NEW DELHI — India on Nov. 15 test fired the Agni IV long-range, nuclear-capable missile from a military base in the eastern part of the country, rebounding from a 2010 test failure. Under Project Director Tessy Thomas, the first female scientist to head a large missile project in India, the Agni IV was launched from a road mobile system at around 9 a.m. local time from Wheeler Island, off the coast of the state of Orissa.
What does inaction by the U.S. Congress on the federal deficit mean? According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, it means no more Joint Strike Fighter. No new bomber. No Littoral Combat Ships and no Ground Combat Vehicle program. The Budget Control Act in August set up a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts. And if Congress fails to pass a deficit-reduction plan by Jan. 15, 2012, the defense budget would undergo $600 billion in automatic cuts over the next 10 years.
For executives of defense companies, the coming drop-off in U.S. defense spending has changed the game so much, an industry analyst says, that successful strategy is going to be fiendishly difficult to devise. In a TechAmerica Foundation briefing Nov. 15, W. Alexander Vacca said this decline will affect the industrial base, talent development, strategy and investor appetite and reaction.
SASC MARK: The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously amended its defense authorization bill for fiscal 2012 on Nov. 15, cutting an additional $21 billion out of the bill it passed earlier this year. The new bill also changes provisions regarding military detentions that President Barack Obama had opposed. Although senators had predicted the full Senate would begin debate on the bill before Thanksgiving, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters that consideration is likely to slide until after the holiday break.
GENOA, Italy — The increasing financial turmoil involving Italy and most of Europe is leading Avio, which had spent most of 2011 preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) by year’s end, and SEA to step back from their planned stock flotations.
NEW DELHI — India is laying out proposals that would facilitate innovation and develop the country’s defense industry. For the first time, the defense ministry has been involved with India’s Planning Commission in the creation of its latest Five-Year Plan, which covers from April 2012 onward.
NEW BLOOD: Starting Nov. 15, NASA is accepting applications from “qualified individuals” looking to enter the agency’s next class of astronauts. “Those selected will be among the first to pioneer a new generation of commercial launch vehicles and travel aboard a new heavy-lift rocket to distant destinations in deep space,” the agency says. Qualifications include a bachelor’s degree in engineering, science or math and three years of relevant professional experience.
NASA’s fiscal 2012 budget request will take a $924 million hit under compromise appropriations levels reported by a House/Senate conference, leaving the commercial spacecraft the agency is relying on to deliver cargo and crew to the International Space Station with less than half the funds requested.
DUBAI — After completing qualification tests of the helicopter-launched Talon laser-guided rocket, Raytheon and Emirates Advanced Research & Technology Holding (Earth) are now eyeing a production start for the program and further applications, including work on the AT-6 light-attack aircraft.
GENOA, Italy — The Alenia Aermacchi M-346 advanced jet trainer has been delivered to the Italian air force, but the program still needs new orders soon if it is to become a success story. Italy’s chief of the air staff, Giuseppe Bernardis, says the air force needs a total of 15 aircraft and plans to do all it can to make the M-346 an industrial winner. But so far the economic development ministry has provided funds for just the first six, plus ground facilities and the training system, including full flight simulators.
It may not involve huge contracts for weapon systems, but with the U.S. Army planning to spend about $7.1 billion over the next decade on renewable-energy technologies, the defense industry — eager for new business opportunities — has started to take a hard look at what it can offer.
MODULAR SPACE: Northrop Grumman has completed the preliminary design review (PDR) for its modular space vehicle (MSV). The company is designing the vehicle under a NASA Ames contract, supporting the Department of Defense Operationally Responsive Space office at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The MSV is “being developed and manufactured as a rapid response space initiative for combatant commanders,” Northrop says. The PDR validates the design and moves the program one step closer to manufacturing, the company says. Major teammates are ATA and DesignNet Engineering.
DUBAI — Even as the United Arab Emirates’ fighter modernization program has taken a new turn into uncertainty, it is becoming increasingly apparent that next month could see an unusual flurry of big-ticket procurement announcements in Switzerland, Japan and India as well as the Persian Gulf.
HOUSTON — Russia’s Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft sped toward a midweek docking with the International Space Station Monday, following launch with a three-man crew to mark the first piloted flight of the venerable booster since the August crash of the cargo version. Heavy snow fell as the Soyuz 28 mission carrying Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin and NASA’s Dan Burbank lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 13 at 11:14 p.m. EST, or Nov. 14 at 10:14 a.m. local time.
The U.S. defense department now knows that its big weapons programs can incur multiple cost breaches and still not experience one penny of punishment from appropriators. Take fiscal 2012 appropriations, in which four programs with multiple breaches have so far not seen any funding cuts.
DUBAI — Introducing aircraft such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may require heavier use of simulators than was necessary for the previous generation of aircraft, says Air Marshal Geoff Brown, the chief of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
New details are emerging about the design and operational plans for an advanced U.S. Air Force missile and its exotic high-power microwave (HPM) weapons payload. The next-generation weapon is a product of the Boeing and Air Force Research Laboratory’s Counter-electronics HPM Advanced Missile Project (Champ).
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando, Fla., is being awarded a $841,500,000 firm-fixed-price contract for Sniper targeting pod sensor enhancement on hardware and software upgrades and associated host platform integration, initial spares, technical manual and technical orders, repair data, studies and spares recapitalization, and support the standup of organic depot repair requirements for the sustainment of the legacy Sniper pod fleet. ASC/WNQK, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8626-12-D-2138).
PARIS — Ministers from eight European nations are appealing to the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, to fully fund two large-scale projects of strategic interest to European energy, environmental monitoring and security. In a Nov. 9 letter to EC Vice President Antonio Tajani and Commissioners Janusz Lewandowski and Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, the ministers took issue with a plan to fund the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) project and a nuclear fusion program dubbed ITER outside the EU’s forthcoming multiyear budget.
NEW DELHI — India is reviewing its offset policy in defense procurement deals to remove all “ambiguities,” but there are no plans to do away with the clause. “The review is being done to take care of ambiguity in the current policy,” says Amit Cowshish, a defense finance official.
