LONDON — China’s role in the global arms trade is changing, with a shift to becoming an exporter rather than a major importer of weapons, according to new figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
ARMY The Boeing Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded a $187,041,395 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract. The award will provide for the development, integration and testing requirements on the Apache Block III Program. The work will be performed in Mesa., with an estimated completion date of July 31, 2014. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-05-C-0001).
Power-saving integrated circuits that extend battery life in portable electronics, and are being applied to military radios and investigated for avionics, are the overall winner of Aviation Week's 2012 Innovation Challenge, organized to bring new technologies and processes to the attention of aerospace and defense leaders.
BARCELONA, Spain — Thales is readying for the first flight trials of its Dual-Mode Airborne Seeker (Dumas), with the goal of validating the technology in the coming months before embarking upon a more extensive program later this year. An initial series of flights will focus on demonstrating the basic functionality of Dumas, which combines an imaging infrared sensor for wide-area search with a laser radar for target detection and identification. The lidar image will be used by automatic target-recognition algorithms.
Japan and South Korea are both laying the groundwork for combat aircraft they would field in the 2030s. But, whereas Japanese defense officials are looking at a manned fighter that would leap in technology past the Lockheed Martin F-35, South Korea is working on a strike drone for the 2030s, and a technically less ambitious—but still enormously challenging—home-grown fighter for the 2020s.
In 1967, a 19-year-old university student made a daring escape from Fidel Castro's Cuba, reaching the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The chief of naval operations (CNO) happened to be visiting the base, and he took Pedro L. Rustan back to Florida on his plane. Forty-four years to the day after that escape, Pete Rustan retired as director of the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) Mission Support Directorate. His government service ended with an enviable list of accomplishments that led to significant advances in aviation and space and helped greatly improve U.S.
After Lockheed Martin completes flights of the flying-wing X-56A for the U.S. Air Force, NASA plans to use the experimental unmanned aircraft to develop active control systems for slender, flexible wings on future, highly efficient transport aircraft. Transfer of the aircraft from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is expected around the end of the year, with NASA flights planned to begin by the end of 2013, following development of a new research flight-control system, says NASA Dryden Flight Research Center engineer Starr Ginn.
The U.S. defense turn to Asia and the air campaign last year in Libya have European militaries pondering how to ensure they have an independent deep-strike capability. But addressing the multifaceted requirements will not be cheap, and the recognition that something needs to be done comes as no country is looking to spend more on defense.
It is time for another trip back to the future, according to the only airship company in the U.S. But the competition to fulfill a persistent surveillance role is likely to be just as stiff as it was in the past. This next step is being taken by Airship Ventures, which operates Eureka, a 246-ft.-long Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airship, from historic Moffett Field. This an airfield south of San Francisco from which the U.S. Navy briefly sent dirigibles and blimps on patrols of the California coastline in the mid-1930s.
Lockheed Martin is preparing for the first flight test of a low-cost interceptor designed to counter rocket, artillery and mortar threats. The control test vehicle flight, planned for May, is to be followed in late summer by the first intercept test. The vertical-launched missile is being developed under the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center’s Extended Area Protection and Survivability (EAPS) science and technology program.
One might expect the job of securing the skies over this summer's Olympics in London to force British air defenses to adopt new or unusual capabilities. But as the recent Taurus Mountain 2 preparatory exercise demonstrated, the task offers U.K. forces a chance to return to core, pre-9/11 competencies after years of using their aircraft in nontraditional roles over Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
As China starts to put together a modern, integrated air force, which could reach 1,000 fighters by 2020, it is developing the components of a future force of stealthier combat aircraft, new bombers and unmanned, hypersonic and possibly space-based combat platforms. These could emerge as soon as the early 2020s.
Robert J. Stevens, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, went to Capitol Hill on March 14 with a message for lawmakers: You're making my life hell. At issue are automatic cuts to U.S. defense spending scheduled to take effect next January. If Congress and the Obama administration cannot reach a budget compromise by then, military budgets will be hit with a $53 billion cut in 2013 and another $450 billion in reductions during the next nine years.
Innovation and ingenuity in aerospace can take many forms. In the defense sector, it is often borne out of necessity—a need to find a target, to attack it or to reach it more quickly, for example.
The past few years have made it abundantly clear that the mid-term future of airpower is not what a lot of people planned. Large-scale procurement of the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has slipped into the 2020s. The aircraft types in service today—which made their first flights as much as 40 years ago—will be the world's frontline fleets through the rest of this decade, and will make up the majority of fighting forces well into the 2020s.
Both India and Pakistan are increasingly focusing on air dominance and effects-based operations as airpower is becoming a mainstay of their militaries.
In 1989, when Paul Graziani and two friends dreamed up what has become Analytical Graphics Inc., they sat in his living room envisioning a work environment where people could do their best work, creating new and bold things at a speed that would keep them happy and challenged. They would create commercial off-the-shelf analysis software for the security and space sectors, driving down cost while bringing the power of current and dynamic software to a non-consumer market.
Europe faces a tricky balancing act. Even as it tries to end its tendency to field competing missile programs, many of the existing but duplicative systems need to be upgraded to bridge the gap until the new ones are fielded around 2030.
NEW DELHI — Mirroring China’s military buildup, India is raising its defense spending by 13% to 1.93 trillion rupees ($38.6 billion) to fast-track the modernization of its armed forces. In real terms, the boost in defense allocation amounts to 224.7 billion rupees over the revised estimates of 1.71 trillion rupees for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012. Discounting this increase of 65.22 billion rupees, the hike comes to 17.6% over the 1.64 trillion rupees originally allocated.
In the troubled world of defense acquisition, the U.S. Navy's Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft shines as a rare example of a program that appears to be broadly staying on both schedule and cost. After a slow start, test and development aircraft are racking up flight hours and the first production aircraft was delivered to NAS Jacksonville, Fla., on March 5, opening the way for the start of fleet training.
