Boeing has stopped work on its $323 million intelligence aircraft contract for the U.S. Army and losing bidder L-3 Communications has joined Northrop Grumman in protesting the service’s recent source selection. Boeing received its stop-work order Dec. 15 following the Dec. 14 protest filed by Northrop Grumman to the Army’s Enhanced Medium-Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (Emarss) contract (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 16). L-3 filed its protest Dec. 15.
DEFENSE UPDATE: Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith expects that an update to the country’s Defense Capability Program, the public list of major equipment acquisitions, will be published by Dec. 25, the Christmas holiday. “That will give a good indication as to where we are so far as about 150 projects are concerned,” Smith told reporters Dec. 14 at Parliament House. The announcement came as officials fielded questions on the country’s ability to budget and pay for planned programs.
The General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter program looked increasingly vulnerable Dec. 15 when efforts to prolong the controversial program appeared to be losing steam in Congress.
India’s Tejas Light Combat Aircraft successfully dropped the first bomb at the Defense Research and Development Organization’s (DRDO) new test range at Challakere, 100 mi. northwest of Bengaluru, on Dec. 15. With this test, the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) of DRDO has become operational and will be henceforth used by various aeronautical system developers in India.
PARIS — An aircraft engine demonstrator and technologies for a new medium-lift helicopter are among the projects set to benefit from the first stage of a €35 billion ($46 billion) French government bond issue intended to help stimulate the country’s sputtering economy. The program, presented in late 2009 and approved by the parliament in midyear, recently moved into the implementation phase, and 30 work package proposals have already been submitted, according to Rene Ricol, the government’s commissar for public investment.
BENGALURU, India — India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has unveiled a road map to tap the immense potential of nanotechnology, including a Rs 600 crore ($133.3 million) nano foundry to be established in either Bangalore or Hyderabad, in partnership with the country’s premier academic institutions. India already has a Rs 1,500 crore ($333 million) national program for nanotechnology, launched through various science and technology centers.
The Pentagon’s most recent per-unit target price for the conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is $111.6 million, according to program officials. The target price for the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) version, which has encountered the most challenging technical and testing problems, is $109.4 million, the F-35 Joint Program Office says. And the target cost for the most expensive variant — the carrier version (CV) — is $142.9 million, officials say.
NEW DELHI — A U.S. company has shown interest in an explosive detection kit (EDK) developed by India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), and a technology transfer agreement is likely to be signed soon, DRDO says. The EDK costs $100 and was developed by the DRDO’s High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (Hemrl) in Pune. It comes packed in a small box containing four reagents capable of detecting explosives even in trace quantities.
M7 Aerospace, which supports Gulfstream C-20s and Shorts C-23s in U.S. military service, has been acquired by the U.S. subsidiary of Israeli defense company Elbit Systems for $85 million in cash. San Antonio -based M7 also supports the Fairchild Merlin and Metro, ATR 42 and 72, Dornier 328 and Shorts 360 turboprop regional aircraft. The acquisition will boost Elbit Systems of America’s ability to provide contractor logistics support, avionics upgrades and special-mission modifications for U.S. military aircraft, the Israeli company says.
LCS LAWMAKING: The U.S. House on Dec. 15 approved by voice vote a bill that would allow the U.S. Navy to continue with its new Littoral Combat Ship acquisition plan, despite misgivings by some lawmakers over yet another dramatic change to the cornerstone program. If enacted, the bill changes the Fiscal 2010 defense authorization act to reflect a purchase of 20 LCSs versus the 10 ships under the original law, as well as other changes. The bill passed by anonymous voice vote and would need to pass the Senate verbatim before heading to the White House for signing.
HOUSTON — A Russian Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Dec. 15, initiating a five-month expedition to the International Space Station that will feature a flurry of multinational cargo mission activities intended to prepare the orbiting lab for the approaching retirement of NASA’s space shuttle fleet.
MODEST PROPOSAL: On the heels of last week’s successful Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Demonstration 1 flight for NASA, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has raised the prospect of combining the Falcon 9/Dragon Demonstration 2 and 3 International Space Station rendezvous and berthing missions into a single test flight by mid-2011. Although NASA is assessing Musk’s proposal, the next SpaceX demonstration mission is unlikely before midsummer, says Josh Byerly, a NASA COTS program spokesman.
The U.S. aerospace industry is recovering faster than expected from the global economic downturn, but future growth will hinge on companies’ ability to capture more overseas business as the Pentagon’s budgets are constrained, according to the Aerospace Industries Association’s (AIA) annual forecast.
California firefighters may get some help battling blazes under a five-year agreement that NASA Ames Research Center and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Calfire) have signed to use imaging technology developed at Ames that helps fire bosses keep track of the front lines of fires, regardless of smoke.
ANOTHER MISS: The Boeing Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system once again failed in an attempt to intercept a complex ballistic missile target deploying countermeasures fired from the Kwajalein Atoll, according to U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) officials. The Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) was fired from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. This flight was designed as a re-do of a failed January trial. During the Dec. 15 test, the Sea-Based X-Band radar and other sensors performed nominally and the GBI’s Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle deployed, according to MDA.
BEIJING — Chinese space contractor CASC has taken a Bolivian order for a communications satellite based on the DFH-4 bus of subsidiary CAST. The TKSat-1 satellite will be fitted with 30 transponders and launched from the Xichang base in Sichuan by a Long March 3B or 3E rocket from another CASC subsidiary, CALT, according to China Great Wall Industry Corp., the group’s international sales agency.
NEW DEHLI — As the Indian aerospace industry eyes significant business in defense offsets required of foreign providers to India’s military, there are calls to make the technology licensing policies more flexible.
PARIS — Thales Alenia Space (TAS) will supply the payload for a second communications spacecraft planned by Empresa Argentina de Soluciones Satelitales (Arsat). Arsat-2 is to be launched in 2013 to 81 deg. W. Long., where it will provide data, phone and broadcasting services to South and North America. The 3-metric-ton, 3.4-kw. bird will carry four C-band and 12 Ku-band transponders.
Northrop Grumman on Dec. 15 filed a protest of the U.S. Army’s November decision to award a $323 million intelligence aircraft contract to Boeing. Company officials declined to say on what grounds they are protesting. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which adjudicates contractor protests, must render a decision by March 14.
PARIS — The U.S. Export-Import (ExIm) Bank says it has agreed to provide a $171.5-million direct loan to SES S.A. for construction of a new Mexican satellite. The spacecraft was ordered from Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) in early 2009 to serve a Mexican startup, QuetzSat, set up by SES and local partners to provide fixed satellite service capacity for the Mexican and U.S. market. QuetzSat-1 will be launched in 2011 to 77 deg. W. Long., a position granted to QuetzSat in 2005 by the Mexican government.
LONDON — Ecuador is buying 12 former South African Cheetah-C fighters. Under the terms of the deal, Denel Aviation, the producer of the Mirage III derivative, will provide maintenance support for five years, with options for an extension. Talks about the sale of the mothballed aircraft — they were removed from service in 2008 — have been underway since last year. An Ecuadorian team went to South Africa in April to inspect the single-seat aircraft.
New Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) proposals have cut per-ship costs by a third or more of what the finished vessels have cost the U.S. Navy so far, according to figures provided to lawmakers Dec. 14 by Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. The proposed average costs for the LCS ships are running between $440 million and $460 million per vessel, Stackley testified during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington.
