U.S. AIR FORCE Northrop Grumman Technical Services Inc., Hill Air Force Base, Utah, (F42610-98-C-0001, P03801) is being awarded a $12,655,091 contract modification contract for a Dual Source program. The contract modification is to refurbish fuses under the ICBM prime integration contract. The location of the performance is Hill Air Force Base, Utah and King of Prussia, Pa. Work is expected to be completed by June 30, 2014. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2013. The contracting activity is AFNWC/PZBE, Hill Air Force Base, Utah.
LONDON — Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) says it has completed development of the Surion Korean Utility Helicopter (KUH-1) and that the type is now ready to start replacing older helicopter models in South Korean army service.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom has arrived in Guam — the farthest western U.S. territory — to start the ship’s first Pacific deployment, while a probe is still underway to determine why the vessel’s service diesel generators (SSDGs) experienced three brief failures during the transit.
MELBOURNE, Australia — BAE Systems Australia says it is nearing completion of an autonomous navigation, guidance and control package that would allow precise localization of an unmanned aircraft without emissions, satellite signals or even preparatory mapping. The system also is intended to flexibly and autonomously guide the aircraft through its mission rather than forcing it to follow a line of waypoints, to reorder mission priorities as opportunities arise and to land the aircraft without external help.
BUDGET BRIEF: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will deliver his first major address on the Pentagon’s strategic and budgetary challenges at the National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington on Wednesday, April 3. The event will be streamed live at http://www.defense.gov. The speech is expected to preview in broad strokes the strategy behind the department’s fiscal 2014 budget request, which is expected to be released April 10 along with the rest of the U.S. government’s proposed budget.
U.S. AIR FORCE Northrop Grumman Corp., Aerospace Systems, San Diego, Calif., (FA8528-12-C-0003-PZ0001) is being awarded a $433,518,021 (estimated) cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for contractor logistics support for the RQ-4 Global Hawk fielded weapon system. The location of the performance is San Diego, Calif. Work is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2014. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2013. The contracting activity is AFLCMC/WIKBA, Robins Air Force Base, Ga. U.S. NAVY
LANGKAWI, Malaysia — Indonesian Aerospace (IAe) is aiming to start manufacturing C295s in September 2014 and is speaking to Airbus Military about jointly marketing the CN235 and ensuring commonality. Airbus Military in Spain and IAe in Bandung both assemble CN235s, but there are some differences between the products and the two companies have had a tendency to compete against one another for CN235 sales.
Northrop Grumman’s AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) successfully detected multiple rocket launches during company-funded testing that the firm says demonstrates the radar’s ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability. The G/ATOR system detected multiple rockets launched by NASA from its Wallops Island, Va., test site, including three different rocket types. Data collected from the testing will be used to verify potential future theater ballistic missile algorithms and ballistic missile defense capabilities.
LONDON — State-owned consortium Russian Helicopters sold nearly 300 helicopters during 2012 and increased revenues by 21% to 125 billion rubles ($4 billion). The Moscow-based company delivered 290 aircraft, up from 262 during 2011. Nine models of rotorcraft were sold to operators from 19 nations. The company now has a backlog of 817 helicopters worth nearly 360 billion rubles ($11.5 billion).
GRIPEN DEAL: Saab and Swedish defense procurement agency FMV have signed a SEK 10.7 billion ($1.65 billion) contract for development work on the next-generation Gripen fighter. The contract follows on from a smaller SEK 2.5 billion deal contract in February. The development order, signed on March 22, accounts for operations on the Gripen E program from 2015-2023.
NEW DELHI — India’s Bharat Electronics (BEL) will manufacture sub-assemblies for the Boeing Super Hornet fighter. “Under a follow-on contract of 2011, BEL will deliver components for our F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and P-8I maritime reconnaissance aircraft,” says Dennis Swanson, vice president of international business development for Boeing Defense, Space & Security in India.
The Pentagon’s 2012 portfolio of 86 major defense acquisition programs is estimated to cost a total of $1.6 trillion, reflecting decreases in both size and cost compared to the 2011 portfolio, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says.
Manfred Bischoff, who heads Daimler's supervisory board, first told me about 25 years ago that the French government should abandon its stake in Aerospatiale Matra, the predecessor of EADS aerospace/defense group's French arm. Bischoff was then chief financial officer of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and, like most of his German colleagues, firmly believed the time was right to give the private sector some long-overdue freedom and suppress cumbersome political interference. Although he was convincing, he could not persuade his French counterparts to act accordingly.
Lawmakers came up with a budget penalty bad enough to prompt themselves to deal with taxes and entitlements. Until now, the consequences of the $85 billion budget penalty known as sequestration were largely an academic exercise, but the looming closure of FAA contract towers is already making that tangible (see p. 18).
A new NASA mission to bring an asteroid closer to Earth in time to meet President Obama's goal of landing humans on one by 2025 would do more than bring the mountain to Mohammed. It also would add relevance to some of lawmakers' favorite NASA programs—the Orion crew vehicle, heavy-lift Space Launch System and commercial human spacecraft. NASA's fiscal 2014 budget request will include $100 million for the mission to find a small asteroid, capture it with a robotic spacecraft and bring it into range of human explorers somewhere in the vicinity of the Moon.
