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.
U.S. MH-60R Seahawk helicopters equipped the AN/AQS-22 Airborne Low-Frequency Sonar (ALFS) and MK-54 lightweight torpedoes are proving to be quite a lethal anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission package, according to the service and its contractors. Over the past two years, service leaders have been talking up the ASW potential of the MH-60R, or “Romeo,” especially with the advancements in sensor and torpedo technology providing an efficient end-to-end capability.
House Republicans will meet Feb. 27 to discuss the budget, sequestration and a proposal to keep the government running after current legislation providing funding expires on March 27.
HAGEL CONFIRMED: The Senate on Feb. 26 confirmed former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as the next defense secretary, ending a long and controversial nomination process full of questions about his policy positions and financial past. Taking over at the Pentagon will be that much harder, as the military prepares itself for more than $40 billion in cuts to defense spending for fiscal 2013 to take effect March 1.
DESPERATE TIMES: It’s not new, and it’s not likely to go anywhere. Still, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) is proposing a bill that would remove military spending from sequestration and allow the remainder of about $500 billion in budget cuts over 10 years to fall on the rest of the federal government. But the proposal from Forbes — who chairs the House Armed Services sea power and projection forces subcommittee — is merely symbolic.
If sequestration takes place March 1, military furloughs are not expected to begin at that time. Rather, they would start around April 25, according to a proposed Pentagon timeline.
LONDON — BAE Systems is leading the Eurofighter consortium’s push to sell the Typhoon to the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF). RMAF officials are on the hunt for a new multirole combat aircraft (MRCA) to replace the country’s aging Mikoyan MiG-29 fleet. The Typhoon is up against Saab’s Gripen, the Dassault Rafale and Boeing’s Super Hornet. BAE is confident the U.K.’s ties with the country will give it an advantage.
LITTLE CREEK, Va. — While the U.S. Navy ponders canceling or delaying various deployments, repairs and other operations, the service plans to keep pace with the more robust inspection schedule that it recently implemented for a good part of its fleet. In order to do so, says Rear Adm. Robert Wray, president of the Board of Inspection and Survey (Insurv), the service may have to rely more on uniformed inspectors than civilian technicians to scrutinize the ships as well as the systems, equipment and components aboard.
A team of researchers from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has developed a shipping resupply computer program that aims to save the Navy millions of dollars in fuel costs. Called the Replenishment at Sea Planner (RASP), the program creates a schedule that minimizes the distance supply ships have to travel and identifies routes that allow vessels to travel at speeds optimal for fuel conservation, says NPS research associate Anton Rowe of Honolulu, who wrote the detailed code that makes RASP work.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training, Orlando, Fla., is being awarded a $20,560,000 contract modification (FA8621-11-C-6288, P00020) for procurement of one C-130J weapon system trainer device for Air Mobility Command. The location of performance is Marietta, Ga. and Tampa, Fla. Work is expected to be completed by June 30, 2016. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2013. The contracting activity is AFLCMC/WNSK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. NAVY
TEL AVIV — Israel’s defense ministry says it carried out a successful flight test of the Arrow 3 missile interceptor. The test was conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The interceptor was launched into space Feb. 25 at around 6 a.m. local time from a coastal military launching pad in central Israel. The missile flew for more than 6 min., testing Arrow 3’s fly-out capabilities at altitudes well more than 100 km (60 mi.). The test plan did not include an actual intercept, so no target was used.
