LONDON — The Eurofighter consortium is taking steps to prepare integration of the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation (HARM) missile on the Typhoon fighter. The preliminary work will help support Typhoon’s export campaign in India, which has expressed interest in the suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) weapon. Typhoon is competing against the Dassault Aviation Rafale to win India’s Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft program.
Leading Pentagon Logistic Support Services Contractors In 2010 No. Contractor Number Of Contracts Or Modifications Total Amount Obligated For Transactions Amount Per Transaction 1 Kellogg Brown And Root Services 328
AIR FORCE The Boeing Co., Long Beach, Calif., is being awarded a $195,700,000 firm-fixed-price delivery order against the basic C-17 production contract to procure one C-17 aircraft. This effort supports 100% foreign military sales to the government of Australia. The location of performance is Long Beach. ASC/WLMK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8614-06-D-2006 DO 0008).
CLIMB ABOARD: The German defense ministry will place technology payloads on the civilian Heinrich Hertz wideband technology demonstrator satellite under a new agreement between the ministry and the German aerospace research center (DLR). The pre-definition phase for the geostationary satellite is due to be completed this year, with a current launch forecast for 2016. Heinrich Hertz is intended to bolster German payload and satellite bus technologies. The exact nature of the military-hosted payloads has not been defined at this point.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — With little fanfare, the Kennedy Space Center shuttle launch team gathered at 1 p.m. July 5 to begin the 135th and last countdown for a shuttle launch, aiming to get Atlantis and its four-member crew off the ground at 11:26 a.m. EDT on July 8. “The team gets into the mode of ‘This is launch countdown,’ and that’s really the focus that everybody has,” says NASA test director Jeremy Graeber. “To do it one more time is a great feeling.”
NEW DELHI — India will test fire an air-launched variant of the supersonic Brahmos cruise missile before the end of 2012, “so that it can be inducted into the Indian air force,” says Brahmos Aerospace CEO A. Sivathanu Pillai. Various types of aircraft, including Sukhoi Su-30 MKI fighters, are expected to be armed with these missiles. Brahmos already has been inducted into the army and the navy. The submarine-based version will have the same capabilities as earlier variants and be designed to strike at both land and sea targets.
LONDON — British legislators appear to be tiring of the U.K. Defense Ministry’s persistent equipment mismanagement, with a new report highlighting billions of pounds worth of equipment that cannot be properly accounted for. The report, made public July 5, is only the latest in a string of rebukes of the ministry issued in recent years by Parliament’s defense committee. The new assessment finds that the ministry has lost track of the existence or condition of £6.3 billion ($10.14 billion) of equipment, including £184 million worth of radios.
HOUSTON — NASA Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who supervises a much-diminished corps of U.S. space explorers, envisions some modest recruiting in the post-shuttle era to keep the International Space Station adequately staffed with Americans and support the development of NASA’s Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. The agency also will offer the assistance of members of the astronaut corps to developers of new commercial orbital transportation services – if they want NASA’s help.
On paper, getting business professionals to manage logistics and related support services seems like a good idea. But as a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) investigation shows, the plan can turn into a disaster if government contracting officials are unable to properly supervise those deals. At issue is the Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command’s (Amcom) parts and related logistics contracts with Boeing for Apache and Chinook helicopters (Aerospace DAILY, July 29).
GOOD WORK: NASA is striving to document Commercial Crew Development 2 advances among its latest grant recipients with a new bimonthly, electronic online newsletter, “NASA’s Return on Investment Report.” “We’re only 60 days into CCDev 2, and their progress is right on schedule,” according to an upbeat assessment from Phil McAlister, NASA’s acting director, commercial spaceflight development, on the agency’s efforts to foster multiple commercial crew orbital transportation services.
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan will get to call on unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) to help carry their loads under a $975,000 demonstration contract awarded to Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Army’s Project Workhorse.
In observance of the U.S. Independence Day holiday, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not publish an issue dated July 5. The next issue will be dated Wednesday, July 6.
JSF TESTING: After lagging through much of 2010, flight testing of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter significantly exceeded plans for the first six months of this year, with aircraft logging around 450 flights versus an aim of 378. Test points accomplished in the first half of 2011 exceeded 3,350, versus a goal of 2,996. All three variants surpassed test plans, with the previously problematic short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35B logging 170 flights and 1,572 test points through June 28 against plans for 138 and 1,072, respectively.
Questions about the survivability of the U.S. Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) are still dogging the program and remain a potential concern for lawmakers, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation raised LCS survivability issues in its annual report released publicly earlier this year, saying “LCS is not expected to be survivable in terms of maintaining a mission capability in a hostile combat environment.”
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) JULY 13 - 14 — Military Airlift Asia Pacific, Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, Singapore. For more information go to http://www.smi-online.co.uk/militaryairliftasiapac58.asp JULY 21 - 22 — Practical Aeronautics Short Courses: “Introduction to Jet Engines—A Practical Perspective,” Ohio Aerospace Institute, Cleveland, Ohio. For more information call 970-887-3155 or go to www.practicalaero.com
PARIS — Avionics supplier Rockwell Collins consistently registers one of the highest rates of internal R&D investment in the aerospace and defense industry. But CEO Clay Jones, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, answers emphatically in the negative when asked if defense contractors should pony up more of their own money for cutting-edge research to offset declines in government funding. “There is no argument to be made in this environment for pure company-funded R&D to sell into military markets,” he says.
SINGAPORE — The Southeast Asian kingdom of Brunei has a long-standing requirement for transport/armed helicopters to replace its Bell 212s, which explains why AgustaWestland, Bell Helicopter, Eurocopter and Sikorsky are all exhibiting at the Brunei Darussalam International Defense Exhibition on July 6-9. The air force has 10 212s, according to U.S. consultancy Forecast International, and an industry executive familiar with the helicopter competition says the country plans to purchase at least 10 helicopters to replace the 212s.
