LANGKAWI, Malyasia — Russian arms export agency Rosoboronexport is highlighting its commitment to Malaysia in its effort to win a new contract for 18 fighters.
LOS ANGELES — Plans by the U.S. Air Force to replace its expendable launchers with a reusable booster system (RBS) have taken a big step forward with the award of three technology development contracts potentially worth up to $250 million.
OPPOSING GRIPEN: Opponents of the Swiss government’s decision to buy JAS-39E/F Gripen fighters are calling for a public referendum in the hope that it would kill the deal. The left SP party, which convened this past weekend in Luzern, has long opposed the fighter procurement, so the opposition is not tied, specifically, to the decision in favor of the Swedish Gripen. However, with last week’s decision to buy 22 Gripens, the referendum issue has been put back on the political agenda.
LANGKAWI, Malaysia — Victor Komardin, the deputy director of Russia’s arms export agency Rosoboronexport, contends that the two short-listed candidates for India’s Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition have effectively ruled themselves out by putting too high a price on their fighters.
LANGKAWI, Malaysia — Indonesia’s defense minister wants more local content in Airbus Military C295s assembled in Indonesia. “We’re looking at more than 50% local content on the C295,” Purnomo Yusgiantoro told Aviation Week on the sidelines of the LIMA Airshow in Langkawi, Malaysia, Dec. 6.
Andrew Mellon Auditorium Washington, D.C. March 7, 2012 The Aviation Week Laureate Awards recognize individuals and teams for their extraordinary accomplishments. Their achievements embody the spirit of exploration, innovation and vision that inspire others to strive for significant broad-reaching progress in aviation and aerospace. Join us at this black tie dinner and celebrate the best of the industry’s best! www.aviationweek.com/events/current/lau/index.htm
NEW DELHI — The Indian air force (IAF) has dispatched two of its Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft to France as part of a long-awaited deal to upgrade around 50 of the aging supersonic fighters. The modernization will cost an estimated $2.4 billion under an agreement signed between India, Thales and Dassault Aviation in July.
NEW DELHI — Yet another Indian air force MiG combat aircraft has crashed, the eighth IAF MiG to go down this year. The pilot ejected safely. The MiG-21 Bison fighter took off from Sirsa Air Force station base on the morning of Dec. 2 for a regular practice flight and crashed a short time later into a field in a village in northern India’s Haryana state about 40 km away, police and air force officials said. An IAF spokesman said the pilot, Wing Cmdr. J.D. Singh, was safe.
Work on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on track to stay within its latest cost and schedule plan, NASA told Congress Dec. 6, now that the agency has implemented recommendations from the outside panel that found the 6.5-meter segmented infrared telescope’s cost had jumped by $3.6 billion over its earlier estimate.
It was indeed a stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel that crashed in Iran, say U.S. Air Force officials with connections to the intelligence community. Iran says it was shot down, while U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) specialists say the flying wing broke contact with its ground station and subsequently crashed.
PARIS — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is scaling back plans to supply the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat) with sensors slated to fly on its next-generation, polar-orbiting weather satellite.
AIR FORCE United Launch Services, L.L.C., Littleton, Colo., is being awarded a $150,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract. This undefinitized contractual action is to provide Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services in support of the fifth Wideband Global Satellite Communication mission. The location of performance is United Launch Services, Littleton, Colo. The Space and Missile Systems Center, El Segundo, Calif., is the contracting activity (FA8811-11-C-0001).
Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Kepler extra-solar planet-finding mission have confirmed their first Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star 600 light years from Earth, while almost doubling the number of candidates identified as they improve data-analysis techniques.
Compared to what the U.S. Navy uses in a year, it’s just a drop in the barrel. But 450,000 gal. of biofuel designated to power a carrier strike group for an exercise next summer is the government’s bulkiest buy to date of what’s known as “drop-in” biofuel.
PARIS — Science chiefs from the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are scheduled to meet here Dec. 7 to discuss Russian participation in ExoMars. Alvaro Gimenez-Canete, ESA director of science and exploration, and his NASA and Roscosmos counterparts are expected to focus on working toward a Mars sample-return mission, in the face of U.S. budget uncertainty that threatens to upend the joint ESA-NASA effort. A working-level meeting of technical managers will follow Dec. 8, ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina said Dec. 2.
The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have finally agreed to share the cost of modifications for roughly 30 aircraft to be procured in the next lot of F-35 production.
LONDON and GENOA, Italy — Finmeccanica may have unveiled a financial turnaround plan and resolved its differences involving the board of directors with last week’s appointment of CEO Giuseppe Orsi as company chairman, but the moves were not enough to stave off a downgrade of the Italian aerospace and defense company’s debt rating. Moreover, Standard & Poor’s—which like Aviation Week is owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies—further indicates the government may unload some of its ownership in Italy’s industrial conglomerate.
PARIS — Mobile satellite services provider Globalstar will delay the early December launch of a third batch of second-generation satellites by three weeks as manufacturer Thales Alenia Space swaps one of the six spacecraft with a spare untainted by a momentum-wheel defect affecting other satellites already in orbit.
