BIOFUEL PUSH: Obama administration officials say the U.S. Navy will provide the market for the nation’s nascent biofuel industry as part of a White House initiative to kick-start the alternative energy sector. The Navy and Marine Corps will partner with the Energy and Agriculture departments to share equally in a $510 million investment over three years — estimated at half the private sector’s cost — in the production of so-called “drop-in” aviation and marine biofuels, which can be used with existing fuels to power military and commercial vehicles.
Controllers in Nigeria and the U.K. are commissioning NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X following the launch early Wednesday on a Dnepr vehicle that lifted off from Yasny, in southern Russia. Ground stations in Guildford, U.K., and Abuja, Nigeria, established contact with the spacecraft in their 686-km (426-mi.) Sun-synchronous orbits following separation from the launch vehicle, and reported a successful launch.
HOUSTON — NASA Johnson Space Center safety chief Terry Wilcutt, a veteran astronaut, has been appointed to succeed Bryan O’Connor as the agency’s chief of safety and mission assurance, effective Sept. 1. “As NASA looks beyond the space shuttle to new programs of human exploration, technology development and scientific research, we remain committed to the highest standards for mission success and the well-being of our workforce,” says NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who announced the appointment late Aug. 16.
MOSCOW — The conflict in Libya has cost Rosoboronexport $4 billion in contracts that have been canceled or pending deals that were not finalized, estimates Alexander Mikheev, the company’s deputy director general. The turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa “has had an effect on our contract portfolio,” he says, noting that the entity’s backlog stood at $36 billion, down slightly from $37 billion earlier in the year.
BUDGET BATTLE: U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says upcoming budget cuts will affect national security, and that he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton want the U.S. public — and their elected leaders — to recognize the importance of keeping a strong national defense. Panetta says Washington must look beyond discretionary accounts like the Defense and State departments.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s state-owned aerospace conglomerate Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) aims to design and build a new jet trainer, the XAT-5. “The concept is based on the corporation’s Indigenous Fighter (IDF), but the internal structure may change,” says Mike Lee, secretary-general of the National Defense Industrial Association of Sino and special assistant to AIDC Chairman Jason Liu.
HOUSTON — The U.S. remains top ranked among 10 nations in space competitiveness for 2011, but it is losing ground to global competitors as its space policy undergoes a major transition, especially in the area of human spaceflight, according to the Futron Corp.’s 2011 Space Competitiveness Index.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Brett Lambert, the Pentagon’s industrial policy chief, says access to cash is a potentially major problem for third- and fourth-tier suppliers, who are critical to building and maintaining defense systems. This is one the preliminary findings of his sweeping “sector-by-sector, tier-by-tier” industrial base study, which is under way now (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 4). “The small guys are getting squeezed for credit,” he tells Aviation Week during an interview at the Space and Missile Defense Conference here.
Although U.S. Army unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have logged over 1.2 million hr. of combat flight time over Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft still can’t “do it all,” the U.S. Army’s aviation chief told a crowd at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America summit in Washington Aug. 16. “We are not there yet within the UAS arena but give us a bit of time to finish that process,” says Maj. Gen. Tim Crosby, Army program executive officer for aviation. “For UAS in the army, there are so many aspects and new areas we can be focused on.”
Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush called for changes in both the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) to boost U.S. exports of UAVs in an address at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in Washington today. Existing rules “hurt industry, without making us more secure,” Bush said, citing the expanding number of countries developing UAV systems for their own use and for “ITAR-free” export.
A ground-based sense-and-avoid system being prototyped by the U.S. Army would have prevented the mid-air collision of a C-130 Hercules airlifter with RQ-7 Shadow unmanned aircraft at a forward operation base in eastern Afghanistan on Aug. 15, a service official says. “Had we been operational with GBSAA [ground-based sense and avoid] we would have completely averted the incident,” says Tim Owings, deputy project manager for Army unmanned aircraft systems.
MOSCOW — That Russia wants to revive its air and ballistic missile defense system — with the much-touted S-500 as its centerpiece — is not a big surprise. But now the design bureau behind the effort has released a road map.
MCLEAN, Va. — It should come as no surprise that China would dominate discussions at a gathering of intelligence professionals. The Asian giant is the closest nation that represents a future peer competitor for the U.S. With the recent buildup of Chinese naval forces, everyone’s trying to figure out what the country has on its collective mind.
MOSCOW — Russian industry has unveiled a new air-to-air missile for engaging fighters and airborne early warning aircraft at extended ranges. The missile, the RVV-BD, appears to be the latest iteration of prolonged development activity, although the design also features differences from configurations previously seen in Russia.
deployment decision: A quick-reaction assessment of the Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-Max unmanned cargo rotorcraft is getting under way as a prelude to a U.S. Navy decision on what system to deploy to Afghanistan to resupply remote Marine Corps forward operating bases. A similar assessment is planned for the Boeing A160T Hummingbird. Lockheed says the K-Max underwent electromagnetic environmental testing in July. A downselect is expected by October, allowing deployment before year’s end.
The U.S. Navy has awarded the Newport News Shipbuilding unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) a contract modification to continue long-lead time material procurement for the construction of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), the second scheduled next-generation Ford-class carrier.
TIRELESS STALKER: Lockheed Martin Skunk Works has demonstrated an “extreme endurance” version of its Stalker small unmanned aircraft, achieving 8-hr. endurance on a combination of fuel-cell and battery power. The basic Stalker is a 4.2-lb., hand-launched, battery-powered aircraft with 2-hr. endurance. The “Stalker XE” version uses fuel-cell technology under development for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and could potentially reach 24-hr. endurance, the company says.
The U.S. Marine Corps has purchased two Insitu Integrator unmanned aircraft systems to provide pre-deployment training at 29 Palms, Calif. The first system will be delivered next month and the second soon after. The U.S. Navy plans to purchase two similar Integrator systems for its special-warfare forces.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Having completed a key software design review, the tri-national Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) program is looking ahead to its flight-test campaign. During the design review, the U.S., Italian and German customers examined progress in the Battle Management Command, Control, Computers and Intelligence (BMC4I) system. This system, in a tactical ops center (TOC), will be used in the first Meads flight test in November, says Gregory Kee, general manager of the NATO Meads Management Agency.
AeroVironment has received a $65.5 million U.S. Army contract to meet an urgent requirement to provide 180 Puma AE small unmanned aircraft systems to equip all maneuver units within brigade combat teams operating in Afghanistan. The contract is part of a surge effort to rush additional hand-launched small UAVs to deployed forces. The Army is providing each of its nine brigade combat teams with 20 additional AeroVironment Raven systems, for a total of 35 with plans to increase this to 45, says Maj. Jeff Poquette, assistant program manager for Army small UAVs.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A key test is slated next week leading up to a planned declaration of initial operational capability (IOC) for NATO ballistic missile defenses next spring, says Lt. Gen. Friedrich Ploeger, a German officer and deputy for NATO’s allied air command based in Germany.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Air Force is “rethinking” its approach toward acquiring the Joint Space Operations Center (Jspoc) Mission System (JMS), a U.S. Air Force project designed to build an integrated system for space situational awareness, threat characterization and command and control.
MOSCOW — Russia may soon field two similarly sized rockets under a proposal for a new medium-class launch vehicle. While Russia’s space industry has been working on the Angara launcher for some time, a competing proposal is emerging from RKK Energia, the Samara Space Center and GRT VP Makeev that advocates say will be more modern and efficient. The two-stage booster would have a liftoff mass of 669-682 metric tons.
