GREENVILLE, Texas — Northrop Grumman or possibly Boeing could be added to the contractors participating in the U.S. Air Force’s Project Liberty, a program designed to deliver Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350 and 350-ERs outfitted with video and signals intelligence to Iraq and Afghanistan.
An Indian Air Force MiG-29 fighter was scrambled to intercept an Air France Airbus A340 en route from Paris to Bangkok last week that was transmitting the wrong identification code when it entered Indian airspace from Pakistan. India’s defense forces have been on heightened alert since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November. In June, a U.S.-chartered Antonov An-124 freighter en route from Diego Garcia to Afghanistan was forced to land at Mumbai after straying into Indian airspace from Pakistan with the wrong transponder code.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated his support for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — along with his opposition to an alternative engine for the aircraft — during a tour of Lockheed Martin’s final-assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas, Aug. 31. Gates predicted the F-35 at peak production rate will be half the cost of an F-22, adding the program “seems to be on schedule for the first training squadron” in 2011. “Most of the high-risk elements are largely behind us,” he said.
OVERHAUL: The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a roughly $2.43 billion contract for the refueling and complex overhaul of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). The once-in-a-lifetime work, usually conducted halfway through a carrier’s life, is expected to be completed by February 2013, according to the Pentagon. The “TR” is the fourth ship of the Nimitz class to undergo this major lifecycle milestone.
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems president and CEO Jim Albaugh is moving over to the company’s Commercial Airplanes unit, where he replaces Scott Carson. Carson, son a Boeing pilot and a go-to guy for selling innovative programs, has not survived the turmoil surrounding the long manufacturing and development delays in the company’s premier new airplane project, the 787. On Aug. 31, Boeing CEO James McNerney said Carson, 63, is out as president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) as of Sept. 1.
AIR FORCE General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Poway, Calif., was awarded a $10,250,000 modified contract for one-year of Contractor Logistics Support for the Italian purchase of MQ-9 Reaper aircraft under the Foreign Military Sales program. At this time $5,022,500 has been obligated. 703 AESG/SYK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8620-05-G-3028 0058030).
GETTING SCHOOLED: Science Applications International Corp. will help create a Saudi War College (SWC) that meets the educational and administrative standards of U.S. war colleges under a potentially four-year, $11 million contract from the U.S. Military Training Mission. “SAIC will help establish a state-of-the-art educational institution, and develop and implement a flexible curriculum that will enable the SWC to adapt to future Saudi mission requirements,” the U.S. military services contractor explains.
Work on solid-fuel rockets propelled by a mixture of powdered aluminum and water ice may lead to in-situ production on the moon and Mars, following a successful flight-test using the environmentally friendly propellant. Engineers from NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research used the ice-based aluminum propellant — dubbed Alice — to send a 9-foot-long rocket to an altitude of 1,300 feet in a test at Purdue University’s Scholer Farm in Indiana earlier this month.
NEW DELHI — The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has terminated the Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission after losing contact with the spacecraft. ISRO’s Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bengaluru (Bangalore) received its last message from Chandrayaan-1 on Aug. 29.
The combined crews of the space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station will begin transferring scientific equipment and supplies from the Italian-built pressurized logistics module “Leonardo,” after shifting it from the orbiter’s payload bay to the nadir port of the station’s Harmony node.
NAVY Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., Stratford, Conn., is being awarded a $6,526,019 modification to a previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-07-D-0004) to exercise an option for the VH-3D Executive Helicopter special progressive aircraft rework. The work will be performed in Stratford and is expected to be completed in April 2010. Contract funds in the amount of $6,526,019 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md. is the contracting activity.
ASSESSMENT IN: Defense Secretary Robert Gates expects to read U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s assessment of Afghanistan this week. “While there is a lot of gloom and doom going around, I think General McChrystal’s assessment will be a realistic one and set forth the challenges we have in front of us,” Gates said. “At the same time, we have some assets in place and some developments that hold promise.” All-terrain, mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles should be deploying to the country in October, according to DOD.
The contracts for which the Pentagon listed the contractor names as “unavailable” in mandated federal database reports were doing classified work, the Defense Department says. Through analysis of Pentagon contracting records provided by the independent National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), Aerospace DAILY identified about $2.6 billion in such transactions throughout 2008 and into the first quarter of this year (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 25).
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. Sept. 5 - 7 — The Cleveland National Air Show, Burke Lakefront Airport, Cleveland, Ohio. For more information go to www.clevelandairshow.com Sept. 7 - 10 — Asian Aerospace International Expo and Congress, Asia World Expo, Hong Kong. For more information go to www.asianaerospace.com
SEEDING IDEAS: NASA plans to establish a small “seedling” fund in fiscal 2010 to stimulate the flow of new ideas into its fundamental aeronautics research program. The fund, likely no more than $5 million a year, will be targeted mainly at supporting innovative proposals from NASA researchers, but some of the money will go outside the agency, Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Jaiwon Shin says.
UNDETERRED: The current “one-size-fits-all” U.S. approach to nuclear deterrence is in question, according to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright. The Quadrennial, Nuclear Posture, Space and Ballistic Missile reviews all underway now are questioning whether strategies that worked for the last 50 years will work for the next 50, especially in light of emerging threats in North Korea and Iran, and non-state actors such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Cartwright said Aug.
LAB EXERCISE: Lockheed Martin’s Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory will participate in the U.S. Army’s upcoming C4ISR (command, communications, control, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) On-The-Move exercise in September at Fort Dix, N.J. The aircraft has been equipped with service-oriented architecture backbone that allows the plug-and-play installation of different hardware and software packages, says Jim Quinn, vice president of C4ISR systems for Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services – Defense.
Steve Cook, the NASA’s program manager who has shepherded development of the Ares I crew launch vehicle to the threshold of flight test, said today he will leave the agency Sept. 14 to become director of space technologies at Dynetics, a missile defense contractor in Huntsville, Ala. His announcement came on the heels of a last-minute scrub of the first full-scale test of the five-segment solid rocket motor developed to power the Ares I first stage, and two months before the scheduled Ares I-X flight test (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 28).
BELIEVE IN IT: U.S. acquisition policies have to get out of the way of the speed-of-Internet development pace of information technology (IT), according to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but leaders also have to accept some risk in making necessary changes. “There are no laws against moving faster,” says Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright. “There are policies against moving faster — policies we wrote.
GATHERING PACE: Sikorsky says it is on track to break the 250-knot speed barrier by year’s end with its X2 Technology coaxial-rotor high-speed helicopter demonstrator. The aircraft has reached 56 knots in flight tests at West Palm Beach, Fla., and is down for rudder integration. Sikorsky plans to reach 120 knots in September, then in October, after final work on the landing gear and rotor fairings to reduce drag, will begin the push to 250 knots — around 100 knots faster than a conventional helicopter.
SURFACING MARKET: The global naval surface warfare market is “stable and healthy,” according to Stuart Slade, senior naval editor at Forecast International (FI). The consultancy predicts sales of almost 13,360 systems, with an estimated value of $8.911 billion, over the next 10 years. The Franco-Italian Fremm program, with 27 frigates, is the largest non-U.S.
Testing of the U.S. Navy’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) seems to be on schedule, according to program manager Capt. Randy Mahr, with the last of four motor generators at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, N.J., slated to begin testing in the next couple of weeks.
