EMPTY SEAT: House Committee on Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) announced Dec. 14 that he will not seek re-election in 2010. Gordon began serving on the science committee when he first arrived in Congress in 1985, occupying leadership roles on several subcommittees before becoming ranking member of the full committee in 2004. He took the chairmanship in 2007 when the Democrats took over control of Congress. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), the second-ranking Democrat on the committee, announced the same day his intention to pursue the chairmanship.
There were few glitches on the Dec. 9 first captive-carry flight of the X-51A WaveRider scramjet engine demonstrator, paving the way for a full dress rehearsal in late January and the first hypersonic test flight in late February.
LONDON — British financial watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) is warning that the Defense Ministry could face a far larger multibillion pound procurement hole than currently anticipated, if funding assumptions prove incorrect.
A failed rocket motor on a target missile is to blame for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) inability to complete an intercept test of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) anti-ballistic missile system as planned. The test, which took place late Dec. 11 from test facilities near Kauai, Hawaii, was designed to pit Thaad against an air-launched short-range ballistic missile.
After months of back and forth, including two supplemental protests, BAE Systems has prevailed in the latest battle over the U.S. Army’s $3 billion Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) truck contract.
PARIS — Thales’s new chairman and CEO Luc Vigneron has completed his strategic review, leading to a restructuring of the defense and aerospace company and a goal of achieving €1.3 billion ($1.9 billion) in productivity improvements in the coming years.
SUKHOI SCHEDULE: Russia’s next fighter aircraft, the Sukhoi T-50 (also known as PAK FA) is to commence flight trials next year, Vice Premier Sergei Ivanov confirmed last week. The tentative in-service date is 2015.
DARMSTADT, Germany and PARIS The European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to defer selection of the prime contractor for Europe’s third-generation geostationary weather satellite system. The new system, known as MTG, will ensure the continuity of weather data supplied by existing geostationary satellites Meteosat and MSG, and provide an expanded set of climate monitoring data.
HUMINT OPS: The U.S. Air Force’s outspoken intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) chief, Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, has a number of predictions about what the military’s future may look like. He suggests that traditional staff designations (A2, G3, J8, etc.) will give way to a more flexible “matrixing” of specialties and a rebuilding of the ISR career fields.
NASA HAWKS: NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center is set to acquire a third Northrop Grumman Global Hawk unmanned air vehicle from the U.S. Air Force under a recently signed agreement. The third aircraft is AV-7, the last of the original batch built and flown in the original Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. NASA is currently re-activating AV-1 and AV-6 for research flights under a Space Act Agreement signed in 2008 and in October got AV-6 back into the air for the first time since May 2003.
A new, fully instrumented test aircraft is what tops the V-22 Osprey program manager’s Christmas list this year, representing an unusual and unusually urgent request.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Jan. 4 - 7, 2010 — 48th Annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Including the New Horizons Forums and Aerospace Exposition, World Center Marriott, Orlando, Fla. For more information go to www.aiaa.org
CYBER BILL: A new bill in the House of Representatives would reauthorize several National Science Foundation programs to enhance cybersecurity. H.R. 4061 also would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish a cybersecurity awareness program and implement standards for managing personal information stored on computer systems. The legislation also would establish a task force to recommend actions to improve cybersecurity research and development. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that implementing H.R.
CATCHING A WAVE: The U.S. Air Force X-51A WaveRider finally made its first captive-carry flight Dec. 9 under the wing of a B-52H from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., according to Pratt & Whitney. The WaveRider previously was supposed to achieve the carriage flight by late October or early November, but defense officials eventually cited integration issues with the mothership, as well as maintenance issues on the B-52, as reasons for the slip (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 22).
STUAS PICK: Originally expected in September, award of a contract for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (Stuas/Tier 2) has been delayed to March 2010 to allow more time to evaluate the bids. This pushes initial operating capability back to the second quarter of Fiscal 2013, from the fourth quarter of Fiscal 2012, and Boeing’s contracts to provide surveillance services with the ScanEagle UAV will be extended to bridge the gap. AAI, Boeing, Raytheon and General Dynamics/Elbit company UAS Dynamics are bidding for STUAS/Tier 2.
MAINSTAY MODERNIZATION: Upgraded A-50U Mainstay airborne early warning and control aircraft should start entering Russian air force inventory next year, says Maj. Gen. Oleg Barmin, its head of armament programs. The Beriev design bureau and project partner Vega say the first upgraded A-50U has been completed. The effort is aimed at introducing more modern electronics to the system, which was first fielded in 1984. As part of the overhaul, power consumption and weight also are coming down.
SEVILLE, Spain and PARIS The Airbus Military A400M took to the air at 10:15 a.m. (local time) Dec. 11 for a 3-hour-47-minute first flight — the culmination of a two-decade long struggle on Europe’s part to develop a next-generation airlifter. Powered by its four 11,000 shaft horsepower Europrop International TP400D engines, MSN001 took off from the EADS facility in Seville with Airbus’s chief military test pilot Ed Strongman at the controls and Ignacio “Nacho” Lombo in the right seat.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) has run its first test on the new Castor 30 solid-fuel rocket motor it is developing for a variety of applications, including the upper stage of the Taurus II medium-lift launch vehicle that Orbital Sciences Corp. is building to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
The U.S. Army’s much-anticipated fly-by-wire Black Hawk UH-60M Upgrade program may be halted after developmental testing so that a pressing need for more baseline M models can be filled. Brig. Gen. William Crosby, head of the Army’s program executive office for aviation, said Dec. 11 he has recommended the M Upgrade program not proceed to procurement yet. Crosby said he is responding to a request from Maj. Gen. James Barclay, chief of army aviation, for more baseline M helicopters.
GAINING CLEARANCE: The chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate government management subcommittee are pushing a bill “to eliminate delays in the security clearance process that have been a barrier to getting people to work on some of the nations most complex missions, in the government and private sector alike.” Spearheaded by Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio), the so-called Security Clearance Modernization and Reporting Act (S.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers plan to continue diagnosis of what appears to be a seized up wheel on the already stranded Mars rover Spirit. The new problems with the right hand side rear wheel emerged during operations to try and free Spirit from soft soil where it has been trapped since late April when it broke through an unseen crust covering an old impact crater in an area dubbed “Troy” (Aerospace DAILY, Nov. 13).
MONEY BACK: The same approach adopted by some U.S. states to help keep their roadsides free of litter may help hold down the level of orbital debris around the Earth. One of the ideas broached at a three-day conference on the problem sponsored by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is requiring satellite operators to pay a deposit before launching a new spacecraft. “If a satellite owner-operator or third party then removed the satellite from orbit, it gets the deposit back,” says Brian Weeden, technical advisor to the Secure World Foundation.
