LANGLEY AFB, Va. — Improved fifth- and new sixth-generation manned and unmanned aircraft are being designed with wide-area optical and electronic surveillance, explosive and nonexplosive weapons and an intricate view of the surrounding networks that might affect them. Also part of the advanced fight formula will be communications, including command and control, that can function even when under network attack.
LIVE WARHEAD: Lockheed Martin’s Hellfire R-model missile recently flew its first live warhead test. The so-called Romeo missile, an AGM 114R Hellfire II, features a multi-purpose warhead that allows pilots the flexibility to select their warhead variant and engage a broad range of targets currently covered by multiple Hellfire models. The proof-of-principle flight test featured a lock-on-after-launch engagement of a stationary target board at 1.6 miles.
Darmstadt, Germany — Scientists soon will be able to access more precise and comprehensive data on sea and land ice, which is invaluable for the study of seasonal weather and climate change, following the April 8 launch of Europe’s CryoSat-2. The €75 million ($100 million) spacecraft, built by EADS Astrium, lifted off successfully aboard a Dnepr booster from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:37 p.m. Central European Time.
DRUG BUST: A U.S. Navy Fire Scout made its first drug bust April 3 off the deck of the USS McInerney. The MQ-8B Vertical Take-off and Landing UAV (VTUAV) launched for a regular test flight when the ship acquired a suspected narcotics “go-fast” boat on its radar. The Mission Payload Operator completed testing and received permission to pursue the boat. The Fire Scout monitored the boat for three hours, feeding real-time video back to the McInerney. The U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment eventually moved in and seized about 60 kilos of cocaine.
SAME SUCCESS: The Northern Virginia Post of the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) has selected Janice Tuchman, editor in chief of Engineering News Record (ENR), as the winner of its 5th Annual Award for Journalism in Recognition of Architecture or Engineering Achievement. ENR and Aviation Week are both owned by the McGraw-Hill Companies. Under Tuchman’s tenure, the ENR team won four Jesse H. Neal business journalism awards in 2008.
HOUSTON — The Discovery astronauts overcame a failed rendezvous radar to dock with the International Space Station early April 7, two days into a resupply mission intended to equip the orbiting laboratory for operations well beyond the scheduled retirement of NASA’s shuttle fleet late this year. The linkup allowed the shuttle crew to quickly transmit recorded imagery from a day-old damage scan of the shuttle’s heat shielding to imagery analysis experts in Mission Control here.
LONDON — The way forward for the Netherlands on the specific structure of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter involvement is not expected to crystallize until midyear. With a caretaker government operating in the country and the Pentagon in the midst of restructuring the F-35 program, Dutch Defense State Secretary Jack de Vries signaled to lawmakers that a number of issues will remain in flux for several months. Chief among those is determining the actual average procurement unit cost and the life-cycle costs projected for the F-35.
LONDON — The British military continues to increase its use of industry for depth maintenance of fixed and rotary wing platforms, with Tornado GR4 strike aircraft and WAH-64 Apache attack helicopter projects reaching milestones on April 7.
Already struggling with an inadequate supply of talent, the aerospace and defense industry finds itself competing with commercial information-technology providers — and even its own customers — for graduates to fill job openings in the growing cybersecurity field. “There’s a great need for young talent, but availability does not match demand,” says Charlie Croom, Lockheed Martin vice president for cybersecurity solutions.
JSF AVIONICS: Lockheed Martin has flown the first F-35 equipped with mission-system avionics. Aircraft BF-4 is equipped with the APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar, electronic warfare and communication/navigation/identification systems and integrated core processor loaded with the initial Block 0.5 mission-system software. Electro-optical targeting and distributed-aperture sensors will be added later.
PARIS — French aerospace and defense companies expect to sharply boost investment outlays this year as they prepare for an expected rebound from the crisis that has affected the industry.
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems division in Ridley Park, Penn., is ramping up production and personnel to meet U.S. and international demand for its CH-47F Chinook helicopter, according to the company’s new vice president of H-47 programs, Leanne Caret. The factory increased production from three to four aircraft per month in March, “and we’re going to six [per month] in mid-2012,” Caret tells Aviation Week. “In parallel, we’re reconstructing a factory around our workforce.”
LONDON — Pilatus Aircraft says that order intake in 2010 continues to be “sluggish,” making it only the latest of several business aircraft makers to report the crisis is far from over. “We have not yet seen the back of the global financial and economic crisis,” the company said in releasing its 2009 results, adding that “we must now focus our attention on security sales of the PC12NG this year and next.”
NEW DELHI — Canadian cyber-security professionals working with the Shadowserver Foundation and Information Warfare Monitor have uncovered a suspected Chinese cyber-offensive against India. In a report released April 6 titled “Shadows in the Cloud - Investigating Cyber Espionage 2.0,” investigators say that hackers of the so-called “Shadow Network” stole secret files on India’s missile projects, troop deployments and military schools.
IN SIGHT: U.S. Army Secretary John McHugh says his service is still working the requirements for a request for proposals to industry for an improved carbine rifle replacement. “I haven’t set a time frame,” he further told a breakfast group of Washington defense reporters last week. McHugh, formerly a longtime House member from New York and Republican leader of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was aware of anecdotal complaints about the existing M4 carbine and has asked soldiers himself. “I was not advised of any massive failures with the M4,” he said.
LONDON — The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority has issued revised guidelines for unmanned aircraft operations in British airspace, expanding to even the smallest systems the need to obtain an operational permit.
NEW DELHI — Many areas in east India are now under alert following the April 6 insurgent attack in which rebels trapped and gunned down 75 security personnel in the state of Chhattisgarh. The attack comes just more than a month after India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said that the homegrown insurgents, known as Naxals, were regrouping under the pretense of a cease-fire, and violence would increase.
AFGHAN HELOS: The fleet of Afghan National Army air corps is slated to increase by another 21 rotorcraft. The U.S. government, through Naval Air Systems Command, says it plans to award a fixed-price contract for 21 Mi-17V5s or Mi-171/172s. The helos are to be delivered to Kabul International Airport, with all to be handed over within less than two years of contract award. The formal request for proposals is due to be released in May. According to the presolicitation documentation, the government is looking for new aircraft delivered in identical configurations.
Five U.S. companies will develop advanced space-propulsion technologies for NASA under contracts awarded by NASA’s Glenn Research Center that are worth as much as $50 million each. Intended to provide propulsion systems that have higher performance, lower cost and better safety and reliability, the work will center around propulsion system design and trade studies; nontoxic chemical propulsion systems; hypergolic systems; propellant systems; electric propulsion and rocket-based combined cycle systems.
The Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review represents a significant shift toward nuclear nonproliferation, counterterrorism and even a stronger emphasis on conventional deterrence, and it raises the threshold for consideration of the use and role of nuclear weapons. In turn, the April 6 blueprint will set the tone for numerous programs from conventionally armed intercontinental ballistic missiles to intelligence efforts to the next bomber, with related budget requests seen starting in Fiscal 2012, according to officials at the Pentagon.
