ARMS TRADE: The Obama administration expects to sign the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, according to Thomas Countryman, assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, although the U.S. may not be among the first countries to do so when the treaty opens for signatures in New York on June 3. “I do expect that we will sign it in the very near future,” he told an Atlantic Council audience May 15. Countryman is the U.S. diplomat who led a diverse delegation in negotiating the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly passed April 2.
SINGAPORE — The U.S. government’s decision to deploy more of its forces to Asia, particularly to areas in and around the South China Sea, may prove to be a boon for the U.S. defense industry. Major U.S. defense companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin are hoping to derive more international sales to offset the decline in U.S. defense spending, and the U.S. Navy is already lobbying countries in Asia to ensure that their maritime vessels and equipment are interoperable with the U.S. Navy’s.
With first flight of the U.S. Navy’s Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton imminent, Australia has announced it will formally request cost, capability and availability information on the high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft. The potential boost comes as Northrop struggles to keep its RQ-4B Global Hawk program alive, with the U.S. Air Force cutting production and Germany announcing it will not procure Euro Hawk variants.
In April, the FAA and other U.S. government agencies completed the third and final operational field test in a two-year, $8 million program to study the physical and electromagnetic interference between radar systems and wind turbine farms, and to identify mitigation techniques to address this issue.
FURLOUGHS LOOM: The Pentagon is preparing its civilian workforce for up to 11 days of furloughs this year, starting the week of July 8, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says in a May 14 memo. Across-the-board budget cuts aimed at reducing the federal deficit drove the furloughs. Hagel says the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal 2013 was slashed by $37 billion, $20 billion of which hit personnel-heavy operations and maintenance accounts.
SINGAPORE — Canada’s Viking Air and local partner Field Aviation are still seeking a launch customer for a modernized version of the Buffalo tactical transporter. Field Aviation’s non-executive director, Joar Gronlund, tells Aviation Week on the sidelines of the Imdex Asia defense show here that although the platform dates back to the 1960s, the Buffalo is still a highly capable aircraft that can effectively compete in the international marketplace for sales against the Alenia C27J.
MOSCOW — Russian Helicopters is planning to resume the development of the re-engined Mil Mi-34S1 light helicopter. The Mi-34S1 is envisioned as an improved version of 1,450-kg (3,200-lb.) Mi-34 training and sport rotorcraft, which suspended production in the early 2000s. This program initially called for replacement of the outdated 325-hp M14V26V piston engine with the 365-hp M9FV variant and installation of new avionics and an improved interior.
The complexity of software still to be integrated and the potential effect of sequestration cuts on development have created uncertainty over whether the Lockheed Martin F-35 will have full combat capability when it formally enters service with the U.S. Air Force and Navy. The U.S. Marine Corps has already said it plans to declare initial operational capability (IOC) with its F-35B in late 2015, before development is complete, with an interim software standard known as Block 2B that will provide an initial combat capability.
GPS LAUNCH: The U.S. Air Force used an Atlas V 401 rocket to launch another Global Positioning System timing and navigation satellite into medium Earth orbit on May 15, replenishing the constellation of 24 spacecraft. Liftoff of the 3,600-lb. spacecraft from Cape Canaveral came at the opening of its launch window at 5:38 p.m. EDT. The launch vehicle’s Centaur upper stage ignited for the first of two burns — planned to be bounded by a 3-hr. coast phase — at 5:42 p.m. EDT, following burnout and staging of the Atlas common core booster.
An open-source data mining effort to gather intelligence and track risks could gain steam in the commercial world, according to a Lockheed Martin engineer. Lockheed Martin’s Web Information Spread Data Operations Module (Wisdom) program focuses primarily on security-based risk assessment for the government, says Mike Baylor, engineering manager with Lockheed’s Information Systems & Global Solutions.
NEW DELHI — The Indian navy received the first of eight Boeing P-8I maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft on May 15. “The induction of the P-8I aircraft into the navy will greatly enhance India’s maritime surveillance capability in the Indian Ocean region,” an Indian navy spokesman said after the aircraft, a variant of the U.S. Navy’s P-8A Poseidon, landed at INS Rajali, a naval base at Arakonam near the southern city of Chennai.
SAAB Acquisition: Swedish defense and security company Saab has purchased Teknikinformation i Krokom AB to strengthen its technical publication and training tools product line. Saab’s Support and Services division has signed an agreement to buy the company, also known as Tikab, announcing the decision on May 14. Saab says it can offer a “more complete range of technical services,” further strengthening the company’s competitiveness as a provider of support solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
LONDON — EADS Cassidian says the signals intelligence system developed for the German Euro Hawk program could be repackaged for use on another platform. The Integrated Signals Intelligence System (ISIS) was developed by Cassidian for installation onto the Euro Hawk, a version of the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk that the German government planned to use as the country’s next-generation airborne intelligence platform.
SINGAPORE — As the U.S. gets ready to move 10 more ships to the Asia-Pacific region as part of its plan to shift more of its forces to this part of the world, the Navy is looking at getting additional capability from those ships — as well as aircraft and related assets — says Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. For example, the pivot includes more amphibious ships and resources, Greenert said during a May 14 media briefing aboard the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1), the USS Freedom, one of the linchpin vessels for the Pacific pivot.
TURIN, Italy — The CEO of Alenia Aermacchi says Italy is moving ahead aggressively with plans to develop a new, armed, medium-altitude/long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft to replace Italy’s fleet of MQ-1s, which are slated to finish service at the end of the decade. This reinforces comments made last week by Lt. Gen. Claudio Debertolis, secretary general of defense and national armaments director for Italy, to Aviation Week, saying that Rome was in talks with potential partners on a “black program” for an armed UAV (Aerospace DAILY, May 10).
LONDON — The German government is set to face a capability gap in its airborne intelligence gathering when it exits the billion-dollar Euro Hawk program. The German defense ministry is expected to announce to the defense committee of the German government on May 15 that it plans to exit the program over fears that the unmanned Euro Hawk aircraft — a variant of the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk — would not be certified to fly in European airspace, press reports have suggested.
HAWK WATCHING: Two lawmakers are appealing to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to shake loose U.S. Air Force funding for three Global Hawk Block 30 aircraft. Last year the Air Force sought to block additional funding for the high-altitude UAV made by Northrop Grumman. Congress directed the Air Force to purchase three more aircraft, but during a hearing last week, Air Force leaders said they are appealing that law. That has Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a senior member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, and Rep.
TURIN, Italy — The Neuron combat unmanned aircraft demonstrator is being tested for its stealthy characteristics at a facility in France before restarting flight testing, according to Alenia Aermacchi officials.
LONDON — Air traffic controllers have guided a UAV through U.K. airspace for the first time as part of the Astraea project. The Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation & Assessment (Astraea) program was launched in 2006 to look at how unmanned aircraft could be integrated into airspace shared with other air traffic.
SINGAPORE — Top Chinese officials have signaled that they support “an early adoption of a code of conduct for the South China Sea,” Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said May 14 during his kickoff speech here at the International Maritime and Defense Exhibition (Imdex) Asia 2013. Local defense ministers, he says, met earlier this month in Brunei to discuss, among other things, “measures to reduce tensions in the South China Sea, including keeping the channels of communication open so as to avoid escalation and miscalculation.”
LONDON — U.K.-based general aviation specialist Patriot Aerospace has purchased British International Helicopters (BIH). The deal, announced May 13, will make Patriot the U.K.'s largest domestically owned helicopter operator. Terms of the agreement were not revealed, although according to Patriot, Newquay-based BIH will become an integrated part of Patriot Group, which also includes Veritair and London Helicopter Centers.
CYBER CRACKDOWN: A bipartisan group of senior defense hawks in the U.S. Senate is pushing a bill to try to fight foreign cyberespionage of U.S. commercial data and knowledge. The Deter Cyber Theft Act of 2013 would require the director of national intelligence to develop watch lists of foreign countries, their state-run entities and individuals who engage in economic or industrial espionage in cyberspace for U.S. trade secrets or proprietary information.
