COLORADO SPRINGS — Boeing’s space business is in a “relatively healthy position” despite a flattening of the military space budget, says Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems.
With the majority of international sales opportunities for its ScanEagle small unmanned aircraft involving maritime operations, Boeing subsidiary Insitu is planning to qualify its larger Integrator vehicle for shipborne launch and recovery. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ RQ-21A small tactical unmanned aircraft system (Stuas), which is based on the Integrator, conducted its first shipboard launch and recovery in February, on the amphibious transport dock USS Mesa Verde.
RIO DE JANEIRO—Saab’s leadership is ready to offer co-development of the carrier-based Gripen N under a fixed-price, five-year deal, according to company executives at the LAAD Defense & Security show here. The decision follows a detailed review of the design by a 35-member engineering team formed in the U.K. in 2011 to mature the concept.
Key players and timelines for a seminal, and perhaps unprecedented, report on the future of the U.S. Air Force — from roles and missions to force mix among active, reserve and Air National Guard units — are coming together, according to announcements made around this week’s release of the fiscal 2014 budget request.
France announced qualification of the Tiger EC665 Tiger multirole helicopter in the HAD support and attack configuration on April 11, paving the way for delivery of the first four HAD-standard, rotary-wing aircraft to the French army in late April. France has already received 40 Eurocopter-built Tigers in the standard HAP support and protection configuration, equipped with Mistral air-to-air missiles, a 30mm cannon and 68mm rockets.
LONDON — Bell Helicopter says it has taken lessons learned from the V-22 Osprey and is incorporating them into the third-generation tiltrotor it is offering for the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift requirement.
WARSAW — Over the next decade Warsaw expects to spend nearly $50 billion to strengthen its military through a sweeping modernization effort that includes air and missile defense, new helicopters, unmanned reconnaissance systems, air transport, anti-tank missiles and trainer aircraft, among other initiatives.
SEOUL — South Korea has chosen the Raytheon RACR fighter radar as the centerpiece of the upgrade of the bulk of its fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16s. Subject to U.S. government approval, Raytheon will supply 134 Raytheon Advance Combat Radar (RACR) sets to South Korea, the company says. BAE Systems is modernizing the same number of South Korean F-16s. Until now, the main unresolved issue in the modernization program was the selection of radar.
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 like EADS, Thales and Safran is often at odds with its role representing French taxpayers. And in a couple of cases, according to the audit, the government has shown itself to be incompetent.
LONDON — Helicopter operator Bristow Group is making long-term plans to extend its U.K. Search and Rescue contract beyond its initial multiyear length. The Houston-based company signed a £1.6 billion ($2.46 billion) deal with the U.K. Department for Transport to provide a search-and-rescue helicopter service from 10 U.K. bases for up to 12 years beginning in 2016. But company officials say they are looking beyond the basic contract and believe they may be able to extend the deal.
SINGAPORE — Some European aerospace companies are shifting their focus and people to markets where there are more growth opportunities, notably the Asia-Pacific region. Saab recently established an Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Bangkok headed by Dan-Åke Enstedt, who was previously president of Saab North America. “I was covering the U.S. and Canada. It is the same concept. What we did there, we are trying to do in Asia and the rest of the world,” Enstedt says.
SPOOK FUNDING: The baseline funding request for fiscal 2014 for the National Intelligence Program is $48.2 billion, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says. An undisclosed additional amount will be requested as part of the supplemental, off-book budget request coming for warfighting. Altogether, $53.9 billion was appropriated for 2013, and $52.6 billion was requested for 2013, according to the last official announcements. Meanwhile, the baseline Military Intelligence Program budget request is $14.6 billion, the Pentagon says.
The U.S. Air Force is still reviewing an option to cut as many as five Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighters from its current fiscal 2013 plan to procure 19 aircraft, and expects to have to do the same for next fiscal year if no new appropriations are enacted by the time that year begins Oct. 1.
THE PENTAGON — While proposed U.S. Navy aircraft procurement funding is set to hold steady in fiscal 2014, the service’s aircraft depot maintenance accounts are slated to take a nosedive and maintenance backlogs will balloon. Navy spending for aircraft procurement has remained relatively flat—$17.6 billion in fiscal 2012, $17.1 billion in fiscal 2013 and $17.9 billion proposed for fiscal 2014—according to the service’s proposed fiscal 2014 spending proposal.
THE PENTAGON — The Obama administration’s proposed funding level for the U.S. Navy’s major surface-fleet procurement drops a bit for the upcoming fiscal year. Funding levels are sinking for destroyers, holding steady for Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) and rising for the new proposed afloat forward staging base.
Click here to view the pdf NASA 2014 Budget Request (Dollars in millions) NASA 2014 Budget Request (Dollars in millions) Division Subdivision FY2012 FY2013 FY2014Request FY2
COLORADO SPRINGS — 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.
Partisan divides may be blocking Washington from an agreement on how to reduce the deficit, but interest groups from all over the political spectrum are united in panning President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget request for failing to acknowledge sequestration.
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 is re-evaluating 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.
THE PENTAGON — The U.S. Army says network-centric technology is its biggest “investment priority,” but it still comes in behind combat vehicle development among research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) projects in the service’s fiscal 2014 budget request unveiled April 10 at the Pentagon.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is nearly finished negotiating the details of its first two contracts providing launch services to the U.S. Air Force. Talks for its Falcon 9 v1.1 launch of NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr) satellite and a Falcon Heavy flight lofting the Air Force’s Space Test Program (STP-2) satellite should be wrapped up by the end of the month, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell tells Aviation Week. Dscovr is slated to boost in November 2014, with STP-2 to follow in September 2015.
