To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Aug. 16 - 18 — Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International North America 2011, Washington Convention Center. For more information call 703-845-9671 ext. 213, or go to www.symposium.auvsi.org/auvsi11/public/enter.aspx Aug. 16 - 21 — MAKS - International Aviation & Space Salon MAKS 2011, Zhukovsky, Russia. For more information go to www.aviasalon.com/en/
The newly negotiated contract between the Ingalls Shipbuilding unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) and the U.S. Navy for the DDG-113 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer includes provisions that take into account a half-decade gap in building the vessel type as well as the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina on the yard, HII CEO Michael Petters says.
More than a year of in-space testing has demonstrated that a nontoxic “green” thruster technology developed in Sweden is spaceworthy, with better head-to-head performance than hydrazine, according to a paper presented this week at the Conference on Small Satellites in Utah.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s ministry of national defense (MND) caused a sensation during the preview of the 2011 Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition by displaying a billboard depicting an aircraft carrier, similar to China’s former Soviet ship Varyag, being blown up by a Taiwanese Hsiung Feng III anti-ship cruise missile.
Wall Street analysts say they see defense industry spin-offs and other divestitures growing as investors are likely to keep pushing for the release of slower-growing businesses.
LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) are assessing data from today’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) test flight to establish why telemetry was lost during the mission.
A major hurdle to the U.S. military in preventing or deterring cyberattacks has been a prohibition against the use of offensive cyber- and electronic-attack weapons, but those barriers are being defined and some may be removed.
Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Newport News Shipbuilding unit should meet its overall cost-and-schedule targets for the U.S. Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford despite recently acknowledged potential overruns on the ship’s current design-and-construction contract, HII CEO Michael Petters says. “We remain committed to the financial targets,” Petters told Wall Street investment analysts during the company’s Aug. 11 conference call to detail second-quarter financial results. “The targets on this ship have not changed.”
GHOST STORY: Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Ghost electrically powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) mini-UAV is making its debut at next week’s Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Washington. Weighing 9 lb., the tandem-rotor autonomous aircraft can fly for up to 30 min. on battery power and is designed for low noise and ease of use in urban warfare and special operations. IAI also has developed the Panther family of tilt-prop small VTOL UAVs.
The June 9 test-stand fire that ruined one of the two rocket engines scheduled to power the first flight of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus II launch vehicle was caused by kerosene fuel leaking from a 40-year-old manifold manufactured in the former Soviet Union.
HOUSTON — NASA is paying too much to educate civil servants and contract employees by failing to seek the best academic value, set financial limits or seek future service commitments from workers, as well as by allowing reimbursements for academic credits earned for prior experience, according to an audit by agency Inspector General Paul Martin.
LONDON — The U.K. aims to complete its defense reforms by April 2013, according to Jon Day, second permanent secretary for defense. The initiative is born of a report produced by the Defense Reform Unit headed by Peter Levene and largely embraced by Defense Secretary Liam Fox. The changes are part of a larger restructuring effort to help the U.K. cure problems in its military spending and management system.
Despite the hopes of U.S. defense industry advocates to stave off steep cuts to the Pentagon, the military-minded have scant representation so far on a new 12-member congressional panel charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction this year. But that is not to say congressional military policy-making committees were completely shut out.
The U.S. Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford could exceed the current contract’s price by about 11%, Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) officials confirm. The Navy now has a $5.2 billion design-and-construction contract with the Newport News Shipbuilding unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) for the carrier, which features a reconfigured and redesigned Nimitz-class hull. But the company may exceed that amount by about $562 million, Navsea confirms.
NEW YORK — EADS remains interested in making defense acquisitions in the U.S., but high prices and uncertainty over future budgets could stand in the way. While the European aerospace giant has made several major purchases this year – including a recently announced $960 million deal to buy mobile satellite services provider Vizada – it has yet to pull the trigger on a big acquisition that would move it closer to the goal of increasing its U.S. revenues sevenfold to $10 billion annually by 2020.
HOUSTON — Plant and bacteria strains demonstrated early signs of a beneficial relationship called biological nitrogen fixation during NASA’s final space shuttle mission — a finding that could lead to significant contributions to the recycling of air, water and food within colonies on the Moon and Mars, researchers with Qinetiq North America announced Aug. 9.
Spacebel, a software engineering company based in Liege, Belgium, will negotiate with the government of Vietnam to build its second small Earth-observation satellite. The Vietnam Natural Resources Environment and Disaster monitoring small Satellite (VNREDSat) program selected Spacebel for the task after the Vietnamese government gave the go-ahead for a second satellite, designated VNREDSat-1B.
LONDON — In a bid to increase Australian companies’ workshare on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Australian government is making A$8.2 million ($8.5 million) available as a financing crutch for local companies and research establishments. The money is being provided through the so-called New Air Combat Capability Industry Support Program, the Australian defense department says. Funding is being made available through 2014.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is gaining confidence that an unmanned aircraft carrying electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors can plug a gap in data on ballistic missile threats early in their flight. MDA has conducted 10 experiments using the Airborne Infrared (ABIR) UAV, including the General Atomics Reaper outfitted with the Raytheon MTS-B sensor, according to Rick Lehner, the agency’s spokesman. There are three questions facing the ABIR project, he says: • Do forward-based airborne sensors enhance earlier target intercept goals?
NO-FLY ZONE: The F-35 Joint Program Office authorized a return to ground operations for developmental Joint Strike Fighter test aircraft on Aug. 10 after a weeklong suspension of ground- and flight tests. The grounding followed the Aug. 2 failure of an integrated power package (IPP) that caused a fire in test aircraft AF-4. The fire was contained by an onboard fire-suppression system. “Preliminary root cause indicates that a control valve did not function properly, which led to the IPP failure,” says Joe Dellavedova, program office spokesman.
LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Air Force confirms it will attempt the second flight of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) from Space Launch Complex 8 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Aug. 10 at 7 a.m. PDT.
