuel-cell and lithium-polymer battery power.
With there no longer being an urgent need to quickly buy and build vastly up-armored vehicles to prowl the terrain in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is returning to a more customary approach to developing and procuring its ground equipment. A case in point is the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), a program about to enter its engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase.
FARNBOROUGH — Lockheed Martin is touting an export-friendly manned-unmanned teaming capability at the Farnborough air show, hoping to interest the U.K. as it ponders a midlife update for its AgustaWestland/Boeing WAH-64D Apache AH.1s. The VUIT system is based on equipment that was fitted to 48 U.S. Army AH-64Ds and deployed to Iraq to enable the Apaches to receive video from unmanned aircraft and send video to the ground.
