Talk of composites tends to focus on the materials in the forms used by aircraft manufacturers—tows, tapes and fabrics. But work is underway to reduce the cost and improve the performance of composite structures by looking at the carbon fibers that give the material its strength and stiffness.
“A fighter pilot patrols the area allotted to him in any manner he sees fit. When he sees the enemy, he attacks and kills.” What makes it likely that Manfred von Richthofen really said that is the sentence that follows it: Alles andere ist Unsinn. Anything else is nonsense.
JSF REVIEW: The Pentagon Office of the Inspector General is evaluating the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in terms of its quality assurance — a review that is anticipated by the end of fiscal 2013, according to a senior Pentagon official. The review will come from the inspector general’s policy and oversight shop.
LONDON — The Spanish navy is the first customer for Saab’s Skeldar rotary-wing UAV. Saab was awarded a €2.5 million ($3.3 million) contract on June 26, but didn’t announce the deal until July 11, and did not say who the customer was.
LONDON — The German government has placed an order for 15 Eurocopter EC645 T2 utility helicopters for the country’s special forces units. The €194 million ($252 million) deal, announced on July 11, makes Germany the first customer for the EC645 T2, which is the military variant of the EC145 T2 launched by the manufacturer in 2011. Eurocopter says the deal includes the helicopters and equipment packages for Germany’s special forces command, known as the KSK, to conduct their missions.
With the recent successful carrier landing of the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) Demonstrator, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, is emphasizing the potential for electronic attack (EA) missions for future operations using that type of aircraft.
While foreign competition worries U.S. manufacturers of titanium aircraft components, consolidation remains a bigger concern, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). “There is concern that U.S. manufacturers are losing market share to qualifying country manufacturers that are able to use foreign produced titanium,” GAO says in a recent report.
NEW DELHI — India will soon swap out its Prithvi ballistic missile for the newly developed Prahar missile as part of the Indian army’s ongoing transformational efforts. The Prithvi I missile, with a strike range of 150 km (93 mi.), will be “soon phased out” and replaced by the solid-propelled Prahar missiles,which are “more advanced, more competent and more accurate,” an official at India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) tells Aviation Week.
BAE Systems has won AUS$580 million ($532 million) worth of contracts to support the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) fleet of Hawk Mk. 127 training aircraft. The larger of the two contracts is an AUS$435 million maintenance, engineering, full logistics and training systems deal to support the RAAF’s 33 Hawk aircraft. According to the company, the contract, which began on July 1, will support the aircraft at two bases, Williamtown, New South Wales and at Pearce, Western Australia.
The Northrop Grumman X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator made its first arrested landing July 10 on the USS George Bush, the Navy has announced. It was the first arrested carrier landing by an unmanned, autonomous vehicle and the first by a completely tailless aircraft.
NEW BOSS: Italian defense and aerospace group Finmeccanica has appointed Giovanni de Gennaro as chairman to succeed Giuseppe Orsi. Gennaro, who is a former head of the Italian state police, was voted in during a shareholders meeting of Finmeccanica on July 4. Adm. Guido Venturoni was selected as vice chairman. Gennaro succeeds Orsi in the role of chairman only. Orsi, who was also CEO, departed the company in February following his arrest on charges of graft over the sale of 12 AW101 VIP helicopters to the Indian air force in 2010.
LONDON — Oil and gas operators could return their Eurocopter EC225s to service within weeks now that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has certified fixes to the bevel gear vertical shaft, a critical component in the main gearbox that drives lubrication pumps.
The U.S. and its national naval partners that operate in the Black Sea are getting the opportunity this month to refine their sea-basing platforms and tactics, especially as they pertain to non-combatant evacuation and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, during Exercise Sea Breeze 2013.
The Pentagon’s modernization accounts may face disproportionate cuts of up to 20% in fiscal 2014 if Congress allows government-wide budget restrictions to remain in place, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel tells key lawmakers. If Congress fails to reverse current budget caps, the Pentagon’s fiscal 2014 budget request will be slashed by $52 billion, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned in a letter to key lawmakers July 10.
The Norwegian government has downselected AgustaWestland and Eurocopter to meet the needs of the country’s new search-and-rescue helicopter program. AgustaWestland, offering the AW101, and Eurocopter, offering an upgraded EC225, were shortlisted by the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security from four manufacturers to meet the needs of the Norwegian All-Weather Search And Rescue Helicopter (NAWSARH) program on July 9.
NEW DELHI — In the first contract awarded to an Indian company to support its CH-47F Chinook, Boeing has chosen precision components maker Dynamatic Technologies Ltd. to supply aft pylon and cargo ramp assemblies for the tandem-rotor helicopter. The Indian air force (IAF) has opted for the CH-47F over the upgraded Russian Mi-26T2 to fulfill its requirement for 15 heavy-lift helicopters.
LONDON — The U.K. defense ministry has purchased a sixth Shadow R1 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. The purchase of the aircraft, a derivative of the Beechcraft King Air 350ER, was revealed in a written answer to a Parliamentary question on July 4 about the values of aircraft fleets operated by the U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF).
Just months after Adm. Jonathan Greenert, U.S. chief of naval operations, said the Chinese anti-ship-ballistic-missile (ASBM) development “hasn’t affected the way we operate” in the Asia-Pacific, a new report says ASBM deployment is on the horizon and could affect not only regional U.S. operations but also geopolitical relationships in that part of the world.
The potential for a protest is looming as the losing bidders react to the U.S. Navy’s decision to award Raytheon a contract to begin development of the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) pod to be carried by Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic-attack aircraft.
Click here to view the pdf 2014 U.S. Defense Markup: Changes To U.S. Navy Procurement RequestBy House And Senate Authorizers, House Appropriators (Sorted By Acct., Line Number; $ In Thousands) 2014 U.S. Defense Markup: Changes To U.S.
As the Pentagon this week begins to furlough civilian employees, including its embattled acquisition workforce, now comes a new internal report blaming most of the Defense Department’s epic acquisition mistakes and overruns on poor management and lack of workforce skills. Nevertheless, the June 28 report, titled “Performance of the Defense Acquisition System,” found that “a lot of the things we thought were important may not be as important as we believed,” according to defense acquisition czar Frank Kendall.
