X-BAND PLANS: Washington and Tokyo continue discussing the possibility of deploying another powerful X-band radar in Japan to protect the U.S. and allies against North Korean threats, according to Frank Rose, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State for space and defense policy. Besides U.S. assets in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has several Aegis-class ships that have a missile defense capability, and also has deployed the Patriot air missile defense system.
The U.S. Coast Guard would still like to add a small UAV like the ScanEagle to its aviation quiver, but the service says it can’t afford to fund such a program by itself, says Adm. Bob Papp, Coast Guard commandant. “We are looking at the ScanEagle,” Papp said Feb. 27 following his state of the Coast Guard speech, noting the service is doing its second deployment with the UAV this summer.
Would-be F-35 customers are still trying to determine if they can afford to operate the new fighter for the long term as a debate over the cost per flying hour for the stealthy aircraft continues between the Pentagon and manufacturer Lockheed Martin. And even as stakeholders try to sort out the ownership price for the aircraft, a grounding of the entire test fleet owing to an engine issue threatens to again delay its in-service date and increase the already bloated price tag to develop the aircraft.
LONDON — The air arms of Australia and Saudi Arabia have formally inducted their new Airbus A330 tanker aircraft into service. Australia announced it had achieved initial operating capability for the aircraft — known in Australia as the KC-30A — on Feb. 26 during the Australian International Airshow at Avalon.
Sierra Nevada, with team member Embraer, has once again defeated Beechcraft for the U.S. Air Force’s Light Air Support aircraft contract for the fledgling Afghan defense forces. The winning team, offering a variant of Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano, originally beat out Beechcraft’s AT-6 proposal in December 2011. But the Air Force was quickly forced to stop work on the contract after Beechcraft protested the source selection. Findings of government auditors prompted the Air Force to redo the competition, leading to the Feb. 27 announcement.
It was no secret that across-the-board budget cuts would reduce purchases of major defense equipment and slow deliveries, but testimony delivered to a House panel dealing with the military’s air and ground forces lays out a string of specific programmatic effects due to sequestration and continued funding under fiscal 2012 levels.
BURNING FUNDS: The Boeing KC-46 aerial refueling tanker program still has not figured out whether the significant use of management-reserve funds will affect future milestone successes, congressional auditors warn. “The contractor has already allocated about 80% of the management reserves budget, primarily for identified, yet unresolved, development risks, with the bulk of work — about five years — remaining,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported Feb. 27. “GAO maintains that significant use of these funds early in a program may indicate problems.”
Given the financial constraints, the U.S. should shy away from establishing permanent infrastructure in Arctic climes and instead focus on using temporary platforms like the U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter, says Adm. Bob Papp, Coast Guard commandant. “It would not be wise to invest in a permanent infrastructure on the [Alaskan] North Slope,” Papp said Feb. 27 following his State of the Coast Guard speech.
LITTLE CREEK, Va. — As the U.S. Navy continues its more rigorous fleet reviews as part of required vessel inspections by Board of Inspection and Survey (Insurv) teams, cyber readiness is emerging as the major ongoing concern. “Ships can undergo cycles of readiness,” says Rear Adm. Robert Wray, board president and the top Navy Insurv officer. “But we always have to be ready in the cyber realm. We can never afford to be ‘unready’ there.”
AVALON, Australia — If the Pentagon is given flexibility in apportioning the “sequestration” budget cuts slated to start in March, the U.S. Air Force’s F-35 program manager, Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, says he will reduce production numbers and preserve flight testing activities. Last week, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said up to three of 22 Air Force F-35As could be sliced from the fiscal 2013 buy if sequestration takes effect March 1, as scheduled.
NEW DELHI — India’s parliament plans to investigate allegations of bribery in the purchase of AgustaWestland AW101 helicopters, on top of the ongoing defense ministry-initiated probe into the deal. News of the probe comes as the U.K.-based subsidiary of Finmeccanica is demanding New Delhi furnish solid proof that it bribed officials to win the 12-aircraft, $750 million deal originally signed in 2010. India has suspended all payments and threatened to cancel the purchase altogether if the charges of bribery to middlemen both in India and abroad are proven.
The potential new designs for the U.S. Navy’s LPD-17 San Antonio-class amphibious dock ships detailed recently by Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) may have come at a fortuitous time, at least on the international scene. As the production line looks to ramp down for the ships, HII unit Ingalls Shipbuilding is eyeing other possible variants for the ship that could perform missions including ballistic missile defense (BMD), hospital work or sub tending.
ANOTHER SOLUTION: Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is offering yet another bill to replace impending reductions to the federal budget that would reduce defense spending by $167 billion between 2014 and 2021. It would reduce total discretionary spending by $320 billion over the same time frame.
EADS CEO Tom Enders has given up the once important target of balancing civil and defense revenues. “Maybe it is not a bad time to have a smaller rather than larger defense business,” he said at the EADS annual press conference Feb. 27 in Berlin. The plan to increase defense exposure faltered when the merger with BAE Systems collapsed last year and important potential military contracts, such as the U.S. Air Force tanker program, were lost.
Using a special congressional provision granted last September, the U.S. Navy awarded an estimated $40 million contract modification Feb. 27 to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) for additional advance planning efforts to prepare for the Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH) of the CVN-72 USS Abraham Lincoln carrier and its reactor plants. Funds being used for this extension are from an Above Threshold Reprogramming (ATR) approved by Congress, a Navy official says.
BERLIN — EADS defense division Cassidian has seen its earnings fall nearly 60% in 2012 in the face of the downturn in defense spending. While Cassidian’s declines were offset by a successful year for the Airbus Commercial and Military businesses, its earnings fell to €142 million ($185 million) in 2012, compared to €331 million in 2011. Revenues also dipped slightly by 1% to €5.74 billion, although the company’s order intake rose to €5 billion in 2012 compared to €4.2 billion in 2011, according to EADS’ annual results, revealed in Berlin Feb. 27.
House Republicans are moving forward with a plan to pass a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown at the end of March that assumes across-the-board budget cuts will be in effect. The continuing resolution would fund the government at fiscal 2012 levels, except for the Pentagon, military construction and veterans affairs. It would fund the military using a version of the fiscal 2013 defense spending bill passed by the House last year.
ABU DHABI — Ankara has chosen Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) to lead the development of the country’s first truly indigenous helicopter. An executive committee of senior government officials, including Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, gave the go-ahead for the project in late 2012. According to Yilmaz Guldogan, VP of strategy and technology management at TAI, a deal should be signed in the second half of this year, with the aircraft’s development expected to take between four and five years.
Amid continuing uncertainty over delays to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Australian government has opened up a long-anticipated study with the U.S. into the “potential purchase” of 24 additional Boeing F/A-18E/F aircraft.
FALSE CLAIMS: Federal investigators and prosecutors could be on the lookout for an increase in dubious claims by government contractors now that federal budgets appear to be headed downward. That is because contractors could become anxious to land new awards and “may feel the need to stretch their claims,” potentially violating the False Claims Act, according to David Laufman, formerly associate general counsel to the U.S. Special Investigator General for Iraq reconstruction, who spoke online during an Ethisphere Symposium about procurement compliance Feb. 26.
