The U.K. Ministry of Defense has launched a tender to provide a search-and-rescue helicopter capability for its remote Falkland Islands outpost. The 10-year contract, worth between £100-150 million ($160-230 million), would also potentially provide what the ministry calls “support helicopter services” for the U.K. garrison stationed on the islands since the end of the Falklands War in 1982.
Boeing controllers in California are operating the newest Wideband Global Satcom (WGS-6) military communications satellite following its launch on a Delta IV Aug. 7.
The future of Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) naval ship composites yard in Gulfport, Miss., is now in limbo with the U.S. Navy’s decision to use a steel deckhouse for the next Zumwalt destroyer. At the same time, HII is considering commercial shipbuilding work to keep open its Avondale yard in Louisiana, but only with the right partner to mitigate risks.
LONDON — Eurocopter’s Brazilian subsidiary Helibras has received permission to produce the Eurocopter EC225 helicopter domestically. Currently the EC225 is only built in France, but production of the EC225 in Brazil would pave the way for EC225s to support Brazil’s rapidly expanding oil and gas industry.
While leading U.S. Navy shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries CEO Michael Petters warns against cutting the national aircraft carrier force, he says it would be better to do so by building new advanced carriers like the CVN-78 Ford Class while foregoing midlife refuelings of existing ships and retiring those vessels. “This is a debate that’s always going on,” Petters told Wall Street investment analysts during an Aug. 7 conference call to discuss quarterly financial results.
The United Nations has tapped Selex ES to fly its Falco UAV to support peacekeeping duties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under a three-year, €10 million ($13 million) contract. The aircraft will be provided by Selex ES in the coming weeks, according to U.N. officials. The aircraft will be operated by Selex contractors under the control and security of the U.N., with all data from the platform provided exclusively to the peacekeeping mission. The contract has an option to be extended another three years.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems has successfully completed the comprehensive risk reduction program for the U.S. Navy’s Knifefish surface mine countermeasure unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) program. Designed to discover any potential systems defect early on in the program’s development phase, the configuration item test (CIT) successfully verified key components within the UUV system, including the hardware architecture and critical areas of hardware and software integration, the company says.
Japan Airlines’ retirement of its 747 fleet, once the world’s largest, has prompted the Japanese government to bring forward its plan to replace the two 747-400s it uses as official transports. Additional aircraft will be considered for short and medium services, for which the Mitsubishi Aircraft MRJ regional jet is expected be a candidate—and perhaps the reason for the requirement.
Eurofighter Typhoon has now achieved more than 200,000 flying hours since the entry-into-service of its worldwide fleet. Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH confirmed the milestone today adding that, with 719 aircraft on contract, 571 aircraft ordered and 378 aircraft delivered, the programme has “never looked stronger”.
Lockheed Martin expects to lease its S301 Special Operations Forces dry combat submersible by the end of September, says Stephen Froelich, director and general manager of mission and unmanned systems. “We are just getting done classifying that for [the] military to use it,” he says.” We expect to be under lease by the end of September. They are contracting for 18 months initially, but could go longer.” “Lockheed can make modifications to the submarine as needed and to maintain classification,” he says.
The U.S. Navy continued to hone its at-sea surface-to-air missile skills with a set of special exercises earlier this month. The guided-missile cruiser CG-58 USS Philippine Sea and the DDG-103 USS Truxtun simultaneously launched Navy Standard Missile-2s (SM-2s) while DDG-80 USS Roosevelt launched shortly afterward during the so-called Missilx exercise.
Deactivating the USS Miami Los Angeles-class attack submarine could cause ripples — some good and others challenging — through the rest of the U.S. Navy’s sub fleet force structure. In announcing the Navy’s decision to forego fixing the Miami — whose innards were recently scorched in an arsonist-set fire — Rear Adm. Rick Breckenridge, director of Undersea Warfare, acknowledged in an Aug. 7 media briefing that the service hopes to shift some of the money slated for Miami repair work to other subs.
An aerostat-based cruise-missile defense system has now demonstrated compatibility with the U.S. services’ main land-, sea- and air-launched anti-aircraft weapons. The Raytheon-developed Joint Land Attack Cruise-Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (Jlens) passed targeting data to a U.S. Air Force Boeing F-15E via Link 16, enabling the fighter to intercept a surrogate anti-ship cruise missile with an AIM-120C7 advanced medium-range air-to-air missile.
Lockheed Martin plans to begin flexible-wing control flights of the X-56A experimental unmanned aircraft after initial “stiff-wing” flights to validate the vehicle’s performance. The 28-ft.-span, 480-lb., twinjet-powered X-56A made its 14-min. first flight from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, Calif., on July 26 (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 2). The aircraft is designed to demonstrate active flutter-suppression and gust-load alleviation to enable longer, lighter, lower-drag wings for transport and unmanned aircraft.
The U.S. Air Force will take a “sober look at technology” in proceeding with the congressionally mandated 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and “everything is on the table” in terms of trades among programs and capabilities, the senior officer in charge of the effort says.
The Russian government has signed a 12.6 billion ruble ($380 million) deal to purchase 40 Mi-8AMTSh armed transport helicopters from Russian Helicopters for the country’s army aviation organization. Reports suggest the deal was signed on Aug. 3 by Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov and Russian Helicopters CEO Dmitry Petrov, with deliveries due to begin next year.
BEIJING — Attempting to acquire 60 highly capable fighters within a limited budget, South Korea is calling for a further and final round of bids for the F-X Phase 3. The program will be reconsidered if all three bidders again exceed the 8.3 trillion won ($7.2 billion) budget, as they did in their initial offers, local media report.
Two Lockheed Martin F-35Bs are heading to the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship for the second round of developmental testing (DT) trials associated with the aircraft’s unique ability to conduct vertical landings and short takeoffs in support of the U.S. Marine Corps. The trials are slated to take three weeks and will begin Aug. 12 on the Wasp, according to a defense official. In addition to the two primary aircraft assigned to the testing, one will serve as a backup.
Recent technological and programmatic improvements have greatly expanded China’s ability to potentially deploy ballistic missiles on a regional and global basis — including submarine-launched missiles capable of hitting mainland U.S. targets, a recent U.S. government report says.
American air power continues to dominate joint counterterrorism operations against Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which capitalized on 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that culminated in the internationally supported transfer of power from longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh to his deputy Abd Rabu Mansur Hadi in February 2012.
A Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet equipped with prototype conformal fuel tanks (CFTs) made its first flight from St. Louis on Aug. 5. Boeing did not announce the event officially, but it was observed by a local photographer. The aircraft, a late production version, will be used for a series of tests this month to validate the aerodynamics and radar cross-section of the aircraft with the CFTs and the centerline weapons pod, both proposed for the Advanced Super Hornet configuration of the aircraft.
Sailors and Marines aboard amphibious assault ship LHD-4 USS Boxer are slated to become the first West Coast crew to deploy with the MV-22 Osprey this fall. Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 166 is embarked on Boxer as a part of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), and will deploy with 12 Ospreys, the U.S. Navy says. The Osprey is intended to replace the CH-46E Sea Knight, the platform the Marine Corps has used since the Vietnam War. The Osprey can carry more combat troops and has a farther flight range than the Sea Knight.
Scientists launched small UAVs from a research vessel during a July 13-18 experiment to help boost the Navy’s radar and communications performance at sea. Sailing off Virginia Beach, Va., the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) research vessel Knorr explored ocean and atmospheric weather variations that can change the angle that radar and radio waves bend, making it more difficult for ships to remain undetected and hindering their ability to communicate or locate adversaries, Navy officials say.
