A top Republican senator is blocking the nomination of two new members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission until he learns more about how the Obama administration decided to speed up LightSquared’s licensing process. Earlier this week, the president nominated Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai to the FCC. But their nominations are waiting until Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) gets some answers.
NEW DELHI — The Indian government is signaling that Boeing soon will be awarded a contract for 22 AH-64D Apache Longbow Block IIIs for the Indian air force (IAF). The U.S. Army rotorcraft, which is said to have outperformed the rival Russian Mi-28N Night Hunter in tests, was strongly recommended by the IAF earlier this year as its choice following trials in 2010.
GLENN SUPPORT: NASA has chosen Vantage Partners LLC of Lanham, Md., to provide engineering and scientific services to the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland under a $240 million contract with a potential maximum duration of five years. The award covers a wide range of engineering, research and technology development, operations and project management services at Glenn, including delivering engineering products ranging from initial concepts to complete flight systems.
AIR FORCE Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, L.L.C., Thousand Oaks, Calif., is being awarded a $20,400,000 firm-fixed-price contract for the production, testing, inspection, and delivery of 8,500 aircrew laser eye performance block two spectacles and 100 fitting frame sets. ASC/WNUK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8902-06-C-1002 and modification P00028).
DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Aerosonic Corp., Clearwater, Fla., was awarded a firm-fixed-price with economic price adjustment, sole-source contract with a maximum $15,410,867 for pressure altimeter parts. There are no other locations of performance. Using service is the Army. Type of appropriation being used is C-AWCF (DBOF) using fiscal 2012 funds. The date of performance completion is Nov. 2, 2014. The Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (SPRRA1-12-D-0003/0001).
GLENROTHES, Scotland — Raytheon is developing high-temperature silicon carbide integrated circuits (HiTSiC) it believes will yield important efficiency savings for aerospace and commercial aviation applications.
SHEFEX SLIDE: Range and technical issues have forced German researchers to delay the flight test of an ambitious hypersonic demonstrator until early 2012. The test of the Mach 11-capable Sharp Edged Flight Experiment 2 (Shefex 2) is meant to pave the way to potential flights of a small, suborbital reentry vehicle in 2020, and builds on the technologies validated by the Mach 6 Shefex 1 flight in 2005. Shefex 2 is designed provide up to 50 sec. of experimental hypersonic flight time, with a reentry flight distance of around 100 km (62 mi.).
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center can become a public spaceport serving a variety of users, including commercial cargo and crew flights to low Earth orbit, suborbital missions with tourists and scientists on board, as well as human and robotic NASA exploration missions deeper into the Solar System, according to the center’s director.
The growing importance of ballistic missile defense (BMD) missions for U.S. Navy Aegis-equipped ships will shift home ports for many of those vessels toward the U.S. East Coast to meet the nation’s responsibilities under the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Nov. 7 — Aviation Week China Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition, China National Convention Center (CNCC), Beijing, China. For more information go to www.aviationweek.com/events Nov. 8 - 10 — Aviation Week MRO Asia, Partnership for Winning: Strategies for Success in Asia-Pacific, CNCC China National Convention Center, Beijing, China. For more information go to www.aviationweek.com/event
The U.S. Navy delivered the sixth contracted 115-ft. patrol boat (P-305) to the Iraqi navy at the Umm Qasr naval facility in Iraq Nov. 3, a week ahead of schedule. Frank McCarthey, Navy program manager for Support Ships, Boats and Craft, says, “We look forward to officially transferring custody of P-305 to the Iraqi navy to aid in their mission of securing their maritime sovereignty.”
LONDON — Lower-than-expected deliveries of executive aircraft are forcing Embraer to moderate its earnings guidance, although the situation is cushioned by its strong defense and regional jet activities.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA. — NASA managers are relying on hardware developed for other human-spaceflight programs to flatten the development budget on the planned heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) to squeeze it within a spending cap of $1.2 billion a year. Todd May, the SLS program manager here at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said Nov. 4 that the big new rocket is being designed with affordability and sustainability considerations at least as important as performance.
PARIS — Europe’s first two Galileo navigation satellites have reached their final operating orbits in preparation for activating and testing their navigation payloads, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Nov. 4.
NEW DELHI — India today opened bidding to determine the cheapest option between the two European contenders vying for the $11 billion contract to supply 126 fighter jets to the Indian air force. “Financial bids of both Dassault and Eurofighter were opened earlier in the day and we expect to decide on the vendor for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft in three [or] four weeks,” a defense ministry spokesman says.
“We are looking at the modern battlefield and drawing some [new] conclusions,” says Col. Jim Ekvall, chief of the Army’s new electronic warfare division. “The focus is the brigade because it is the smallest warfighting unit that has to be on its own and its commander needs the tools to sustain [combat] inside the electromagnetic spectrum. We want [a] scalable, flexible, open and modular [system] so we can keep upgrading it.”
Top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are pressing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for specific information about the effect of nearly $1 trillion in across-the-board cuts to military spending even as they are working to find a way around that potential penalty. “In order for the Congress do to its job, we cannot wait until December or later to receive specific and concrete information,” say Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) in a Nov. 3 letter to Panetta.
Enhanced ballistic missile defense (BMD) missions will stretch the future U.S. Navy destroyer force beyond its fleet limits as well as put even more pressure on the service’s already stressed funding accounts, according to an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis and a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. CRS notes the projected necessary U.S. destroyer fleet size has grown by 6% to 94, partly to accommodate growing BMD missions.
AUSSIE TRADE: Australian officials say their country’s defense trade treaty with the U.S. is one step closer to being implemented following the introduction of related legislation in Parliament. The treaty, signed in 2007 by leaders of both countries, removes the requirement for individual licenses to be obtained for preordained exports, and allows for the license-free movement of eligible defense articles within the pre-approved communities.
Negotiations for the fifth lot of low-rate initial production (LRIP) F-35 Joint Strike fighters are in flux, primarily as a result of not having decided who will pay for changes to the aircraft — the government or Lockheed Martin — due to concurrency in the program.
CHINA CAPSULE DOCKS: China’s unmanned Shenzhou 8 capsule performed the first of two planned orbital docking maneuvers with the Tiangong 1 target module on Nov. 3, marking an essential milestone as the country mounts plans to orbit its own space station. Official state media, while keen to play up the propaganda value of the docking, frankly noted that the U.S. had coupled two spacecraft in orbit 45 years ago with the Gemini 8 mission.
LONDON — The Swedish military is looking to buy two small unmanned aircraft to replace the SkyLark system that has been in service since 2007. The goal is to acquire an off-the-shelf system. The new requirement is for two systems, ideally with a common ground station, Swedish defense armaments agency FMV says. The smaller system, or air vehicle type A, should have at least 45 min. of endurance, with a minimum mission range of 5 km (3 mi.). For the type B, those figures are at least 120 min. of endurance and a 10-km range.
Boeing has submitted its proposal for a second multiyear procurement of Chinook heavy-lift helicopters for the U.S. Army, covering 155 CH-47Fs to be produced over five years, with deliveries beginning in 2015. If approved, the second multiyear procurement (MYP 2) — for 34 new-build and 121 “renew” F models remanufactured from CH-47Ds — would complete the Army’s planned procurement of CH-47Fs and special operations MH-47Gs.
