Europe faces a tricky balancing act. Even as it tries to end its tendency to field competing missile programs, many of the existing but duplicative systems need to be upgraded to bridge the gap until the new ones are fielded around 2030.
In the troubled world of defense acquisition, the U.S. Navy's Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft shines as a rare example of a program that appears to be broadly staying on both schedule and cost. After a slow start, test and development aircraft are racking up flight hours and the first production aircraft was delivered to NAS Jacksonville, Fla., on March 5, opening the way for the start of fleet training.
Some air forces ponder whether to dedicate a portion of their fleet to counterinsurgency operations, but in Latin America the question is more likely to be how long that mission will remain the primary focus. If there is a major shift in how the region's air forces approach their future defense needs, the impetus is likely to emerge from Brazil or Venezuela.
Pop quiz: What do these have in common—the Army Aerial Common Sensor intelligence aircraft, the V-XX presidential helicopter, the Army/Air Force Joint Cargo Aircraft, the KC-X tanker and the Air Force Light Air Support aircraft?
Power-saving integrated circuits that extend battery life in portable electronics, and are being applied to military radios and investigated for avionics, are the overall winner of Aviation Week's 2012 Innovation Challenge, organized to bring new technologies and processes to the attention of aerospace and defense leaders.
Japan and South Korea are both laying the groundwork for combat aircraft they would field in the 2030s. But, whereas Japanese defense officials are looking at a manned fighter that would leap in technology past the Lockheed Martin F-35, South Korea is working on a strike drone for the 2030s, and a technically less ambitious—but still enormously challenging—home-grown fighter for the 2020s.
The U.S. defense turn to Asia and the air campaign last year in Libya have European militaries pondering how to ensure they have an independent deep-strike capability. But addressing the multifaceted requirements will not be cheap, and the recognition that something needs to be done comes as no country is looking to spend more on defense.
One might expect the job of securing the skies over this summer's Olympics in London to force British air defenses to adopt new or unusual capabilities. But as the recent Taurus Mountain 2 preparatory exercise demonstrated, the task offers U.K. forces a chance to return to core, pre-9/11 competencies after years of using their aircraft in nontraditional roles over Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Innovation and ingenuity in aerospace can take many forms. In the defense sector, it is often borne out of necessity—a need to find a target, to attack it or to reach it more quickly, for example.
The past few years have made it abundantly clear that the mid-term future of airpower is not what a lot of people planned. Large-scale procurement of the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has slipped into the 2020s. The aircraft types in service today—which made their first flights as much as 40 years ago—will be the world's frontline fleets through the rest of this decade, and will make up the majority of fighting forces well into the 2020s.
In 1989, when Paul Graziani and two friends dreamed up what has become Analytical Graphics Inc., they sat in his living room envisioning a work environment where people could do their best work, creating new and bold things at a speed that would keep them happy and challenged. They would create commercial off-the-shelf analysis software for the security and space sectors, driving down cost while bringing the power of current and dynamic software to a non-consumer market.
The severe budget austerity gripping much of Europe does not augur well for air forces looking to achieve leaps in capability for the next decade. It is somewhat a matter of luck, then, that foreign demand is effectively pushing stingy treasuries to provide funding to field upgrades. The list of European militaries likely to benefit from these export-driven enhancements is long and includes the Swedish, French, British and German air forces.
One of the early highlights of the evening, as is the tradition of the Aviation Week Laureate Awards, was the presentation of Tomorrow's Leaders—outstanding young men and women who have chosen career paths in the military and are poised to graduate from premier military academies. All the recipients have an interest in aviation or space. BAE Systems sponsors the award—a fine lensatic compass for each of the four cadets.
In 1967, a 19-year-old university student made a daring escape from Fidel Castro's Cuba, reaching the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The chief of naval operations (CNO) happened to be visiting the base, and he took Pedro L. Rustan back to Florida on his plane. Forty-four years to the day after that escape, Pete Rustan retired as director of the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) Mission Support Directorate. His government service ended with an enviable list of accomplishments that led to significant advances in aviation and space and helped greatly improve U.S.
It is time for another trip back to the future, according to the only airship company in the U.S. But the competition to fulfill a persistent surveillance role is likely to be just as stiff as it was in the past. This next step is being taken by Airship Ventures, which operates Eureka, a 246-ft.-long Zeppelin NT semi-rigid airship, from historic Moffett Field. This an airfield south of San Francisco from which the U.S. Navy briefly sent dirigibles and blimps on patrols of the California coastline in the mid-1930s.
As China starts to put together a modern, integrated air force, which could reach 1,000 fighters by 2020, it is developing the components of a future force of stealthier combat aircraft, new bombers and unmanned, hypersonic and possibly space-based combat platforms. These could emerge as soon as the early 2020s.
BARCELONA, Spain — The German defense ministry is considering an upgrade of the Taurus cruise missile currently operational on its Tornado fighter. A key element of the upgrade would be a data link to allow the missile to provide battle damage information, and possibly inflight retargeting, also providing an anti-ship capability to the weapon. The full scope of the upgrade package has not been set, however.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Launch of the next hypersonic flight experiment under a U.S.-Australian joint program has been scheduled for May 1, from Kauai, Hawaii, carrying a supersonic-combustion ramjet payload to Mach 8.5 on a two-stage sounding rocket. Stakes are high following the failure of the second X-51A scramjet engine demonstrator flight in June 2011. The hydrocarbon-fueled, free-flying X-51 is expected to fly again in the summer, but the hypersonics research community needs a success.
LONDON — European engine makers MTU and Avio have followed the lead of aircraft makers EADS Cassidian and Alenia Aermacchi in teaming up for potential cooperation in the field of medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) engines.
U.S. Air Force planners expect commercial communications satellites to have an ever-larger role in the operation of remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) as war-on-terror funding dwindles and the U.S. military’s focus shifts to other theaters, including Africa, Latin America and the U.S. border regions.
