LONDON — The cost of damage to U.K. military aircraft caused by a freak hailstorm at Kandahar AB in Afghanistan is likely to top £10 million ($16.3 million), defense ministry officials have revealed. The incident had a major effect on U.K. in-theater air operations.
LONDON — Switzerland will hold a national referendum in May on whether the country should purchase the Saab JAS-39E Gripen fighter. Voters will go to the polls on May 18 to determine if the purchase of 22 Gripens—to replace the country’s aging Northrop F-5 Tigers—should go ahead. The referendum was called after opponents of the deal collected more than 50,000 signatures to force a national vote on the 3.1 billion Swiss franc ($3.3 billion) program.
OMNIBUS PASSED: In overwhelming and unusually rapid fashion, U.S. lawmakers have passed the fiscal 2014 omnibus appropriations bill. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill before Jan. 19, averting another government shutdown and funding the government through September. The almost evenly divided Senate passed the measure late Jan. 16 by 72 to 26, with 17 Republicans joining 55 majority Democrats and Independents in favor. The House of Representatives passed the bill Jan. 15 by 359 to 67, with just 64 majority Republicans and three Democrats voting against it.
With this month’s crash of a Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet, the family of F-18 Hornets and Super Hornets continues to lead U.S. Navy aircraft in terms of total Class A mishap costs, an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis of service accident data shows.
In observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the U.S., Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not publish a Jan. 21 issue. The next issue will be dated Jan. 22. Aviation Week Intelligence Network subscribers can visit www.aviationweek.com/awin for updates.
PARIS — European Space Agency (ESA) member states like the idea of extending International Space Station (ISS) operations to 2024, as proposed by the Obama administration during an annual meeting of space agency chiefs in Washington Jan. 9-10. But ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says the 20-nation space agency can do little more than voice support for the extension until it secures funding from member states for Europe’s continued participation in the ISS through the end of this decade.
Managers at NASA are generally pleased with the level of funding the agency received in the omnibus spending bill Congress adopted this week for the remainder of fiscal 2014, but they aren’t sure it will support the planned 2017 first flights of one or more commercial crew vehicles.
The bipartisan spending bill approved by the U.S. House and Senate — expected to be signed by President Barack Obama over the weekend — will add 20 Airbus Helicopters UH-72As to the U.S. Army’s plans for fiscal 2014, carrying the production line through the middle of next year, according to an Airbus Group official. However, the company still is in a race to secure orders and keep the production line busy.
China’s test of a hypersonic missile last week is only part of a wider trend, says Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command. Separately, officials in Beijing and Washington confirm reports of the test. Although the move foreshadows greater challenges for defense systems of China’s adversaries, Locklear says: “The hypersonic test is just one of the things being looked at [when considering] implications for the future.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) is continuing to raise concerns about the agency’s efforts to re-establish U.S. human launch capabilities — both through commercial ventures and government-led initiatives to resume human deep space exploration — in its most recent annual assessment. The concerns, outlined Jan. 15 in the independent ASAP’s 2013 annual report, are focused on presumed underfunding as the two development initiatives mature.
HOUSTON — NASA’s chief scientist Ellen Stofan is among those pleased with the $17.6 billion top line for the agency included in the $1.1 trillion 2014 Omnibus appropriations bill making its way through Congress this week. The compromise spending plan that lifts NASA away from the 2013 sequester budget cuts includes $5.15 billion for science programs, or $133.4 million more than proposed by the White House for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
Without money to carry two vendors through separate programs to develop more powerful Boeing Apache and Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter engines, U.S. Army officials are simply hoping now to be able to carry both through the technology development phase of the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP).
LONDON — Airbus Defense and Space — previously EADS Cassidian — has started test flights carrying the KEPD 350 Taurus cruise missile on the Eurofighter Typhoon. The first flight carrying the weapons took off from Manching air base, Germany, on Jan. 15 on Instrumented Production Aircraft (IPA) 7. The flight follows completion of ground tests and taxi tests late last year.
LONDON — Senior U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) officials have expressed their wish to keep the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial system after U.K. troops pull out of Afghanistan at the end of this year.
Top NASA officials took advantage of the recent gathering of space agency chiefs in Washington to look for ways to broaden cooperation with China, including rare direct talks with Chinese space leaders.
COAST GUARD: Congress looks set to provide the U.S. Coast Guard with $10.2 billion for fiscal 2014, $464 million above the Obama administration’s request for the year ending Sept. 30. In the congressional compromise worked out late Jan. 13 by Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and her House counterpart, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), lawmakers also provided $31 million for the Coast Guard to stand up an asset project office for the 14 C-27Js it is receiving from the Defense Department.
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The main concern of Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, is North Korea and the unpredictable nature of the country and its government. That issue is “what I worry about every day,” he said, speaking Jan. 16 at the 2014 annual Surface Navy Association Symposium. “We’ve put [North] Korea on the back burner for the past couple of decades.” Now, he says, it’s time to put the country and related issues back in the spotlight.
ARLINGTON, Va. — U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Thomas Copeman, commander of the Naval Surface Force and U.S. Pacific Naval Surface Force, wants to bridge a missile gap he perceives in the service’s surface force to make it more lethal. While Copeman and other surface warfare officers have been talking about the growing lack of lethality for more than a decade, he acknowledges that the issue is now getting some of the spotlight.
BEIJING — The Chinese military has become a target for the clean-government drive of the administration of President Xi Jinping, with the armed forces told to cut down on spending that personally benefits service members. The orders announced this week at least indirectly address the problem of officers buying and selling postings, especially those that can be turned to personal advantage.
Despite the continued push to develop more expertise in “electro-magnetic maneuverable warfare,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations (CNO), says the U.S. Navy still is coming up short in that discipline. Radios, radars and other radiating equipment are emitting signals that Navy personnel should be more aware of, Greenert says. The service needs to do a better job masking, disguising or cutting down on those signals, he argues.
