SUBSIDY SHOWDOWN: International Launch Services is filing a complaint with the European Commission over European Space Agency (ESA) aid to its competitor, Arianespace, and may take the case to the World Trade Organization. Frank McKenna, president of the Reston, Va.-based launch services company, argues the European Guaranteed Access to Space program has pumped more than €1 billion ($1.4 billion) into Arianespace since 2003.
GULFPORT, Miss. — As Northrop Grumman was preparing for the March 24 christening of the amphibious transport dock ship LPD-24 Arlington, the company also was putting together the mast for the LPD-25 using the same fabric of composite materials that not only make the LPD unique but, company officials say, represent the future of U.S. Navy shipbuilding.
New guidelines from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) provide a step-by-step guide to ensure that members continue to play a role in saying how taxpayer dollars are spent on military gear despite bans on earmarks. HASC Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) issued the how-to as part of the committee’s procedure for developing the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill. It shows members how to file a budgetary legislative proposal.
FAREWELL VOYAGE: The March 26 christening of the LPD-24 Arlington marks the last major shipbuilding event for Northrop Grumman, which on April 1 becomes Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII). It is interesting to note that HII will be a much different breed than shipbuilders were before Northrop got involved more than a decade ago. What once was a group of disparate companies will be joined under a single corporate tribe in a way the units never were previously, even under Northrop’s rule.
BENGALURU, India — Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony wants the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) to improve its human resources (HR) management. “Effective HR policies are the key to a dynamic, vibrant and futuristic organization,” Antony said March 25. “DRDO’s top management must lead by example and maintain transparency and fairness at all levels. DRDO personnel at all levels must be given equal opportunities in matters pertaining to career progression and training.”
LONDON — Faced with the prospect of flattening or even declining revenue in the coming years as combat operations in Afghanistan start winding down, Chemring is looking to expand its international footprint. The company says it is now in “advanced” talks with India’s Hinduja Group about establishing a joint venture. The business would try to bring Chemring products to the Indian defense and security customer.
Collaboration between students and industry on a project to improve the accuracy of hypersonic engine testing is moving forward with the unveiling at the University of Virginia (UVa.) of a full-scale mock-up of a scramjet experiment to be flown in 2012. Graduate and undergraduate students at UVa.’s School of Engineering and Applied Science are working with faculty and industry on the Hy-V program to ground- and flight-test a scramjet to develop improved methods of testing hypersonic engines.
A powder vibration system that will be used on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has been selected as the agency’s 2010 Commercial Invention of the Year. Developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center and commercialized by inXitu Inc. of Campbell, Calif., the system is used in X-ray diffraction (XRD) instruments and has the particular distinction of being portable.
MISSING OUT: Despite a host of hypotheses about the absence of the Lockheed Martin F-22 in the air war over Libya, the U.S. Air Force says the answer is simple. The aircraft were not in the right place at the right time. “Because of the speed upon which the operations came together with our coalition partners, [Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn] needed to look realistically at the fighter assets already within Europe to execute operations,” according to officials on the Joint Task Force.
pErsonal attackS: Electronic, cyber and information attacks are part of the assault on Libyan government forces loyal to dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Communications and radar are being jammed. Networks are being exploited. And some senior Libyans are receiving personal messages similar to emails sent during the 2003 Iraq invasion that instructed senior commanders on how to surrender to coalition forces. Key units for electronic infiltration would be the 32nd and 9th Special Brigades under Gadhafi’s personal command. The U.S.
The ongoing budget impasse in the U.S. Congress is starting to have an effect on NASA’s plans, including the joint Mars missions the agency is mounting with its European counterpart. “We have already started taking things off the table,” Administrator Charles Bolden told a lunchtime meeting of the Space Transportation Association March 25.
BENGALURU, India — The navies of India and Singapore concluded the week-long Singapore Indian Maritime Bilateral Exercise (Simbex) on March 25. The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) hosted this year’s exercise; last year it was the Indian navy’s turn. Simbex began as a training-oriented anti-submarine warfare event in 1994 and has grown since then. The exercise comprised a shore phase held at the Changi Naval Base and a sea phase in the South China Sea, according to an Indian navy spokesperson.
WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, Va. — Orbital Sciences Corp. is on track — with “a limited amount of slack” — to fly its new Taurus II launch vehicle in September on a risk-reduction mission. The first flight main stage is on a ship en route from the KB Yuzhnoye factory in Ukraine to the new Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) here, where it will be mated with its ATK Castor 30A upper stage and Cygnus cargo capsule.
HYPERSONIC HITCH: The U.S. Air Force is rescheduling the launch attempt of the second X-51A hypersonic test vehicle after unspecified issues forced controllers to abort a planned drop test from an Air Force Flight Test Center B-52H on March 24. The aircraft took off from Edwards AFB, Calif., carrying the under-wing-mounted X-51A shortly before 9 a.m. PDT and flew as planned to the designated launch area over the U.S. Navy Point Mugu Sea Range.
BENGALURU, India — India’s Cabinet Committee on Security has cleared the indigenous Akash Missile System (AMS) for service with the Indian army, which plans an initial order worth $3.1 billion. Dr. Prahlada, chief controller for Aeronautics & Services Interaction at the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), tells Aviation Week that the initial army order will be for two regiments — approximately 2,000 missiles.
HOVERING: The U.S. Navy Department’s renewed VXX presidential helicopter replacement program “is likely still years away from establishing its business case,” congressional auditors tell lawmakers. VXX is in its “earliest” stages and nearing completion of the materiel solution analysis phase, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says.
MONEY FLOW: The Pentagon’s new baseline budget for fiscal 2012-15 is $50 billion lower than last year’s plan, with cuts in operations and maintenance (O&M) and procurement making up most of the difference, according to financial analysts. The Defense Department released the so-called Green Book, another name for the baseline Future Year Defense Plan , on March 24. According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts, research, development, testing and evaluation actually increased $8 billion.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Mar. 29 - 31 — Infotech@Aerospace 2011, Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch, St. Louis, Mo. For more information go to http://www.aiaa.org/ Mar. 29 - 31 — 49th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium, Greenbelt, Marriott, Greenbelt Md. For more information call 703-866-0020, fax 703-866-3526 or go to www.astronautical.org
TROUBLE AHEAD: The U.S. is entering a period of discontinuity in its defense planning that future historians may see as a planning crisis, according to Rand Corp. The think tank says the causes are technology diffusion that is leveling aspects of the military playing field, as well as geostrategic changes and the range of potential adversaries. The Rand report’s authors, Paul Davis and Peter Wilson, see these as leading to (1) increasingly difficult force projection in some important circumstances; (2) a related block obsolescence of U.S.
MOSCOW — Russia is hoping upgrades to its Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopter that are now undergoing flight trials will help secure an Indian contract now out for competition. The Mi-26T2 is up against Boeing’s CH-47F Chinook in the effort to supply helicopters to the Indian air force. The order is expected to be for 15 rotorcraft.
SUNK COSTS: The chief of naval operations, U.S. Navy Adm. Gary Roughead, says the relatively sudden operations in Japan and Libya are not yet weighing on his service financially, largely because ships were already in place and weapons inventory previously planned. “Those costs are sunk for me, I’m already paying for that, in fact,” Roughead told defense reporters March 23 in Washington. “We don’t surge and we don’t ride to the sound of the guns — we’re there,” the CNO says.
The head of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is blasting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s decision to “pre-empt” Congress and stop work on the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine for the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter.
With a battery of successful ballistic missile defense (BMD) tests in its wake, the guided missile cruiser USS Monterey steamed into the Mediterranean Sea earlier this month equipped with its Aegis defense system and, analysts say, under a new set of orders for a U.S. Navy ship — provide BMD protection for U.S. allies against growing nuclear powers in the region.
