FIRST POSEIDON: The U.S. Navy’s first Boeing 737-based P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft will begin operational test and evaluation at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., following a ferry flight from Boeing Field in Seattle. T1, the first P-8, will be flown by the Poseidon integrated test team (ITT) comprising Navy Air Test and Evaluation Sqdns. VX-1 and VX-20 as well as Boeing. The aircraft is assigned to airworthiness testing while T2, which is expected to arrive from Seattle in the next month, will be used for mission systems tests.
HOUSTON — Spacewalking astronauts started a coolant tank exchange, retrieved a science experiment and replaced a rate gyro assembly outside the International Space Station early April 9. Rick Mastracchio and Clay Anderson, two of seven astronauts from the shuttle Discovery, plan spacewalks early April 11 and 13 to finish the task of replacing a 1,700 pound ammonia coolant tank positioned on the station’s right side truss. Friday’s six-and-a-half-hour outing drew to a close just before 8 a.m., EDT.
NASA’s Constellation Program, although facing cancellation, is moving ahead with the development of key technologies, including a sophisticated Launch Abort System for the Orion capsule that could be used by commercial crew transportation services or a follow-on government spacecraft. The steerable life-saving system is scheduled for its first test flight on May 6, at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
T-50 TESTING: A second Sukhoi T-50 prototype is expected to join the test flight program before the end of this year, following the delivery of the first prototype of the fifth-generation fighter and a ground test airframe to the Gromov Flight Test Center in Zhukovsky near Moscow last week. Six flights of the T-50-1 were carried out from the Sukhoi production site in Komsomolsk prior to the aircraft being moved by Antonov An-124 to Zhukovsky. The T-50 design is intended to meet the Russian air force’s requirement for a next-generation fighter, known as PAK FA.
LONDON — Three U.S. military personnel and a civilian have died in the first crash of a U.S. Air Force Special Operations CV-22 tiltrotor. The cause of the accident has not been determined yet, according to a statement issued by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, which runs much of the military campaign in Afghanistan.
The U.S. Air Force is planning to trim its buy of C-5 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) kits made by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics by 20 aircraft, indicating the service is likely to retire 20 aircraft if approved by Congress. The Pentagon’s April 2 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) is the first public acknowledgment of the reduction in C-5 AMP numbers (Aerospace DAILY, April 5). The Air Force had sought to retire some of its oldest C-5s to save money for maintenance.
(Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) April 12 - 15 — 26th Annual National Logistics Conference & Exhibition, Hyatt Regency, Miami, Fla. For more information go to www.ndia.org/meetings/0730 April 13 - 15 — 11th Annual Science and Engineering Technology Conference/DoD Tech Expo, “Enabling Technologies to Fight Current & Future Conflicts,” For more information go to www.exhibits.ndia.org
DRY DOCK: The USS Hawaii, the first U.S. Navy Pacific fleet Virginia-class submarine to go into dry dock at Pearl Harbor, will undergo routine inspection and maintenance in the shipyard until early May. The shipyard has been researching, planning and training for dry-docking the subs since June 2008. Virginia-class submarines present unique challenges that make docking them more complicated than Los Angeles-class ships, requiring a special project team that was dedicated to dry-docking the Hawaii.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) April 12 - 15 — 26th Annual National Logistics Conference & Exhibition, Hyatt Regency, Miami, Fla. For more information go to www.ndia.org/meetings/0730 April 13 - 15 — 11th Annual Science and Engineering Technology Conference/DoD Tech Expo, “Enabling Technologies to Fight Current & Future Conflicts,” For more information go to www.exhibits.ndia.org
UP AND RUNNING: AgustaWestland last week said the U.K.’s WAH-64 Apache integrated operational support program is now fully underway. The integrated operational support (IOS) package — an availability-based contract — for the British army’s Apache attack helicopter was awarded to AgustaWestland in September 2009.
GOES-P HANDOVER: The third Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-P) built by Boeing has been transferred to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to begin on-orbit verification. Now named GOES-15, the spacecraft was launched as an in-orbit spare on March 4.
READY, PRODUCE: The U.S. Navy announced BAE Systems’ Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) has reached Milestone C and is ready to enter low-rate initial production. APKWS transforms standard 2.75-inch unguided rockets into smart, laser-guided missiles. The weapon will be used against soft and lightly armored targets, with the goal of minimizing collateral damage. The Marine Corps will initially deployed APKWS from AH-1W Cobra helicopters.
POSTURE REVIEW: Democrats, as expected, are praising the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (Aerospace DAILY, April 7), and even most Republicans recognize a need to shift attention toward nonproliferation and counterterrorism. But conservatives question the wisdom of the U.S. declaring it will not use nuclear forces in certain situations; previous policy was deliberately ambiguous. “There could be clear consequences for some of the language and perceived signals imbedded in the review,” says Rep.
ORDERING CHINESE: China Great Wall Industry Corp. has signed a preliminary agreement to build and launch a telecom satellite for Bolivia. The spacecraft, Tupac Katari, is to be launched in three years. Tupac Katari will be based on China’s new DFH-4 telecom bus, which also served as a basis for Venesat-1, which China Great Wall built for Venezuela. The $300-million project will include two ground stations.IntelligenceBody
MEETING EXPECTATIONS: Nelson Jobim, Brazil’s defense minister, tells the country’s congress that the ministry will submit its final technical report to the government on its choice of fighter within two weeks. He also said last week that the Dassault Rafale was the only one of the three fighter contenders that fully met the government’s technology transfer requirements. The Boeing F/A-18E/F and Saab Gripen NG are the other contenders.
EVAC SENSORS: FLIR Systems, Inc. will provide the U.S. Army with $12.4 million worth of its Star SAFIRE II stabilized multi-sensor systems to be deployed on UH-60 helicopters in support of medical evacuation operations. The new order adds to the 200-plus Star SAFIRE systems already deployed on UH/HH-60 Medevac helicopters. Work on the delivery order will be completed within the next 12 months, according to FLIR.
HOUSTON — Discovery’s astronauts attached the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo to the International Space Station early April 8, after hoisting the big cargo container from the shuttle’s cargo bay with the orbital laboratory’s robot arm. They floated into Leonardo, which was filled with six tons of scientific research equipment and other supplies, just before 8 a.m. EDT. The gear will be unloaded over the next week.
The U.S. Navy is upgrading its Consolidated Automated Support System with an electronic version (eCASS), which could save the service nearly $2 billion over the next decade or so. The CASS test equipment was designed in the 1980s and finished production in 2003, Program Manager Capt. Mike Belcher tells Aviation Week. “The real benefit of moving to a new system is a reduction in ownership costs,” he says. “We estimated it would cost $2 billion to continue to maintain CASS through 2022.”
LONDON — Airbus Military on April 8 completed the first flight of MSN002, the second A400M airlifter to join the flight test campaign that kicked off in December. MSN002 is the first A400M not to be fitted with the optional refueling probe. The aircraft completed a 4-hour-50-minute flight from the Seville, Spain, airport collocated with the A400M final assembly site. The flight occurred a few weeks later than planned. The heavily instrumented aircraft will be used for aircraft performance and TP400D engine-certification activities.
Proposed work assignments under NASA’s turnabout Fiscal 2011 budget request would spread the agency’s five-year, $6-billion total budget increase — and the new jobs that may go with it — across the agency’s 10 field centers. In announcing the field center work assignments, Administrator Charles Bolden said April 8 the specific effects on public and private-sector jobs remains to be seen, but he suggested that the $6 billion in additional NASA spending over the current five-year budget runout will translate into more space workers.
DARK WIND: Although offshore wind turbines provide clean energy to the U.K., they also create blind spots in radar defenses. The London Times Online reports that the U.K. Defense Ministry has signed a deal with Lockheed Martin for the installation of a TPS-77 radar system at Remote Radar Head Trimingham in the fall to protect a new offshore wind farm with 88 turbines. Although Lockheed Martin would not discuss the contract, a company official confirmed the radar will be manufactured in Syracuse, N.Y.
After completing an 80-flight test phase that proved the tailless flying-wing X-48B could be controlled safely at low airspeed, NASA expects to fly a modified version of the Boeing blended wing-body demonstrator in about a year to test a revised configuration and additional capabilities. The X-48C has the vertical tails moved inboard and fuselage extended aft to shield the noise from two turbofan engines, which will replace the three turbojets powering the subscale, unmanned X-48B.
