Leaders of the intelligence community on Jan. 27 outlined their various efforts aimed at thwarting attempted terrorism before the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington. The hearing explored lessons learned in the Dec. 25 terrorist attempt to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and examined ways to avert similar attacks.
LONDON — Britain’s aerospace and defense companies are renewing their call for government to provide sustained — and growing — research and development (R&D) investment coupled with a “clear industrial policy” to sustain the sectors. Domestically the sectors are under pressure as a result of budgetary problems in government, with the difficulty also reflected in cuts in R&D spending.
ROME — Globalstar is preparing to take delivery of its first batch of second-generation satellites as it seeks to become the first satphone operator to reach the market with a global high-speed voice/data service.
MOON MAP: Temperatures comparable to those that would be found in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the Solar System exist at the moon’s North Pole, kept as cold as 25 Kelvin by the permanent darkness at the bottoms of deep craters there. The Diviner lunar radiometer experiment on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mapped the lunar North Pole last October, during the winter solstice.
GENOA, Italy — Finmeccanica performed better than expected in 2009, beating its own financial guidance, although economic and market realities have forced a partial adjustment of the company’s 2010 outlook. Complete 2009 results for the Italian aerospace and defense giant are to be announced on March 4.
PRECISION KILL: The U.S. Marine Corps announced Jan. 28 it completed the integrated test phase of the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) program on Jan. 5, firing five rounds against moving and stationary targets. All five shots hit their intended targets within two meters of the laser designator’s spot. In the final series of shots in integrated testing, five laser-guided rockets were fired from various distances by an AH-1W Cobra helicopter.
Both Raytheon and L-3 reported strong results last year, and given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the nature of the geopolitics, the companies are confident of continued growth this year. L-3 CEO Michael Strianese expects DOD spending to run 2 percent to 3 percent above inflation this year. “We are very positive on defense spending going forward.” The “challenging geopolitical environment” will mean no “significant reduction in defense spending going forward,” Strianese said Jan. 28.
NEW DELHI — The Indian government has requested to purchase 145 M777 155mm Lightweight Towed Howitzers through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The request includes warranty, spare parts, support and test equipment, documentation, maintenance, personnel training and training equipment, technical assistance from U.S. government and contractor representatives, and logistics support services. The estimated cost is $647 million.
PARIS — A Belgian-led technology satellite will provide vital data on space weather while validating critical hardware for upcoming European science missions.
Industry finally received the much-awaited new request for proposals (RFP) for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) from the U.S. Navy on Jan. 26. In an e-mail late in the day, the armed service said proposals are due back to the Navy in March. An industry source close to the program pegged the date as March 29.
STRATFORD, Conn. — In a bid to demonstrate its commitment to global expansion, Sikorsky is preparing to launch the first International Black Hawk helicopter, the S-70i, from its production line at PZL Mielec in Poland.
STRATFORD, Conn. — After a recent transmission failure on the X-2 Technology Demonstrator, Sikorsky says it will be ready to return the aircraft to ground testing in March. During ground test work on the hub fairing, the X-2 experienced a transmission failure that was not due to anything intrinsic to the X-2 design, according to Steven Weiner, director of engineering sciences. A manufacturing process error occurred, he said. “They didn’t prep the gear properly.”
LONDON — Australia’s troubled frigate upgrade program, called SEA 1390 Phase 2.1, may have turned the corner, with the government deciding it no longer needs to maintain the effort on its “Projects of Concern” list.
FLIGHT FIRST: The first U.K. active-duty service pilot to fly the Joint Strike Fighter completed a 1.8-hour mission from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., on Jan. 26 in BF-2, the second F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing test aircraft. Two F-35Bs have now logged seven flights since ferrying to Patuxent River from Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, plant. The U.K. is the largest international partner in JSF development and plans to begin flying the F-35B alongside the U.S. Marine Corps at the Eglin Air Force Base training center in Florida in 2011.
A crash investigation committee and well-known Russian test pilot V.G. Pugachev have met at the Flight Safety Center of the Komsomolsk aviation factory to sift through the final seconds of the flight that killed Lt. Col. Vladimir Volodya on Jan. 14 and resulted in the grounding of the Russian Federation Air Force’s Su-27 fleet.
ACTING UP: U.S. House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) has promised to press his chamber of Congress to pass a bill reauthorizing the America Competes Act. The 2007 law, readily agreed to by the George W. Bush administration and a Democratically controlled Congress, sprang from alarm over lagging science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) development in U.S. education. But the White House and lawmakers scuffled for more than a year over funding the policy measure, which expires Oct. 1.
ADAPT NOW: The Pentagon’s understanding of what personal skill sets its officers have is limited, and the Defense Dept. should boost sharing of data already collected and collect additional information about officers’ existing knowledge, skills and abilities, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In fact, the Washington think tank’s report — which lambastes the U.S. military’s current development of its officer corps — says the national security regime should be changed from emphasizing tenure to competency.
STRATFORD, Conn. — After nearly a year of testing an Armed Black Hawk configuration with the Israeli Air Force (IAF), manufacturer Sikorsky says it is ready to begin marketing the product internationally.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to conduct a flight test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system Jan. 31 and hopes to execute the first-ever intercept attempt by the Airborne Laser soon after. The goal of the GMD test, expected between 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. EDT, will be to achieve an intercept against a new target, the Lockheed Martin LV-2, according to Rick Lehner, an MDA spokesman.
TAKING LICENSE: A coalition of U.S. trade groups in the aerospace and defense industry and elsewhere has sent the Obama administration a wish list of goals as it studies a new U.S. export controls regime. The administration last summer announced a wholesale review of the system, from national security to economics, and last month the White House goosed federal agencies with a deadline for suggestions of next month.
Both General Dynamics and United Technologies (UTC) are bullish on foreign military markets this year and beyond, the chiefs of both companies told analysts Jan. 27. The U.S. and European markets for the Black Hawk helicopter are saturated, UTC CFO Gregory Hayes said. The company is competing a military helicopter order from Turkey with AgustaWestland and expects to hear early this year. “There is a huge market for the International Black Hawk in Taiwan and Singapore,” Hayes said.
