Latin American drug traffickers and Islamic terrorists beware: the Pentagon and other U.S. federal, state and local agencies are ramping up their capabilities to allow tactical forces to counter hostile and/or criminal tunnel networks, including in “nonpermissive” environments.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The Eurofighter consortium is working to improve the Typhoon’s naval combat capabilities by incorporating anti-ship missiles, including the Boeing Harpoon. This aircraft was designed for air defense and ground attack, rather than as a naval fighter, but the consortium is in the competition to sell fighters to Malaysia, which has said it needs a version with an anti-ship capability. Malaysia’s new fighters are to be stationed at Kuantan AFB overlooking the South China Sea, an area where there are territorial disputes with China.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) is talking to operators of the Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper about options to extend the medium-altitude unmanned aircraft’s loiter time. The company is proposing two field-installable kits. Option 1 adds two fuel pods under the existing 66-ft.-span wing, on the inboard pylons, and extends endurance to 37 hr. from 27 hr. for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
The U.S. Navy is laying the groundwork for joint-service, international alternatives for both large, manned aircraft and smaller unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) designs.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Saab soon will display its Saab 340 Maritime Security Aircraft (MSA), a new variant that aims to create a market for second-hand Saab 340Bs.
FORT WASHINGTON, Md. — During this quarter, the first DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer should start look even more like the new U.S. Navy warship it is planned to be, as contractors prepare to marry the vessel’s composite hangar with its hull.
SEA LAUNCH: Sea Launch has received Intelsat 19 from Space Systems/Loral at its home port in Long Beach, Calif. Sea Launch will use a Zenit-3SL to launch the satellite in May from the company’s Odyssey platform in the western Pacific. The satellite is to be placed into a geostationary parking orbit at 166 deg. E. long. and replace Intelsat 8. It will provide video services across the Asia-Pacific region.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The industrial cooperation package that manufacturers can offer Malaysia appears to be the key to winning government support in the country, which has a competition under way for the purchase of 18 fighters.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Boeing’s UAV subsidiary Insitu has secured a contract to supply its ScanEagle UAV to Malaysia, for help in monitoring territory off the north coast of the state of Sabah. Malaysian company Unmanned Systems Technology (UST), a subsidiary of Malaysian composites parts manufacturer CTRM, has a government contract to provide UAV surveillance covering sections of land and sea in and around Sabah. At the Defense Services Asia (DSA) exhibition in Kuala Lumpur this week, UST signed a contract with Insitu.
BEIJING — South Korea has announced the deployment of two types of surface-to-surface weapons, one a cruise missile and the other ballistic. The Tomahawk-like cruise missile, which must be the previously reported Hyunmu 3C, has world-class precision, good enough to fly through a window, says Maj. Gen. Shin Won-sik, director general of planning at the defense ministry, who did not name either weapon. Its range is 1,500 km (930 mi.), he says.
KUALA LUMPUR — Eurocopter aims to deliver the first of 12 EC-725 tactical transport helicopters ordered by the Malaysian air force by the end of the year. Training starts in July, Eurocopter Malaysia President Pierre Rossignol tells Aviation Week on the sidelines of the Defense Services Asia exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. He also says an EC-225/725 training simulator will be coming to Malaysia and will be stationed here.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Apr. 23 - 25 — Aviation Week NextGen Ahead Air Transportation Modernization Conference, Washington Marriott at Metro Center, Washington, D.C. For more information go to www.aviationweek.com/events
HOUSTON — Russia’s 47 Progress supply ship sped toward an April 22 docking with the International Space Station (ISS) following a flawless liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to initiate a two-day transit. The Russian freighter and its nearly three tons of propellant, water, compressed air and other supplies was on course to dock with the ISS’s Russian segment Pirs module at 10:40 a.m. EDT.
It’s time for the U.S. to start funding and fielding directed-energy weapons such as high-energy lasers and high-power microwave, a new study argues, and not just because they are cheaper than one-shot kinetic weapons. The cost per shot for interceptor missiles is not only expensive—at least $9 million each—it puts U.S. forces on the bad side of what is called the “cost-imposition curve,” says Mark Gunzinger, author of “Changing the Game: The Promise of Directed-Energy Weapons,” the latest report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis.
FORT WASHINGTON, Md. — The budget plan to delay the purchase of one Virginia class submarine from fiscal 2014 to 2018 is a retreat in the program’s progress in bringing down unit costs, according to the manager for the U.S. Navy program. The cost hit from the delay has not been totaled, says Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley, because the Block IV 2014-18 contract has not been awarded, but unit cost on a single sub in 2014 would necessarily go up, since overhead costs would remain relatively constant.
NEW DELHI — India on April 19 successfully test-fired a long-range missile capable of targeting parts of northern China and eastern Europe, bringing the emerging South Asian power into an elite club of nations with intercontinental defense capability. The Agni-V, an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to hit a target up to 5,000 km (3,100 mi.) away, was launched from Wheeler Island off the coast of the eastern state of Odisha at 8:07 a.m. local time, according to V.K. Saraswat, chief of India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO).
