With law enforcement agencies eager to snap up new UAVs, Congress and the FAA are still in the early stages of trying to handle the resulting fears about the new form of surveillance. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), both first-term lawmakers, are sponsoring companion legislation that attempts to lend industry a hand by setting rules for the domestic use of UAVs before they proliferate widely. The bills would essentially require police to obtain a warrant for surveillance with UAVs as they currently do to wiretap phones.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Boeing has begun discussions with the U.S. Air Force and international customers about becoming involved in upgrading Lockheed Martin F-16s as the current fighter fleet ages and needs to be kept viable. The company believes the experience it is gaining on the QF-16 program, turning retired fighters into target drones, is giving it the intellectual know-how to become involved in upgrading and extending the service life of F-16s, says Torbjorn Sjogren, vice president for Global Maintenance and Upgrades at Boeing.
NRO LAUNCH: United Launch Alliance and the U.S. Air Force launched the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) classified NROL-38 satellite from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral at 8:28 a.m. EDT June 20 aboard an Atlas V rocket. The mission marks the second of four NRO launches scheduled to take place over a space of five months this year. The next is slated for June 28. Launch had been delayed from an earlier target of June 18 to allow for a valve replacement that required the rocket to be rolled back from the pad.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The U.S. government is expected to give the green light soon to equip three C-17s operated by NATO’s Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) partnership with directed infrared countermeasures. Clearing the NATO group to fit the Northrop Grumman Large-Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (Laircm) self-protection system has been a slow process, in part because the 12 countries that are part of the SAC consortium include two non-NATO members.
SINGAPORE — Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall dismisses talk of consolidation among satellite makers. “In Europe there used to only be two main manufacturers of satellites,” Le Gall told Aviation Week June 19. “A few years ago people were wondering ‘When will they merge?’ The thinking was that it was better to have one rather than two, but then we ended up with three in Europe.”
If the U.S. and its allies launch a bombing attack on Iran’s nonconventional weapons capabilities, the targeted facilities would likely include missile and missile engine development operations run by the specialized Qods Force — an extralegal Iranian Revolutionary Guards organization that remains beyond the control of Tehran’s elected government, say both U.S. and Israeli officials.
NRO A GO: United Launch Alliance and the U.S. Air Force are preparing to launch the National Reconnaissance Office’s classified NROL-38 satellite at 8:28 a.m. EDT June 20 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Launch was set for June 18 but was pushed back to allow the replacement of an environmental control system duct, which required the Atlas V rocket to be rolled back from the pad. Forecasters showed a 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Boeing is considering additional layoffs this year in anticipation of a broad decrease in U.S. defense spending should legislators fail to agree to $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction and trigger an automatic budget cut known as sequestration.
India’s armed forces are set to become highly reliant on Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), with plans to increase their use in a phased manner. “Given the threat perceptions along the borders, the country is likely to possess a fleet of around 30 attack RPAs in the next couple of years,” a defense ministry official says.
With six months until the government imposes a $1.2 trillion reduction to all federal programs — from the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter to the FAA’s NextGen air traffic modernization and NASA’s commercial crew development — lawmakers are debating how to best study the effects of that kind of budget cut.
While the U.S. Navy shipbuilding plan helps alleviate submarine and destroyer shortfalls, it still envisions a force below the level the service has said it needs, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS suggests what many defense analysts have maintained for some time — the Navy’s review of the ship-fleet force it needs and can afford will likely be much lower than what the service has desired over the past several years.
Looking at the shape of the U.S. defense budget markup at the account level, Army ground vehicles and missiles are especially favored by House lawmakers. The ground vehicle account gets a 25% increase over the fiscal 2013 request, from both the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) mark and the spending bill from the House Appropriations Committee (HAC). The House approved the HASC policy-making bill on May 18.
The U.S. Navy needs to update the requirements for its proposed Organic Airborne and Surface Influence Sweep (Oasis) program and should better integrate helicopter testing operations with the system, a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report says. “The Navy did not update capability requirements in the draft capability production document (CPD) after a contractor’s analysis showed Oasis would not work after sustaining a shock wave of 65 percent of the shock capability requirement,” the IG says in its June 13 report.
In Moscow, a third round of talks continues this week, but serious differences still divide Iran from six world powers over putting an end to Tehran’s nuclear program. Iran’s representatives have been told to stop uranium enrichment or face an end to negotiations, heavier sanctions and the likelihood of kinetic bombing of key military facilities.
LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Air Force’s second X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-2) has landed after 469 days in space, more than double the time clocked by the OTV-1. As with the first OTV flight, the Air Force remains secretive about the mission, saying only that the Boeing-built X-37B conducted “on-orbit experiments.” In a short statement, it says the vehicle provides “return capability” that allows the Air Force to test new technologies without the same risk faced by other programs.
ARMY General Dynamics C4 Systems, Scottsdale, Ariz., was awarded a $385,550,000 firm-fixed-price and fixed-price-incentive-firm contract. The award will provide for the replacement of antiquated radars at four Army Test Centers with state of the art test-oriented equipment. The work will be performed in Scottsdale, with an estimated completion date of June 4, 2022. The bid was solicited through the Internet, with five bids received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W900KK-12-D-0003).
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) will face hurdles in revamping the current Dun & Bradstreet Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) as a unique identifier for government contracts, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In 2011, the federal government spent more than $1 trillion on contracts and grants, relying on DUNS to keep track of the contractors for those deals, GAO notes in a June 12 report.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Boeing is looking for both additional U.S. purchases of F/A/-18E/Fs and export campaigns to sustain that production line and the F-15 beyond their currently expected lives. The current F/A-18E/F multiyear program with the U.S. Navy runs until around 2015, but Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS), sees the possibility of additional sales of the electronic-attack EA-18G version to the Pentagon to extend production. Whether there is enough demand for a fourth multiyear contract is unclear, he notes.
NAVY ERAPSCO, Columbia City, Ind., is being awarded a $25,392,401 firm-fixed-price contract for the procurement of 4,628 AN/SSQ-125 sonobuoys. The work will be performed in DeLeon Springs, Fla. (53%), and Columbia City, Ind. (47%), and is expected to be completed in June 2014. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to the FAR 6.302-1. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity. (N00421-12-C-0049).
OSPREY OVERSEAS: Although Bell-Boeing and the U.S. Marine Corps are stepping up efforts to secure an export order for the V-22 tiltrotor, such a sale is still some time off, says Mark Kronenberg, vice president for international business development at Boeing Defense, Space & Security. “We are just starting to develop the market,” he tells reporters near Washington. Israel and Japan are seen as presenting “near-term” opportunities, he says, with satisfying Canada’s search-and-rescue requirement also a possibility.
