Deliveries of three Pentagon-procured fixed-wing tactical transport aircraft to Yemen's capital of Sanaa in September, coupled with announcements of a newly tendered squadron of light observation planes, marked the culmination of the Obama administration's push to help the Yemeni air force take ownership of an Al Qaeda fight that has become synonymous with American unmanned aerial vehicle technology.
Mounting budget pressure is forcing France to curb defense spending, slowing deliveries of major military programs rather than killing them outright. Under the nation's new military program law—a €190 billion ($256 billion) budget for the period 2014-19—key aerospace platforms that will see reduced or delayed orders include Dassault Aviation's Rafale combat jet, Eurocopter's Tiger and NH90 helicopters and Airbus Military's A400M tactical airlifter.
NUKED: A move by the Democratic leadership of the U.S. Senate to curb the minority Republican party’s ability to filibuster has sidelined passage of the chamber’s version of the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill. Consideration of the so-called nuclear option, in which Senate rules are changed to lower the vote threshold for taking action, preoccupied the upper chamber’s agenda on Nov. 21. While Senate passage this week of the defense policy bill was always tenuous, the nuclear option debate appears now to have pushed a final vote on the bill into December.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier deactivations may come as close as it gets to guaranteed future defense contracts. The U.S. Navy cannot simply park a nuclear reactor-equipped carrier somewhere. “You have to do the inactivations,” says Chris Miner, vice president for in-service aircraft carrier programs at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding unit.
LONDON — The Netherlands is to become the fourth European country to purchase the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. The Hague announced plans on Nov. 21 to introduce four MQ-9 Reapers and an unknown number of ground stations into full operational service by 2017, not only for use on deployed operations but also to support civil authorities in disaster relief and counter-narcotics operations. The ministry estimates the deal will cost €100-250 million.
Additive manufacturing has captured industry’s imagination, but even as the first parts appear inside jet engines, the technology’s possibilities are only just being realized. As researchers experiment with new materials and optimized designs made possible by 3-D printing, the potential scale of the revolution in manufacturing is becoming clearer.
DUBAI — A U.S. Navy notice for the purchase of 36 Super Hornets posted on a federal procurement website in October was nothing more than an error, according to the Navy’s Hornet program manager. Speaking at the Dubai air show on Nov. 19, Capt. Frank Morley, Naval Air Systems Command program manager for the Boeing-built F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18 Growler, said that the notice, which went up on the FedBizOps.gov website on Oct. 17, was an “administrative error” and had no effect on the current program of record.
AEGIS AWARD: The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon a $406 million multi-year contract to provide AN/SPY-1 radar transmitters and MK99 Fire Control Systems for Lockheed Martin’s Aegis combat system. The components of the weapon system perform the search, track and missile guidance functions for Aegis, which the U.S. Navy is upgrading to provide greater ballistic missile defense as well as enhanced ship-defense.
TEL AVIV — The Israeli Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) held a successful test of the David’s Sling air defense system on Nov. 20 in which a ballistic missile was intercepted and destroyed. Barring unexpected delays, the system, also known as Magic Wand, is expected to be operational within two years. It has been in development since 2006
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (Darpa) goal with its new Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program is to demonstrate a reusable capability that can transition to industry for low-cost military and commercial satellite launches and hypersonic technology testing. The agency usually hands off successful programs to one of the U.S. military services, but “Darpa’s XS-1 transition partner is you — industry,” Program Manager Jess Sponable told attendees at a proposers’ day briefing earlier this month. (See charts p. 8.)
PARIS — Mounting budget pressure is forcing France to curb defense spending, slowing deliveries of major military programs rather than killing them outright. Under the nation’s new military program law – a €190 billion ($256 billion) budget for the period 2014-19 – key aerospace platforms that will see reduced or delayed orders include Dassault Aviation’s Rafale combat jet, Eurocopter’s Tiger and NH90 helicopters and Airbus Military’s A400M tactical airlifter.
U.S. Navy officials are examining the results of a third — and previously unplanned — round of sea trials for the stealthy, unmanned X-47B after the team returned to port Nov. 19.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee approved legislation this month urging intelligence agencies to relax resolution limits on commercial radar and electro-optical satellite imagery after U.S. companies requested the move. In a Nov. 13 report accompanying passage of its version of the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act (S 1681), the committee said it is concerned that commercial imagery providers outside the U.S., notably EADS Astrium Services, may soon be able to provide satellite imagery sharper than the currently allowed U.S. limit of 50 cm.
Quality continues to be a problem for delivered ships in key U.S. Navy shipbuilding programs and the service needs to improve the way it tracks, finds and corrects issues, a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says. “The Navy expects to spend about $15 billion per year to provide its fleet with the most advanced ships to support national defense and military strategies,” GAO says in a recent report. “Problems with recently delivered ships have focused attention on quality issues.”
NEW DELHI — AgustaWestland has decided to proceed with arbitration over the scandal-plagued sale of 12 AW101 helicopters to India for VIP transport, even as the Indian Defense Ministry continues to discount the threat as it moves to terminate the award, saying “these proceedings are not applicable on the breach of the pre-contract integrity pact.”
Lockheed Martin is proposing to take retired U.S. Navy S-3 Vikings out of desert storage and refurbish and refit them with a new, larger fuselage suited to the cargo role to meet the Navy’s emerging requirement to renew its carrier onboard delivery (COD) fleet. Northrop Grumman is already proposing to remanufacture the Navy’s existing C-2 Greyhound COD aircraft, while Bell Boeing is offering new V-22 Osprey tiltrotors.
LASER POINTERS: The U.S. Air Force Research laboratory is seeking ideas for laser systems that could be used on a post-2030 future air dominance platform. Information is being sought on low-power lasers for sensing, targeting and defeating sensors; medium power for self-protection; and high power for laser weapons. ARFL is interested in systems that could be demonstrated on a technology readiness level of 5 (basic prototype in a relevant environment) by 2022.
Uncle Sam’s sequestration could be about to accomplish what no nascent Chinese or Russian anti-satellite capability can do yet: put U.S. space capability on the verge of flaming out. That is one of the emerging conclusions of an extraordinary industrial base assessment by the Commerce Department, shared recently with Aviation Week.
The U.S. Air Force’s Operationally Responsive Space-3 (ORS-3) demonstration mission lifted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Nov. 19, placing the Space Test Program Satellite 3 (STPSat-3) primary payload and 28 cubesats into orbit.
Debate on the Senate’s version of the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill is underway, and lawmakers are considering a long list of amendments, including one that proposes to limit the retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolt. The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), would prevent the Air Force from retiring or placing the A-10 in storage until the F-35A is fully operational — a milestone that Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh has said he hopes will happen in 2021.
Republican defense hawks in the U.S. Senate are proposing a major change to the 2011 Budget Control Act — an overhaul of its mechanism of automatic annual cuts known as sequestration —in what could be an early test of pro-Pentagon sentiment under nascent efforts to find a way out of Washington’s budget quagmire.
