Sky Rider, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) unit of Israel's artillery corps, is enhancing performance of its Skylark I-LE platform with improved takeoff, flight and imaging capabilities, including the ability to transfer aerial footage directly to a battalion. The system comprises a new version of Skylark, which is produced by Elbit Systems, and a new network operating system called Version 10. “The new version of the UAV will be substantially better,” says the Sky Rider commander, Lt. Col. Uri Gonen.
North Korea said last week it would conduct its third nuclear test and continue long-range missile trials designed to reach the U.S. just as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was gearing up for a long-awaited return to flight of the system designed to protect the U.S. homeland from such an attack. The vow came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a Washington-backed set of sanctions for Pyongyang in response to its December rocket launch.
When safety issues arise with products used by millions of Americans, Congress is often quick to exercise its oversight role. But for the most part, lawmakers are willing to let the FAA and Boeing take time to discover just what caused the 787 battery fires that have grounded the fledgling fleet (see page 30). Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee who plans to retire in 2014, is one exception. He had a brief outburst last week pressing for congressional inquiry into the matter.
NASA's loss is Boeing's gain, as former space shuttle program manager John Shannon retires to head up the company's International Space Station program. “It is really great to be back in an operational program again,” Shannon says. Not so great for his space-agency bosses, who continue to see rising stars bail out while Congress and the White House squabble over NASA's future.
Seasons greetings from Iceland came early in 2012, carried aloft by seven jolly men in a newly upgraded Bombardier Dash 8 Q300. The aircraft, a maritime surveillance platform belonging to the Icelandic Coast Guard, flew for 8 hr. and 1,835 nm from Reykjavik to Moncton on Dec. 18 via a fuel stop in Goose Bay, Labrador. The goodwill mission aimed to help Toronto-based Field Aviation, the aircraft modification company that installed a new flight deck on TF-SIF, the Q300's Icelandic registration, in 2011.
As it continues to cement its place as an “American” gas turbine engine manufacturer, Rolls-Royce is enlarging its advanced manufacturing capacity in Virginia while tapping automation and evolved machine tooling at its industrial base here in Indianapolis.
As the Boeing 787 fleet remains grounded due to safety issues with its lithium-ion batteries, the Joint Strike Fighter program office is not saying whether the issue will prompt any review of the F-35's electrical system, which incorporates a lithium-ion battery that is larger and higher-voltage than the 787's and has a once-per-sortie charge/discharge cycle. Made by a U.S. subsidiary of France's Saft, the JSF battery is the only onboard means of starting the fighter's integrated power pack, which starts the engine.
Rome was not built in a day. So why should anyone expect Lockheed Martin, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) project office, the U.S. Air Force and Navy to be able to agree on a date by which the money spent so far might actually translate into a tested product usable for national defense? Is that too much to ask, even though the program has been on contract for 11 years and has consumed $50 billion or so?
India's first C-17 has entered flight acceptance testing by the U.S. Air Force at Edwards AFB, Calif., as part of a fast-track foreign military sales (FMS) program that will see four other deliveries to India's Hindon Air Force Station near New Delhi this year.
The U.S. Navy can keep a competitive edge between contractors—even in programs ruled by duopolies—with the right kind of negotiations, says Secretary Ray Mabus. During a Jan. 17 keynote address at the 2013 Surface Navy Association National Symposium, Mabus outlined how the Navy was able to whittle away at pricing on the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer restart, even though both of those efforts are dominated by two contractor teams.
PARIS — Eurocopter has begun design work on a new helicopter that will incorporate the high-speed technology used in its X3 demonstrator. CEO Lutz Bertling told journalists at the company’s annual press conference in Paris Jan. 24 that the first designs are now on the drawing board, but he would not offer a timeline for when or in what form the hybrid rotorcraft would appear. “This concept is not about high speed, but high productivity and it delivers additional productivity to the operator,” he said.
As the Pentagon prepares for across-the-board cuts to government spending, the competition for scarcer dollars is already beginning. A union representing 270,000 Pentagon civilians worries that the Pentagon could wind up converting civilian jobs to contract ones as the civilian workforce shrinks but the workload remains. Last year, the Pentagon issued guidance against that practice, known as direct conversions, and the head of the American Federation of Government Employees has asked the Pentagon to repeat the message.
Lockheed Martin executives are expecting to finalize negotiations for multibillion-dollar contracts with the Pentagon for the next two lots of F-35s in the first half of 2013, after the last two thorny sets of production discussions each took a year or more to close.
The U.S. Air Force is studying how to gain better insight into the true cost of weapon systems produced year over year, with an eye toward reducing “windfall profit” for companies at the tail end of a production cycle, says Lt. Gen. C.R. Davis, The ultimate goal is to allow the government to share in the benefits when production processes and personnel become most efficient in building a weapon system and prices tend to substantially drop.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) plans to show that a robotic vehicle can remove the antenna from a retired spacecraft in graveyard orbit, and attach systems to it to rebuild a functioning geostationary communications satellite, in an orbital demonstration planned for 2016.
The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (Speea) has pushed back a vote on a new four-year contact with Boeing until Feb. 18 at the earliest, about two weeks later than originally planned. The 10-member Speea negotiating panel, however, still is expected to recommend a “no” vote on the contract and ask its 22,900 engineer and technical members at Boeing Commercial Airplanes factories in California, Oregon, Utah and Washington to authorize a strike.
