HOUSTON — NASA’s four STS-135 astronauts marched through their last suited ascent simulations on June 16, lifting off four times in an integrated training session with their Johnson Space Center Mission Control team to test their readiness to tackle the shuttle program’s final flight, a 12-day supply mission to the International Space Station. The mission is scheduled for a July 8 liftoff at 11:38 a.m. EDT.
The U.S. Navy is finding more structural problems with its new Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). The service acknowledged June 17 that LCS-2—the USS Independence built by the subsidiary of Australia’s Austal and General Dynamics—“is experiencing galvanic corrosion and pitting in the area of the water jet propulsion ‘tunnel’ areas due to dissimilar metals.”
ST. CLOUD, France — Dassault Aviation is once again proposing the Heron TP unmanned aircraft to meet the French government’s near-term military needs in Afghanistan, either through a sale or fee-for-service arrangement.
As the U.S. Navy awaits its first dual-band radar (DBR) suite for the Ford-class aircraft carrier, there is some concern about just how well the sensor package will operate on its first deployment at sea later this decade. The DBR combines S-band and X-band radars to provide a larger and more enhanced defensive bubble for vessels. Navy officials consider it a steppingstone for its future Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) to provide ship and ballistic missile defense (BMD).
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) JUNE 20 - 26 — Paris Air Show, LeBourget, France. For more information go to www.paris-air-show.com June 27 - 30 — 3rd AIAA Atmospheric Space Environments Conference, Sheraton Waikiki and the Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, Ha. For more information go to http://www.aiaa.org
PARIS — As NASA puts the finishing touches on proposed hardware designs for a congressionally mandated space exploration program, the agency’s top official says U.S. companies should partner with European industry to develop it.
NEW DELHI — India is well on its way to creating a minimum credible nuclear deterrent, a senior defense official says. “There is a huge amount of work going on toward creating a credible minimal deterrence to ensure our adversaries don’t take us by surprise. We are way up and ahead of what we need to do in protecting the country,” says Air Vice Marshal K.J. Mathews, commander-in-chief of Strategic Forces Command.
Raytheon is considering rapid development and fielding of a range of non-kinetic warheads for anti-electronic and non-lethal warfare. If the plan matures, such warheads could eventually be fitted to the company’s existing arsenal of air-to-ground, air-to-air and, potentially, surface-to-space missiles. The effort is tied to Raytheon’s purchase of Ktech — a company with specialties in directed energy — that will be announced June 21 at the Paris air show.
The $100 billion U.S.-taxpayer investment in the International Space Station (ISS) could be lost if utilization of the orbiting laboratory is mishandled, the NASA official in charge of station utilization warns. Mark Uhran, assistant associate administrator for the ISS in the agency’s Space Operations mission directorate, told the Space Transportation Association Wednesday that the U.S. government could try to monopolize the station at the expense of the sort of basic research that could create a new economic engine in space.
Amid mounting evidence that its planned wireless broadband network will interfere with GPS, Reston, Va.-based LightSquared has requested and received a two-week extension to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) June 15 deadline for filing a report on the extent of the interference.
NEW CHIEF: Defense Secretary Robert Gates on June 16 recommended U.S. Navy Adm. Jonathan Greenert, currently vice chief of naval operations, to succeed Navy Adm. Gary Roughead as the next chief of naval operations. Roughead is retiring in the fall. Greenert’s career as a submariner includes assignments aboard the USS Flying Fish, USS Tautog, Submarine NR-1 and USS Michigan and as commander of USS Honolulu. He also served as commander of Submarine Squadron 11, U.S. Naval Forces Mariana, U.S. 7th Fleet in the Pacific and U.S.
Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) represent some of the best operational investment opportunities for the U.S. Navy, and the service could use UUVs to offset submarine fleet reductions, says Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations. “If we make the right decision on UUVs, we could perhaps absorb a smaller sub force structure,” Roughead said June 16 during an event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
With the defense budget being driven down by intense political and financial pressures, the U.S. Navy and Air Force are being forced to rationalize the number of manned special missions units they support and examine closely their operational communications and electronic intercept roles and missions with an eye to cutting capabilities in one of the services to eliminate redundancies.
In recent years, Oshkosh Corp. turned in a performance more resembling a high-tech startup than a 94-year-old truck builder from Wisconsin. Annual revenues rocketed to more than $9 billion last year from less than $2 billion in 2003, rising nearly 50% in 2010 alone, when Oshkosh reported an operating profit of $101,000 per employee – second-best among publicly traded companies in the global aerospace and defense industry.
LONDON — The lack of government spending in aerospace research and development (R&D) and the absence of new aerospace development programs at the Pentagon could erode industry design and development skills, warns Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Jim Albaugh. “What we’re seeing right now, with no new starts in the [Defense Department], is that we are losing our ability to do detailed design and we are losing our capability to transition engineering into production,” he tells the Royal Aeronautical Society.
2010 Leading Pentagon Rotary-Wing Contractors 2010 Leading Pentagon Rotary-Wing Contractors No. Contractor Number Of Contracts Or Modifications Total Amount For All Transactions Amount Per Transaction 1 Bell Helicopter Textron
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — This week’s test to verify a modification to space shuttle Atlantis’ fuel tank ended up revealing a leaky valve in one of the shuttle’s main engines, a problem that would have remained latent until launch day, prompting a scrub.
This week’s Australian acquisition of U.S. Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopters through the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales program — the first-ever procurement of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare helicopter outside the United States — highlights the growing importance of Pentagon-related rotary-wing acquisitions.
NASA has selected a shuttle-derived vehicle with two existing liquid-oxygen/liquid-hydrogen stages as its reference design for the heavy-lift Space Launch System that Congress has ordered it to build for exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit, but it will hold a competition between liquid- and solid-fuel boosters to get it off the pad.
BEIJING — Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin will supply Australia with 24 MH-60R Seahawk naval helicopters after winning a competition that may boost their chances in Malaysia and South Korea. Citing the MH-60R’s adoption by the U.S. Navy, higher value for money and lower risk, Australia has rejected the NH Industries NFH, which offered great commonality with the MRH90 battlefield transport helicopters being delivered to the Australian army.
A Defense Science Board (DSB) report on early missile intercept is already prompting discussion on Capitol Hill over how U.S. strategic forces are funded. The Obama administration is pursuing the European Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense, which by 2020 would develop the SM-3 Block IIB interceptor to protect the U.S. and Europe against long-range missiles from North Korea and Iran. In April, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon each won concept definition and program planning awards worth at least $41 million.
LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Air Force and X-51A industry team members are studying data to determine why an inlet problem resulted in the failure of the program’s second hypersonic research test flight over the Pacific on June 13.
2010 Leading Pentagon Tracked Combat Vehicle Contractors 2010 Leading Pentagon Tracked Combat Vehicle Contractors No. Contractor Number Of Contracts Or Modifications Total Amount ForAll Transactions Amount Per Transaction 1 International
