Boeing has signed the $4 billion second multi-year contract for CH-47F Chinook helicopters, with the U.S. Army electing to exercise 22 of the options under the contract from the outset. The additional aircraft, all for foreign military sales customers, take the basic five-year contract to 177 Chinooks, including 155 for the Army. Another 38 helicopters remain on option. Of the CH-47Fs for the Army, 124 with be remanufactured, or “renew,” aircraft and 31 will be new-build. The other 22, and all of the option aircraft, will be new-build Chinooks.
Eurocopter is claiming to have beaten Sikorsky’s X2 unofficial speed record by reaching 263 kt. in a dive with its X3 high-speed demonstrator. During trials in early June, Eurocopter test pilots flying at the Istres test base near Marseille, France, also achieved 255 kt. in level flight, breaking the X3’s previous top speed of 232 kt. set in May 2011.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — The first of 10 C-17 airlifters for the Indian air force (IAF) is en route to an air force station near Delhi, following departure from Boeing’s Long Beach, Calif., production site on June 11.
A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) draft report on the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program is leading some in Congress to ask for a halt to some LCS funding until the Navy finishes specific tests and reports meant to ensure the worthiness of the vessels and the program. The Navy plans to buy a fleet of 52 LCSs, which now come in two versions: one made by a team led by Lockheed Martin and another class being built by a team led by Austal USA and General Dynamics.
For defense contractors in the U.S., this year suddenly has gone from bad to worse. Just as contractors for the Pentagon and intelligence community were beginning to grapple with the fact that the majority of $37 billion in so-called sequestration reductions to fiscal 2013 spending will come from their lines of business, now comes the epitome of a defense contractor many in America will love to hate: Edward Snowden.
The U.K. Royal Air Force will lose the ability to conduct air sampling for nuclear treaty verification when the last Vickers VC-10 air-to-air refueling tankers are retired later this year. The little-known and highly secretive mission, passed to the Vickers VC-10 following the retirement of the Avro Vulcan back in the 1980s, has been quietly conducted as part of international nuclear verification efforts.
SUPPLY CHAIN: An effort by the Republican-run House Armed Services Committee to guard against Defense Department use of information technology (IT) manufactured by firms with known Chinese affiliations is drawing the ire of U.S. technology lobbyists. The committee is pushing legislation mandating a Pentagon report on the telecommunications and IT supply chain of select military components, especially nuclear weapons command and control.
GMD SITES: The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is promoting a letter from leading three-star officers that refutes the need for an East Coast branch of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. The director of the Missile Defense Agency, Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, and the commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, Army Lt. Gen. Richard Formica, told Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that “there is no validated military requirement” for a proposed East Coast missile defense site.
One of Africa's oldest aerospace companies, ATE (Advanced Technology and Engineering Company (Pty) Ltd), manufacturers of high-tech products for the global defence industry, has been saved from liquidation with vital technology and skills now staying in Africa, thanks to the acquisition by Africa's largest privately owned defence and aerospace business, Paramount Group.
PARIS — BAE Systems has conducted the first drop of a Raytheon Paveway IV precision-guided bomb from a Eurofighter Typhoon in the Phase 1 Enhancements (P1EB) configuration. BAE Systems confirmed that test pilots dropped the weapon over the Aberporth test range in West Wales on June 5 using one of the instrumented test aircraft, IPA6.
STRATEGIC MOVES: The Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee will begin marking up its take on the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill this week. That version of the bill, as well as the whole Senate’s version, is expected to significantly push back on House GOP efforts to rein in the Obama administration’s push to further reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile, and Republican efforts to speed establishment of an East Coast branch of the Ground-based Midcourse system.
PARIS — Thales is planning to make its touchscreen-driven avionics human interface system available for integration into aircraft and helicopters by 2020. The manufacturer’s ‘Avionics 2020’ vision, which will be shown next week at the Paris air show, uses technologies developed from its Avionics 2030 ideas displayed in 2010.
With a program to modernize the “night” side of the Boeing AH-64D/E Apache’s targeting system almost complete, the U.S. Army has begun taking delivery for the first upgrade to the “day” side of the attack helicopter’s sensor suite. Lockheed Martin has delivered the laser rangefinder/designator (LRFD) for the modernized day sensor assembly (M-DSA), one half of the Apache’s distinctive nose-mounted targeting system.
The U.S. Navy ramped up its Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) program this month, with the launch of one ship and a delivery of another. JHSV-3USNS Millinocket successfully launched June 5 from the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Ala. The next day, the Navy accepted delivery of JHSV-2 USNS Choctaw County from the same company at the same yard.
