LONDON — The Australian government has allocated an additional A$12 million ($12.5 million) to foster locally developed defense technologies for potential military application. The effort is part of the A$45 million Priority Industry Capabilities activity that provides repayable, matched grants to companies. The program is in its second of eight years. In announcing the latest funding recipients, Jason Clare, defense minister for materiel, says “This is an investment in cutting-edge defense technologies developed here in Australia.”
The U.S. Air Force will not turn any missions over to the Navy — such as airborne radar surveillance of the air or ground — even though those missions are currently conducted by an aging, underfunded fleet of E-3B AWACS and E-8C Joint Stars aircraft. Some USAF officials have gone so far as to tell Aviation Week that airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) is in crisis. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz disagrees, but he does concede that ISR is fully occupied.
HOUSTON — Spaceflight brings a whole new meaning to dressing for success. An astronaut’s garments must be functional, yet as comfortable as possible, whether the flier is sealed inside a spacecraft or on a spacewalk. As NASA envisions a future of deep-space exploration and missions stretching from months to years, the list of wardrobe requirements soars as well.
Participants in a Pentagon Defense Acquisition Board meeting scheduled for May 3 are expected to approve the U.S. Army’s plan to evaluate available helicopters before deciding whether to buy off-the-shelf aircraft or extend the life of the Bell OH-58D to meet its Armed Aerial Scout requirement. “I am fairly certain we are moving forward,” says Jose Gonzalez, Defense Department deputy director for land warfare and munitions, speaking at the American Helicopter Society International Forum 68 in Fort Worth.
BEIJING — China plans to add three more satellites to its Compass positioning system this year, following the successful launch of two sats by a single Long March 3B rocket on April 30.
Not everything in the Libyan campaign worked as planned. An emerging issue is the erosion of a fundamental U.S. Air Force skill — targeting — that surfaced in a recent Air Combat Command review.
Lockheed Martin has launched a small precision-guided weapon from an AAI Corp. RQ-7 Shadow 200 tactical unmanned aircraft under a company-funded R&D program. The 11-lb. class, laser-guided Shadow Hawk glide weapon scored a direct hit on the target, the company says. The test was conducted at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The 2.75-in.-dia., 27-in.-long unpowered munition was released from the Shadow at 5,100 ft. altitude and impacted the target at 460 ft./sec.
Efforts to prevent terrestrial contamination of ice-covered solar system bodies with the potential to harbor life or its biological precursors deserve an overhaul, according to a new National Research Council (NRC) assessment of the current contamination odds-making as well as the science and technology gaps.
LOS ANGELES — The Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) office is pushing ahead with preparations for three more missions and continuing a key military utility assessment of the ongoing TacSat-4 tactical test spacecraft, despite uncertainty over its future after being zero-funded in the White House’s fiscal 2013 budget.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) is pushing for a budget to acquire fixed-wing maritime surveillance aircraft on long-term wet-lease, since its existing agreement with Bombardier for maritime patrol has lapsed. The MMEA also is hoping to renew a customer support pact with Bombardier that lapsed a while ago, according to the agency’s director general, Adm. Amdan bin Kurish. “The Bombardier planes have not been flying for some time,” he says.
If U.S. lawmakers want to put back procurement funds for favored weapons programs, the U.S. Air Force’s top general says, then they should put back the operations and maintenance money too. To do otherwise, says Gen. Norman Schwartz, speaking May 1 at the Stimson Center, is the surest way to hollow the force.
GOES-R: Lockheed Martin has completed the spacecraft critical design review for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series (GOES-R) satellite system that the company is building for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. “The team demonstrated that the design and operations are understood and sufficiently mature to begin the build and integration phase,” Lockheed said in a May 1 announcement. The first spacecraft in the next-generation weather satellite series is due for launch in 2015.
SINGAPORE — China is trying to woo the defense establishment of Thailand, one of the very few Southeast Asian nations with which it has no conflicting claims in regard to the South China Sea.
NUCLEAR DYAD?: It may be time for the U.S. to reconsider its questionable insistence on three different nuclear delivery vehicles, the Cato Institute’s Christopher Preble tells a Capitol Hill audience April 30. Preble quoted former Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke as saying, “You very seldom see a cowboy in the movies carrying three guns. Two is enough.” Preble, who has been funded by the Ploughshares Fund to study the history of the triad, says it’s time for lawmakers to start asking hard questions about the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons posture.
Saab says it will implement a far-reaching command-and-control upgrade to the Royal Thai Navy’s aircraft carrier to allow the system to be more interoperable with the country’s relatively new fleet of Gripen fighters and Saab 340 airborne early warning aircraft.
SINGAPORE — Last year’s devastating floods in Thailand and this year’s renewed fighting in the south by Muslim insurgents are starting to register in some of the country’s military procurements.
AIR FORCE ITT Corp., Clifton, N.J., is being awarded a $47,530,000 firm-fixed-price contract to procure 15 AN/ALQ-211(V); four airborne integrated defensive electronic warfare suites; and two sets of antenna couplers for support production. The effort is in support of the Royal Air Force Oman F-16 C/D model production aircraft. The location of the performance is Clifton, The work is to be completed by Dec. 31, 2014. WR-ALC/GRWKB, Robins AFB, Ga., is the contracting activity (FA8540-12-C-0014).
LOS ANGELES — Lockheed Martin is ramping up final assembly work on the flight test version of the Orion crew module as workers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) begin verification checks on the Orion ground test vehicle.
