In 2001, the U.S. Air Force officially took over the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk unmanned air system (UAS) project, now estimated to cost $12.4 billion for 55 aircraft, and embarked on its development. Within months, the momentum behind the high-flying spy aircraft grew. The young UAS was rushed into operation in the Middle East after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and service officials began crafting plans for a larger, more capable design, dubbed the Block 20/30, that was intended to take over the role long held by the U-2.
CLARION CALL: The entire, sprawling U.S. intelligence community’s leadership agrees that the U.S. “is in a type of cyber Cold War, losing some $300 billion annually to cyber-based corporate espionage, and sustaining daily intrusions against public systems controlling everything from major defense weapons systems and public air traffic to electricity and banking,” said a group of high-ranking defense officials last week that included Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr., CIA Director David Petraeus and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Are defense contractors earning too much money in an era of budget austerity? That question is being asked at the Pentagon after earnings results showed the industry managed to maintain and in many cases bolster profit margins in 2011, even as growth evaporated.
LONDON — NATO defense ministers have given the go-ahead to the Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) program to acquire five Global Hawk unmanned aircraft. A contract is still being prepared with the U.S. and European industrial team in charge of supplying the unmanned aircraft and ground support infrastructure. NATO “found a practical funding solution” to go ahead with AGS, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the conclusion of a meeting of NATO ministers Feb. 3. Libya “showed how important such a capability is,” he adds.
Entry-into-service is years off, but that has not stopped the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter from facing its first overseas battles where—at least in the political theater and competitive skirmishes—it has held its own.
Lawmakers are getting behind an emerging market in civilian UAVs, setting in motion rules that would speed up the process of allowing law enforcement agencies and first responders to use pint-sized unmanned aircraft.
First flight of the European Neuron unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) demonstrator is planned for mid-2012 at the Istres flight-test center in France, where the air vehicle was assembled and rolled out late last month. The milestone began what is shaping up to be a critical year for UCAVs in Europe. Prime contractor Dassault says software integration is in its final stages, and ground and engine tests will start soon.
Leithen Francis (Camp Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, Philippines)
The South China Sea dispute has suddenly led the Philippines to move to strengthen its military and try to do it quickly. Discussing the upgrade program on Jan. 27, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said the Philippines is in a race against time to improve its military air capability. “Without a deterrent force, we can be easily pushed around, our territories will be violated,” he declared.
David Fulghum (Washington), Bill Sweetman (Washington), Amy Butler (Washington)
How much of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's spiraling cost in recent years can be traced to China's cybertheft of technology and the subsequent need to reduce the fifth-generation aircraft's vulnerability to detection and electronic attack?
EADS Chief Executive Louis Gallois recently was asked to reflect on his legacy as he prepares to step down, but the self-effacing aerospace chief took a pass. It is too early, he said, to render a verdict on his impact on the sprawling enterprise he has led since 2007.
Research suggests that the ambitious performance goals of future long-endurance reconnaissance aircraft and highly efficient commercial transports may only be achievable by using very light structures and long, slender wings.
General aviation groups are urging U.S. regulators to withdraw LightSquared’s conditional waiver for a broadband wireless network, saying the GPS system must be protected from all sources of interference. Their comments are in response to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) request for input on LightSquared’s December petition for a ruling that commercial GPS receivers are not entitled to protection from interference caused by a broadband wireless network operating within technical parameters set by the government.
The strategy employed by Boeing to win $3.5 billion worth of missile defense work late last year reveals a willingness on the part of the aerospace giant to embrace highly aggressive pricing and low margins to hedge against the uncertainty ahead with waning Pentagon spending. And, the company's rivals are taking notice.
Actions may speak louder than words. So even though the U.K.'s new defense industrial strategy (DIS) says a lot about more competition and off-the-shelf procurement and little about support for its guided weapons and military aircraft sector, recent sole-source awards signal that London still has an active hand in backing its industry.
NEED BRAC: Lawmakers are cringing at the idea, but the Pentagon remains adamant that to best deal with the budget cuts that Washington enacted into law last August, the military must be free to pursue another round of base realignment and closure (BRAC). The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, says a BRAC is already needed just to deal with the first part of the Budget Control Act’s cuts, not to mention if the full, $1 trillion effect of so-called “sequestration” is triggered. “By the way, I didn’t pass the Budget Control Act,” Dempsey says.
Deals for mergers and acquisitions in global aerospace and defense hit a new high in 2011, reaching $43.7 billion, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
With fortuitous timing, as the U.S. Defense Department unveils plans for budget cuts, a government/industry consortium has released an open systems standard that promises to save money by enabling reuse of avionics software across Pentagon platforms. The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) technical standard was released on Jan. 30, after just 18 months of work by a 39-member consortium managed by open-systems standards organization The Open Group.
As of the end of January, the K-MAX unmanned helicopter had delivered over 100,000 lb. of cargo on more than 50 resupply missions in Afghanistan, according to numbers provided by Lockheed Martin, which produces the K-MAX along with Kaman Aerospace. The U.S. Marine Corps flew its first-ever unmanned cargo resupply mission in Afghanistan on Dec. 17, sending the K-MAX on a mission to supply Marines stationed at a small combat outpost with 3,500 lb. of food and equipment.
The British might have once ruled the Indian subcontinent, but the French are taking over its skies. The Indian government late last month named Dassault Aviation's Rafale the lowest-cost bidder against the rival Eurofighter consortium's Typhoon in the long-running and fiercely contested competition to supply at least 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) to the Indian air force (IAF).
With this month’s Bold Alligator event—the East Coast’s largest joint and multinational amphibious assault exercise in the past 10 years—the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps brass hopes to tax their commanders to the limit and develop long-lasting tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) for using equipment and units.
The Pentagon’s ongoing budget rollout has members of Congress scrambling in all different directions as if trying to gather up pieces of a broken puzzle. The list of items against which some lawmakers are pushing back is long and growing. There’s a steeper round of budget reductions, force structure cuts, base realignment, reductions to the Air National Guard, the cancellation of the Global Hawk Block 30, delays to the Joint Strike Fighter and more.
SPECIAL STRESS: With the Obama administration’s newly planned decrease in overall ground forces and increased reliance on Special Operations Forces (SOF), congressional researchers are warning that there could still be limitations to SOF growth no matter how much the White House, Pentagon and Congress are willing to spend. “While DOD maintains that it is willing to increase its investment in SOF, there are limitations on expansion because of stringent qualification and training standards,” a Jan. 11 report to lawmakers says.
HELP WANTED: Australia is starting to outline the workforce it thinks it needs to match up against a plan for more than $200 billion in defense spending over the next decade, starting with the Future Submarine Project, slated to be Australia’s largest-ever single defense project. “A steady supply of steelworkers, welders, electricians and mechanics is needed, among many other trades. And we also need engineers, systems analysts, accountants and specialists in air and marine transport,” says Sen. Kim Carr, minister for defense materiel.
The U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle office is teaming up with the armed service’s Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) effort at Fort Bliss, Texas, this spring to test several non-developmental vehicle technologies as part of its larger analysis of alternatives/non-developmental testing and evaluation program.
