Fresh from its recent win of the U.S. Navy’s coveted Air-and-Missile-Defense Radar (AMDR), Raytheon now has an $8.5 million deal from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to design the Flexible Distributed Array Radar (Flexdar). “Migrating digital technologies closer to the front end of radars will allow for more reconfigurability and ultimately more flexible radars resulting in game-changing improvements,” says Paul Ferraro, vice president of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems Advanced Technology Programs.
A new U.S. conventional arms transfer policy governing direct commercial and Foreign Military Sales signed by President Barack Obama this year is supposed to allow Washington officials to make ad hoc decisions about military exports, including industrial competitiveness, an official said recently.
General Electric has begun component testing for a large turboshaft demonstrator that will lay the groundwork for engines to power the U.S. Army’s planned Future Vertical Lift (FVL) family of advanced rotorcraft. The detailed design review for the Future Affordable Turbine Engine (FATE) demonstrator was completed in November. “Now we are running components tests, including particle separator and combustor,” says Mike Sousa, new product development manager.
HOUSTON – NASA is seeking fast-track proposals from the worldwide science and engineering communities for a cost-constrained mission to assess the habitability of the ice- and ocean-covered Jovian moon Europa, while providing the surface reconnaissance needed to plan for a future instrumented lander.
The U.S. will find the money to fund the refueling and overhauling of the aircraft carrier CVN-73 USS George Washington, says U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.
As it develops an “extensible” program of human and robotic missions aimed at landing humans on Mars in 20 years, NASA is likely to include an in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) experiment on the nuclear-powered robotic rover it plans to send to the Red Planet in 2020.
Less than two weeks after the U.S. Navy issued a draft request for proposals covering its Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) program, the House of Representatives seapower subcommittee has moved to prevent a contract from being issued before the requirements are reviewed by the secretary of defense.
The aerospace and defense groups of Orbital Sciences Corp. and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will be combined in a stock transaction valued at $5 billion, the companies announced April 29. The merger will form a space, defense and aviation systems development and manufacturing company of 13,000 workers that the companies said is worth about $4.5 billion. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year.
India’s attempt to intercept a target ballistic missile at an altitude of 120 km "attained mission objectives," a senior defense scientist says. "In a significant milestone achieved in developing a two-layered Ballistic Missile Defense system, the Defense Research and Development Organization [DRDO] successfully carried out the maiden ‘Prithvi Defense Vehicle’ [PDV] mission, meeting the objectives perfectly," a DRDO scientist says.
Draft legislation circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives would bar the use of Russian rocket technology in launching Pentagon payloads as early as this year. The language — drafted this month as the U.S. considers additional sanctions against Moscow over aggression in Ukraine — aims squarely at the NPO Energomash-built RD-180 engine that powers the first stage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5, a Lockheed Martin-built rocket that launches most U.S. government missions.
