BAE Systems and EADS have told the London Stock Exchange that they are in talks over a possible merger that would create the world's largest aerospace and defence company.
TRAINER ACCORD: Israel’s defense ministry has reached a $603 million agreement on a multiyear maintenance and support framework for the M346 jet trainer. TOR Advanced Training, a joint venture of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Elbit Systems, was established by Israel’s two largest defense contractors specifically for this task. Under the agreement, Elbit Systems will establish a logistical support and maintenance infrastructure over the next three years to support the operations at a cost of $110 million.
U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) engineers in Florida are finding that finger skirt design improvements and a composite/aluminum hybrid lift-fan design are feasible for use on U.S. and allied Navy air cushion vehicles (ACV), service officials say. The new technologies are being developed to support the Office of Naval Research (ONR)’s Transformable Craft ‘T-Craft.’
Berlin – Details are expected to emerge this week of a joint venture between EADS and Boeing to capture work for Germany’s next-generation heavy-lift helicopter program. EADS is displaying its joint concept with Boeing , including diagrams of a proposed tandem-rotor design and a full-scale cross section of the proposed cabin for the aircraft. It looks much like an enlarged CH-47 Chinook, built by Boeing . It is likely that Boeing’s contribution to this design would be providing the tandem-rotor technology and dynamics of the aircraft.
The congressional compromise to keep the government running from the end of the fiscal year until next March stipulates that a weather satellite program should remain on schedule and blocks the Air Force from its plan to retire aircraft. The bill supports the Obama administration’s request for $88.5 billion in war funding.
When it comes to survival of the fittest in the most extreme conditions, few military groups can match the reputation of the U.S. Navy Seals. One of the most important tools in a Seal’s survival kit is a handheld GPS device, according to “The U.S. Navy Seal Survival Handbook,” recently released for review. “The GPS is just so convenient,” Don Mann, a former Seal team member, trainer and book co-author, tells Aviation Week. “In many people’s minds, the map and compass [are] obsolete.”
BERLIN – An Airbus Military A330-based Multirole Tanker Transport bound this month for delivery to the United Arab Emirates lost its refueling boom during a checkout flight over Spain. The incident occurred Sept. 10 at about 7:30 p.m. local time. No one on the ground or in the flight crew was injured. An Airbus Military spokesman says the boom separated cleanly at a mechanical joint, leaving minimal damage to the actual aircraft.
RUAG Aviation has sold a Dornier 228NG to an unidentified Asian customer, and plans to deliver the aircraft with a passenger configuration in the second half of next year. This deal, unveiled at the 2012 ILA Berlin air show, brings to six the number of orders RUAG has received for the type since launching production of the upgraded aircraft two years ago. At the end of August, RUAG delivered a Dornier 228NG to Germany’s naval squadron 3 “Graf Zeppelin” in Nordholz.
The leaders of major U.S. defense companies remain largely undecided about whether to issue layoff notices before the Nov. 6 elections because of federal budget cuts that could take place in January. In late June, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote to the nation’s top defense executives asking them how their companies would be impacted by the $1 trillion across-the-board budget reduction scheduled to take place unless Congress changes the current law. Over the summer, his office has been collecting the responses and released them Sept. 10.
As the U.S. Navy invests more resources into the development of its unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), the service is seeking quicker information processing and increasing autonomy, according to a recent Defense Science Board report.
If Iran is bombed to slow its nuclear development program, the actual targets would be a mix of uranium-enrichment and reactor facilities, ballistic missile cantonments and mobile launchers, radar surveillance sites and air bases.
Syria is not in any jeopardy of near-term intervention by NATO, says the organization’s number two official, although he notes that alliance member air forces have restocked their supplies of precision-guided munitions since the conflict in Libya, where shortages became a concern. “There has been a rebuilding process,” says Alex Vershbow, NATO’s deputy secretary general and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia. “Countries took measures to ensure they [will not] run out. There is recognition that we have to be prepared for the next [intervention].”
PARIS — French defense equipment agency DGA has ordered a pair of studies from private industry on developing a successor to the Syracuse 3 military communications satellite system, the results of which are expected to support defense program decisions as the administration of President Francois Hollande updates the country’s defense and security strategy in the coming months.
With another Zumwalt-class destroyer design contract it its pocket, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer program office is steaming ahead with the planned three-ship fleet. The Navy brass is touting Zumwalt program success that contrasts sharply with missed budgets and deadlines that have marked other new-ship programs such as the Littoral Combat Ship or LPD-17-class dock ships.
The U.S. Air Force is starting a key, three-month Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) of the stealthy F-35A at Eglin AFB, Fla., in preparation for the planned — and much awaited — start of formal pilot and maintainer training there early next year.
