A heavy-lift version of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9 could enter the launch services marketplace in the next few years, offering commercial and government customers the long-sought $1,000 price to send a pound of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO).
NEW DELHI — After years of hesitancy, India is likely to take up with the newly elected Myanmar government the issue of increasing incidents of poachers sneaking in from the Southeast Asian country. “Poachers from Myanmar have set up hideouts in India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands and are increasingly preying on the fragile marine ecology,” says a senior naval officer of the archipelago.
IRAN AIR: U.S. lawmakers are looking at using aviation business ties to continue to try to squeeze Iran. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, are calling on the Obama administration to withhold pending licenses for the inspection and repair of 15 U.S.-made engines on Iranian aircraft until the regime there abandons its nuclear weapons program and support for terrorism. “There is no reason we should be helping the Iranians keep these planes in the air,” Sherman says.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Pratt & Whitney has updated progress on a four-point plan to help Lockheed Martin correct issues with the F-35B short take-off and vertical landing (Stovl) variant, development of which has been placed “on probation” by Pentagon leadership.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) is poised to complete development of the RS-68A, the most powerful hydrogen-fueled engine ever made, and this week will deliver the third flight test engine for integration into a Delta IV launch vehicle. “We’re just wrapping up 68A and held a design certification review in California with United Launch Alliance and the National Reconnaissance Office on March 31,” says PWR President Jim Maser. “We’ve built and tested the first three flight engines, we’ve delivered two.”
The U.S. Navy is through with making new molds for its warships and is looking for more production-line stability from its shipyards, according to Michael Petters, president and CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), the newly minted spin-off of the former Northrop Grumman shipbuilding units. “We’re entering a period now — and this could be most of the decade — where there’s not a whole lot of lead shipbuilding going on,” Petters said April 4 at a press briefing on the new company’s operations. “It’s a different mindset.”
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) will keep its ship composites construction facility in Gulfport, La., as part of its spin-off from Northrop Grumman, even as the company prepares to close its yard in Avondale, La., HII CEO and President Michael Petters says. No other facility can produce composite ship structures similar to the Gulfport facility, he says, and the company is banking that the U.S. Navy will continue to use composites in its vessels.
ARMY Alliant Techsystems Inc., Plymouth, Minn., was awarded on March 24 a $65,807,670 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the engineering and manufacturing development of the Counter Defilade Target Engagement System. The work will be performed in Plymouth, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 30, 2013. One bid was solicited with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., is the contracting activity (W91CRB-11-C-0024).
LONDON — The European Commission is asking for industry input into how to structure its new research funding mechanism, which aims to harmonize and simplify processes. The European research commissioner, Marie Geoghegan-Quinn, has issued a green paper for public consultation to help shape the common strategic framework (CSF) that will supplant the traditional Framework Program starting in 2014.
The U.S. branch of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) is expanding its online marketing operation to include entire satellites, with prices, technical details and sales information available at the click of a mouse in what is apparently a first for the satellite industry. Under the new arrangement, announced April 4, U.S. customers can order satellite buses online ranging from the $10 million SSTL-100 to the SSTL-600 at $36 million (with a deposit of $1.8 million required).
Space shuttle managers will delay launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for 10 days this month to avoid a conflict with a planned launch of a Russian Progress cargo carrier to the International Space Station. Originally set for April 19, the launch of Endeavour on the STS-134 mission now shifts to a window that opens at 3:47 p.m. EDT on April 29.
NEW DELHI — India and Saudi Arabia are enhancing their strategic partnership to improve defense ties. The two countries are also sketching out plans to conduct joint naval and military exercises to increase maritime cooperation and sharpen their defensive and offensive capabilities, a top diplomatic source tells Aviation Week.
LONDON — The U.K. agency critically linked to arms sales may be unable to meet export licensing demands, particularly as the government puts more emphasis on promoting such deals, a U.K. parliamentary report warns.
RAIDER: Aurora Flight Sciences is to design and build the composite airframes for Sikorsky’s two S-97 X2 Raider light tactical helicopter prototypes, which are scheduled to fly in 2014. Sikorsky is proposing the high-speed, coaxial-rotor Raider for the U.S. Army’s Armed Aerial Scout requirement to replace the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, and is building two prototypes using company and supplier independent research and development funds.
LONDON — Europe’s space sector received a shot in the arm April 4 with the European Commission’s (EC) release of a policy statement supporting the sector’s long-term ambitions and making “independent access to space” a cornerstone of the push. The statement could lead the EC to devise a space program this year, with a clearer path forward to emerge by June, depending on the input it receives from stakeholders. The program would become part of future multiyear funding.
NEW REALITY: Business spin-offs and divestitures — like Northrop Grumman’s recent shedding of its shipbuilding unit — will become even more prevalent among aerospace and defense (A&D) companies as they focus on rebalancing their portfolios during a period of slower organic growth, according to consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers’s A&D practice.
AIR FORCE United Launch Services, Littleton, Colo., is being awarded a $292,958,632 cost-plus-award-fee contract modification for an extension of the period of performance of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle launch capability contract by three months. The work will be performed at Littleton. The Space & Missile Systems Center, El Segundo, Calif., is the contracting activity (FA8816-06-C-0002-P00275). NAVY
ARMY The Boeing Co., Ridley Park, Penn., was awarded on March 28 a $528,125,000 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the procurement of 25 CH-47F (Chinook) new-build cargo helicopters. The work will be performed in Ridley Park, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 30, 2013. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-08-C-0098). NAVY
SOYUZ SCHEDULE: Flight trials are due to commence this year for the new light two-stage Soyuz-1 launch vehicle. The test program will last several years and include five launches. Soyuz-1 was derived from Soyuz-2-1b by removing a side booster and installing an NK-33-1 engine on the central module. The new modification will use the standard nose fairing of the Soyuz family. Soyuz-1 has a liftoff weight of 158 tons and will be able to orbit 2,800 kg (6,200 lb.) of payload.
The House Budget Committee chairman is preparing a government-wide proposal to trim the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. But lawmakers say Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who will announce his plan April 5, intends to do it largely without touching the Pentagon’s billions in fiscal 2012. That would be no small feat, indicates Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
LONDON — Violence shaking parts of the Middle East and Africa is raising concerns in the British Parliament about some of the arms shipments authorized by the government. In a report examining arms controls, a group of committees says “both the present government and its predecessor misjudged the risk that arms approved for export to certain authoritarian countries in North Africa and the Middle East might be used for internal repression.” The legislators endorsed the decisions made this year by the government to revoke several export licenses.
