Defense

Lockheed Martin recently graduated the first class of students from its Hercules Training Center C-130J piloting and loadmaster qualification courses.

Brief news items of interest to aerospace & defense professionals.

The Bell V-280 Valor flies its first public demonstration of 2020 at Bell’s Flight Research Center in Arlington, Texas.

AE Industrial Partners has unveiled a new commercial aircraft leasing company.

Boeing’s Oklahoma City military MRO campus has changed landlords.

As NASA’s deep-space human exploration plans gain momentum, policy makers must avoid subjecting the agency to fluctuations in goals, ambiguous objectives and inadequate budgets, a report says.

Israel’s defense ministry confirms Elbit Systems is developing a technology demonstrator for an aircraft self-protect laser.

The FAA issued Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) the evening of Jan. 7 prohibiting U.S. civil aircraft operators from using airspace over Iraq, Iran, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Systems installation is underway on Virgin Galactic’s second commercial SpaceShipTwo sub-orbital vehicle at Mojave, California, following the

ELBIT SYSTEMS LTD. has $31m initial Israeli Ministry of Defense contract for Iron Fist Active Protection Systems for the Eitan Armored Fighting Vehicles.

Eric Chewning, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s chief of staff, will leave his job at the end of January.

Before he joined the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Daniel Prosser found he liked computer programming and simulations and was good at them.

U.S. developing scientific license agreements for commercial satellite data

Iran on Jan. 7 launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles at U.S. forces and their allies in Iraq.

Launch service operator Arianespace is planning up to 20 launches with its Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega rockets in 2020.

The U.S. Navy has kicked off a pilot program focusing on better sustainment of the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne surveillance aircraft.

British aerospace and defense supplier Meggitt has invested in HiETA Technologies, another UK company that focuses on metal additive manufacturing.

Deliveries of Dassault’s Falcon business jets have hit a new bottom, at 40 in 2019.

TT ELECTRONICS, UK has acquired Southern California-based aerospace and defense power electronics business unit of EXCELITAS TECHNOLOGIES, MA.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has claimed its first discovery of an Earth-like world in the habitable zone of a neighboring star.

The Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics (Asteria) sat effort to miniaturize a spacecraft for extrasolar planet detection, has gone quiet.

SpaceX’s 19th NASA-contracted Dragon resupply mission spacecraft returned to Earth Jan. 7.

Turkish Aerospace has rolled out the third prototype of its T625 Gokbey twin-engine medium helo as it begins to accelerate the aircraft’s flight-test program.

SpaceX has opened what it hopes will be a bustling 2020 launch manifest of 35-38 missions with the Jan. 6 liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a third batch of Starlink broadband comm sats.

Ukraine has begun taking delivery of H125 single-engine light helicopters from Airbus.