With the likelihood of U.S. Navy aircraft being grounded due to maintenance funding cuts, the service is looking at cutting some near-term training flying. Aircraft depot maintenance, which dropped from about $1.17 billion in fiscal 2012 to about $1.16 billion in fiscal 2013, is proposed for another dip to about $916 million in the fiscal 2014 budget. The percent funded of the total requirement is similarly dropping, from 100% in fiscal 2012 to 94% in fiscal 2013 and 79% in the proposed fiscal 2014 spending plan.
Now that the U.S. Navy’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal is out and aircraft carrier acquisition, repair and funding is better defined, service officials expect to secure an agreement soon for inactivation work on the USS Enterprise, the nation’s first nuclear-powered carrier. “The Enterprise is funded and supported in this budget,” Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, deputy assistant Navy secretary for budget, said April 10 during a budget briefing. “In fact, Enterprise will go to contract sometime here in the spring.”
Pratt & Whitney aims by June to complete the investigation into the root cause of the turbine blade crack that temporarily grounded the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet in February.
Pentagon plans to have the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) lead efforts to identify technologies required for the next generation of U.S. Air Force and Navy air-combat aircraft received a boost with the agency’s 2014 budget request. Funding sought for the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) study, which gets underway this year, would double in 2014 under the budget proposal released April 10. The study “will define the projected threat domains and capability gaps for the 2020-50 timeframe,” according to Darpa budget documents.
The U.S. Air Force has conducted maximum angle-of-attack testing of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, successfully recovering the aircraft from extreme attitudes and upsets.
The U.S. Navy’s proposed fiscal 2014 spending plan includes assumptions the service will be able to recoup money lost over the future years defense plan (FYDP) to keep key programs on track through fiscal 2018. Indeed the proposed spending plan appears a bit fluid. “In investment accounts, we’re still in a lot of analysis,” Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, deputy assistant Navy secretary for budget, said April 10 during a briefing on the budget proposal.
NEW DELHI — India, one of the largest importers of defense equipment in the world, is letting supporters of the U.N.’s recently passed arms-transfer treaty know that it is not happy with their actions. The treaty, aimed at laying down common international standards and limiting the illicit sale of conventional arms, was passed by the U.N. General Assembly with an overwhelming majority of 154 votes on April 3. Iran, North Korea and Syria voted against the treaty, while China, India and Russia abstained.
NASA plans to launch a program in fiscal 2014 to accelerate dramatically the development and certification of new composite materials and structures for aircraft, but also will re-evaluate its rotary-wing research with the aim of phasing out lower-priority work. The agency’s aeronautics research budget is planned to stay essentially flat to fiscal 2018, slipping just 0.6% to $565.7 million in the fiscal 2014 request. Funding is planned to stay at that slightly lower level for the rest of the five-year budget plan.
Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works is proposing a stealthy, tailless flying-wing design for the U.S. Navy's Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) program. The 66-ft.-span, 30,000-lb.-gross-weight aircraft strongly resembles the Skunk Works private-venture P-175 Polecat and once-classified RQ-170 long-endurance UAVs.
Over the next decade, Warsaw expects to spend nearly $50 billion to strengthen its military via a sweeping modernization effort that includes air and missile defense, new helicopters, unmanned reconnaissance systems air transport, anti-tank missiles and trainer aircraft.
After a decade of multibillion-dollar cost overruns and delays in delivering satellites, it seems the U.S. Air Force can claim that it has finally averted a potential disaster—at least for now—on its next big satellite program.
Over the last decade, the French government's equity interest in several large defense companies has been questionably managed, according to a new report by France's auditing arm, the Cour des Comptes, which says the state's shareholder interest in companies such as EADS, Thales and Safran is often at odds with its role representing the French taxpayer. And in a couple of cases, according to the audit, the government has shown itself to be incompetent.
Boeing is developing a family of small satellites—from 4-1,000 kg (8.8-2,204 lb.) in size—to whet the growing appetites of commercial and government customers interested in lower-cost space platforms. This small satellite market, potentially worth billions in the next 10 years, is “coming of age,” says Alex Lopez, vice president of advanced network and space systems at Boeing. The company has yet to get a committed customer.
Brazil's purchase of 36 new fighters, a key target for competitors Boeing, Saab and Dassault, is “on the desk” of President Dilma Rousseff. Industry executives seem united in believing that the decision cannot be deferred much beyond the summer without costing Brazil more money—or even putting force structure at risk—as aging fighters are forced into retirement. Competing officials also report signals from the Brazilian military that the deal will move quickly through the contract stage once Rousseff has made her choice.
Bell Helicopters is playing the speed card with a third-generation tiltrotor to meet the requirements for the U.S. Army's Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. While its competitors look to hybrid, compound helicopters to meet the Army's need to fly at 230 kt. and still perform like a normal helicopter, Bell is gambling that increased speed and higher productivity on the battlefield will become the critical capabilities the service will be seeking in the coming years.
The U.S. Air Force faces the prospect of 15-25% in annual reductions this fiscal year in its planned acquisition of the conventional F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. And believe it or not, that is the good news. The bad news is the cuts are likely to happen again next year due to the same political impasse that led to the 2011 Budget Control Act and its nightmarish “sequestration,” or widespread automatic budget cuts, which started to take effect last month and seem more than likely to do so again come October when fiscal 2014 begins.
It has been a late, cold spring season in Washington, with fiscal panic in the air, and barely a single program, even the rare specimen that is based on a sound requirement and executed with a smattering of competence, is safe.
As U.S. defense priorities change, Lockheed Martin Space Systems is renewing a strategy that it has used for years: tapping into Silicon Valley's penchant for sharing ideas.
