NEW DELHI — The U.S. Ambassador to India is hailing India’s decision to buy 10 Boeing C-17 aircraft for $4.1 billion, saying the procurement will would boost ties between the countries and sustain 23,000 American jobs. “This sale captures the mutual benefits of the U.S.-India global partnership. For India, the sale adds strategic and humanitarian muscle to its defense needs,” outgoing U.S. Ambassador Timothy Roemer said in a statement last week.
ARMY AeroVironment Inc., Monrovia, Calif., was awarded on June 6 a $13,113,191 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the modification of an existing contract to confirm Puma unmanned aircraft systems training and contractor logistics support. The work will be performed in Simi Valley, Calif., and Kandahar, Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 14, 2011. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-11-C-0004).
GREEN GREENLIGHT: A new specification allowing use of bio-derived jet fuel in aircraft is expected to be released in August, following approval by a key committee at standards-development organization ASTM International. The approval will allow biofuels from feedstocks such as camelina, jatropha and algae to be combined with conventional jet fuel in blends up to 50%. ASTM has begun work on a third specification for biofuels derived from alcohols produced from cellulosic feedstocks.
The June 10 story headlined “Pentagon Nominee Panetta Hints At Contractor Cost-Sharing” included the wrong party affiliation for Sen. Rob Portman, who is a Republican. Also, due to a publishing error, the story did not contain corrected versions of two quotes. While the gist of the quotes remains the same, some of the words were different. They have been corrected on the Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN).
Orbital Sciences Corp. will build the next communications satellite for Thaicom plc., a medium-sized hybrid platform set for launch in the second quarter of 2013 on a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9. The regional telecommunications satellite operator, based in Nonthaburi, Thailand, will buy a satellite based on Orbital’s GEOStar-2 platform, equipped with 18 C-band and eight Ku-band transponders, according to the companies. It will be launched on a Falcon 9 flying from Cape Canaveral AFS.
Defense budgets are under the microscope. Business aircraft sales are weak. Fuel prices threaten airlines. So, do tough times spur expansion? Yes, says the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), which has seen a 50% growth rate in its full membership ranks since January 2010. That expansion, which included eight new members accepted in May, reflects an attitude among aerospace and defense (A&D) companies that there is strength in numbers.
NOT SO FAST: A coalition of U.S. trade groups representing most aerospace and defense contractors are calling on the Obama administration to stop using accelerated rulemaking procedures so frequently. In a letter to the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy, the trade groups argue that the quick rulemaking contradicts the administration’s calls for governmental transparency.
ARMY BAE Systems Land & Armaments, LP, York, Pa., was awarded on June 3 an $11,598,005 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the modification of an existing contract to procure Paladin integrated management ballistic hull and turrets. The work will be performed in York, with an estimated completion date of April 30, 2012. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-09-C-0550).
The relatively aggressive testing schedule for the SPY-3 radar changes on the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer class radar suite will require the U.S. Navy to test those enhancements on a ship instead of further using a facility at Wallops Island, Va., specially built for such Zumwalt tests, Navy officials say.
KILLER APP: The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is migrating its Enhanced Quality Imagery Search (Equis) capability into commercial-off-the-shelf handheld devices like iPhones and Androids to give troops in the field instant access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s unclassified imagery. Equis Mobile has been in use since last November, and has received “extremely favorable reviews” from users, the NRO says.
LONDON — The Watchkeeper unmanned aircraft program is one of the first to come under scrutiny from the U.K. Defense Ministry’s Major Projects Review Board, which was created to help monitor large-scale defense modernization programs in a bid to avoid cost overruns and schedule delays.
Lockheed Martin has forfeited $15 million in an available award fee for the liquid apogee engine (LAE) mishap that has caused the U.S. Air Force’s first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) jam-proof communications satellite to take more than one year to reach its intended orbit.
NEW DELHI — Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace expects to start developing a new hypersonic missile, the BrahMos-2, this year. Also, tests for the air-launched version of the existing BrahMos supersonic cruise missile are scheduled to begin next year. “We expect to be able to start the tests of BrahMos missiles launched from aircraft. Various types of aircraft, including Su-30 MKI fighters, are expected to be armed with these missiles,” says BrahMos Aerospace Director Alexander Maksichev.
HOUSTON — The European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle Johannes Kepler boosted the International Space Station (ISS) by more than a dozen miles on June 12, setting the stage for the freighter’s departure as well as the arrivals of Russia’s Progress 43 cargo carrier and the shuttle Atlantis on its 12-day STS-135 mission.
The White House’s new cyber-doctrine says the U.S. will use all means to defend itself, but nobody knows what events will actually merit a response, say specialists with insight into the world of network warfare. Two decades of debate on the subject have not brought the U.S. or anyone else in the world any closer to codifying or regulating the cyber-frontier, says Judith Miller, former general counsel for the Defense Department. She spoke during a Global Security Forum sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies.
LONDON — Downward pressure on U.K. research and technology (R&T) funding for aerospace is persisting, with concerns mounting within the industry over an ability to reverse the trend. Although research and development spending was largely flat in 2010 compared with 2009 levels, total R&T spending was down 1%.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is conducting a planned revision of its Integrated Master Test Plan (IMTP), a comprehensive document outlining test goals for years to come. The first IMTP was unveiled last August by MDA Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly during the annual Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville, Ala.
