CHINA LAKE, Calif. — Targeting with the tiny video cameras on small unmanned reconnaissance aircraft had been impossible until a team of U.S. Navy engineers and scientists modified an arcane medical technology to produce highly accurate Video Correlation Targeting. Medical imaging had been developed to keep precise track of a camera moving through the maze of a human’s airways. It is now being used here to extract precise targeting information from low-quality video provided by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
RAFALES CRASH: Two French navy Rafale fighters crashed into the Mediterranean Sea Sept. 24 during flight trials off the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. One pilot was recovered near the crash site, roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Catalan city of Perpignan, and the other was missing. The Charles de Gaulle is preparing to return to service with a new complement of multirole Rafale F3 fighters after a more than 18-month shutdown for major overhaul.
NUCLEAR OPPORTUNITY: The next two years may represent the best opportunity to secure widespread ratification and adoption of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and bring it into force, according to the Arms Control Association. Nine more states — China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and the United States — must ratify it before the CTBT, which would ban all nuclear weapon test explosions, can formally enter into force.
MUM’S THE WORD: With the U.S. Army keen for its OH-58B Kiowa Warriors to receive video from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate has demonstrated manned/unmanned teaming with the armed scout helicopter using a dedicated computer and transceiver integrated with its existing cockpit controls and displays. Provided by AAI and L-3 Communications, the system received UAV video, transmitted video from the helicopter’s mast-mounted sensor to the ground and shared video between the Kiowa and an Apache.
Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) complained Sept. 24 of their surprise over the Obama administration’s recent changes to European missile defense in a hearing with Pentagon officials, but it remains to be seen how significant opposition will be there and across Capitol Hill.
CASELLE, Italy — Alenia North America is building the case for why a jet-trainer, its M-346, should be the platform to host a forthcoming light attack aircraft, possibly for the U.S. Air Force and for foreign customers. This is the latest proposal in the company’s push into the U.S. market. Already, Alenia is proposing the M-346 as the T-38 replacement, and it is selling C-27Js to the Pentagon as part of a team with L-3 Communications.
HOT SPOTS: The U.S. Air Force expects to announce preferred U.S. basing locations for its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter force in late spring 2010. Final decisions are slated for calendar 2011, after environmental studies are performed. The Air Force will evaluate more than 200 Air Force sites against approved criteria, as well as other factors like combatant commander requirements, aircraft retirements and delivery schedules; aircraft maintenance and logistics support; and integration with the Air National Guard and Reserve.
LOSING A SUB: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 23 that London is studying whether it could cut its fleet of next-generation ballistic missile submarines from four to three. The potential cut is being portrayed by the British government as a move toward encouraging other nuclear states to similarly consider reducing their nuclear capabilities, while also offering an incentive to non-nuclear states.
TEXANS TOO: With deliveries under way to Israel and an order just booked for Iraq, Hawker Beechcraft has received a $37 million contract to supply 24 T-6C Texan II turboprop trainers plus simulators to Morocco. The company says it is pursuing potential sales to Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K.
Boeing is bidding as a prime contractor for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, the deadline for which closed Sept. 22. Boeing is teamed with Bigelow Aerospace on the venture, as well as being a subcontractor itself on three other teams. Around 60 bidders from industry and academia have registered with the space agency to take part in the contest, which is using Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds to help develop and demonstrate commercially led human spaceflight capabilities.
More than a year after scathing accusations rocked the U.S. Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), key senators, government investigators and even Obama administration officials appear skeptical that enough reform is taking place in the Defense Department’s internal auditing unit, according to a congressional hearing Sept. 23.
CHINA LAKE, Calif. — The need for non-kinetic, more-kinetic, directed energy and electronic weapons is changing the complexion of research at the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center here.
NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft will perform its third and final flyby of Mercury on Sept. 29, getting one last gravity assist to position itself to enter the planet’s orbit in 2011. The spacecraft will pass less than 142 miles above the surface, taking more than 1,500 pictures and giving scientists their last close look at the planet’s equatorial regions. The first flyby took the spacecraft over the eastern hemisphere in January 2008, and the second took it over the western side in October 2008.
LOST CAUSE: An MQ-1 Predator flying a mission in Afghanistan lost contact with its ground control station and presumably crashed in a forward operating area May 13, according to a U.S. Air Combat Command accident investigation board report released Sept. 22. The Predator, assigned to the 15th Reconnaissance Squadron at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., was not recovered and no crash site has been located. The aircraft loss is valued at about $3.9 million. The aircraft lost its return link and attempts to re-establish it were unsuccessful.
Bad weather moving in from the Atlantic Ocean forced the Sept. 23 scrub of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) Demo mission on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Launch from Space Launch Complex 17B was slated for a window of 8-9 a.m. EDT. A launch will be attempted again during the same window Sept. 24. Weather is expected to slowly improve over the next few days.
NEW DELHI — The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched India’s Oceansat-2 remote sensing satellite and six nanosatellites for international customers Sept. 23 on the fifteenth successful flight of the country’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
MADRID, Spain — Airbus is preparing to begin handing over A330-200 multirole tanker transport (MRTT) aircraft to four nations as the program transitions from development to deployment.
BEIJING — A heavy helicopter that China’s Avicopter proposes to develop with Russia’s Oboronprom would go into service in five to 10 years, according to Avicopter Vice President Xia Qunlin. The aircraft would weigh more than 20 tons, Xia says. Russian reports suggest the proposed weight is about 30 tons. An agreement to build the helicopter has not been finalized. The division of work on the aircraft also is undetermined.
The Honduras Air Force on Sept. 22 took over operations of the country’s four international airports, closing them for commercial service for an unknown period due to civil unrest. The de facto government of the country imposed nationwide curfews lasting until 6 p.m. on Sept. 22-23 to quell violent civil unrest.
The Netherlands is looking to upgrade its Mk-48 torpedoes used on Walrus-class submarines. In a letter to the Dutch parliament, the ministry’s state secretary, Jack de Vries, made the case for modernizing the 30-year-old weapon. The Dutch standard is still optimized for blue-water operations, which the government points out is of limited value in brown water conditions that are of greater interest these days.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey program office is taking the long-term view on a program that has transitioned from a development to an in-service mind-set, according to new program manager Col. Greg Masiello.
CASELLE, Italy — The Italian government and Alenia Aeronautica are in negotiations on how to finance the domestic F-35 final assembly and checkout (FACO) facility in light of fiscal belt-tightening brought on by the global recession. Details must be finalized by January to maintain the schedule of delivering the first F-35 assembled at the Cameri Air Base, Italy, facility by 2014, says Giovanni Bertolone, chief executive officer of Alenia Aeronautica. The facility is to be government owned but contractor operated.
