ODD COUPLE: Staffers at Texas A&M University say forcibly retired former U.S. Air Force chief of staff Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, an alumnus, is on the short list for the next president of the College Station, Texas institution. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was president of A&M prior to taking over at the Pentagon, has voiced interest in returning to the institution. The irony, of course, is that Gates fired Moseley as chief of staff, officially because of inattention to nuclear weapons stewardship.
NEW DELHI — Boeing has decided to bid on India’s programs to purchase 22 combat helicopters and 15 heavy-lift helicopters. Proposals for the combat helicopters are due Sept. 22, and the deadline for the heavy-lift helicopters is the next day. This is the second time India has issued a tender for attack helicopters. The first tender — issued in May 2008 — was scrapped in March by the government. Neither Bell Helicopter nor Boeing participated in that effort. Bell has said it will not participate in the new competition.
NASA has not been properly funded to meet the goal set by Congress that it discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects (NEOs) 140 meters in diameter or larger by 2020, according to a National Research Council (NRC) panel.
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — U.S. Navy planners are sorting out how they will beef up unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations in Afghanistan over the next 18 months — a period deemed as critical in determining if U.S. strategy there is working or not Navy operations have so far been limited to small UAVs, but will soon be reinforced with bigger designs. “[Navy UAVs] have flown hundreds of thousands of hours over four years” with the ScanEagle, Raven, Wasp and Shadow, says Gary Kessler, deputy program executive officer for unmanned aviation.
In the run up to the planned launch of space shuttle Discovery later this month on STS-128, NASA is still analyzing the surprising foam debris shedding on the previous mission, with some engineers calling for the shuttle to be rolled back from the launch pad for more in-depth analysis. STS-127 saw worrisome foam losses from three areas of the big external fuel tank — the forward bipod area, an ice/frost ramp on the liquid oxygen tank, and the intertank area.
There is a sleeper in the race for fielding more unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capability worldwide — General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is already flying a reduced-signature Predator C and the company is looking to bank its existing gains.
While the U.S. Air Force will train more unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operators this year than fighter and bomber pilots, one former fighter pilot and current Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher does not see much correlation between the two.
Remote sensing rivals DigitalGlobe and GeoEye both are reporting healthy second-quarter earnings and say that demand for imaging worldwide is recession-proof. DigitalGlobe reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company this week. The company went public in May and raised $68 million in cash from its initial offering, reported in its second-quarter results.
MOSCOW — An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton rocket launched AsiaSat 5, a Space Systems/Loral 1300 series telecommunication satellite, on Aug. 11. Liftoff from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, occurred at 1:47 a.m. local time Aug. 12 (19:47 GMT Aug. 11), and the Proton’s Briz-M upper stage deployed the 3.7-metric ton spacecraft into geostationary transfer orbit 9 hours and 15 minutes later. Hong Kong-based AsiaSatellite Telecommunications already has received the first signals from the satellite.
A&D Programs Conference November 2-4, 2009 Phoenix, AZ A&D Finance Conference December 2-3, 2009 New York, NY Defense Technology & Requirements Conference February 17-18, 2010 Washington, DC AVIATION WEEK Laureates Awards March 17, 2010 Washington, DC
ARMING AFGHANISTAN: The Afghan Air Corps’s Mi-35 attack helicopters are about to reach initial operational capability, says U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Walter Givhan, who leads the allied effort to rebuild the Afghan service. Czech advisors have been training Mi-35 crews. The helos will give the Afghan Air Corps its first real air-to-ground strike capability, although some of the Mi-17s are fitted with machine guns. Givhan says studies are currently underway to assess what kind of fixed-wing intelligence gathering aircraft to provide.
The first deployment of a 19-helicopter squadron attached to a carrier strike wing is complete, and the U.S. Navy is pleased with the results. The eleven MH-60R and eight MH-60S helicopters deployed with the USS John Stennis Carrier Strike Group, which returned in July, provided commanders with “a lot more flexibility to respond to real-world tasking at a faster pace,” said Capt. Donald Williamson, commodore of the Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing August 12. The Navy’s “helicopter force has never been more relevant.”
RFID CLEARED: The U.S. Air Force has approved Savi Technology’s radio frequency identification (RFID) tags aboard its aircraft that transport Department of Defense supplies. This approval follows extensive Air Force tests that demonstrated the RFID tags didn’t interfere with aircraft electronics and avionics, even while the ISO 18000-7 compliance tags are on and transmitting microwatts of power intermittently. U.S.
Simulator manufacturer CAE says that Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Marc Parent will become president and CEO on Sept. 30, replacing Robert E. Brown, who is retiring. Under Brown’s leadership, CAE’s revenues grew 77 percent to C$1.7 billion ($1.56 billion) in the company’s 2009 fiscal year, which ended April 30, since he became CEO in April 2004.
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — A huge problem remains for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in positioning their unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) force so that all warfighters have at least an unmanned ISR and possibly a strike capability to call on at any time. An area of key concern is the Pacific, where bases are few.
Raytheon officials say they have developed and are now conducting ground tests on the world’s largest infrared light-wave detector. The company has been hard at work to develop the 4,000 x 4,000 pixel focal plane array (FPA) as a technological advantage for military and civil uses. The company built off of its 2,000 x 2,000 pixel FPA design, which was developed for potential use in a space-based missile warning role under the U.S. Air Force’s Alterative Infrared Satellite System (AIRSS) program.
Early results of cost analysis by the Augustine human spaceflight panel have found no good options for continuing human exploration of space within the constraints set by the Obama administration’s fiscal 2010 budget plan for NASA. “This budget is simply not friendly to exploration,” panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride said during the group’s final public meeting in Washington Aug. 12. “It’s very difficult to find an exploration scenario that fits within this very restrictive budget guidance that we’ve been given.”
The future U.S. Defense Department will enjoy record spending but still be continuously squeezed by de facto budget limitations and growing costs, leading the Pentagon to face the irony of having to cull capability priorities, according to new independent analyses in Washington.
BACK DOWN UNDER: A new two-year, AUS$4.32 million contract with the Underwater Centre Fremantle (TUCF) will allow the Australian military to once again train its submariners to escape their vessels, the defense ministry has announced. Since early 2009, interim pressurized escape training for Royal Australian Navy submariners — which simulates the escape from a Collins-class submarine including the effects of water pressure — has occurred in Quebec, Canada.
While the Chinese navy continues to improve, experts say questions remain over just how strong the Asian sea force is, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says. Still, CRS points out, the Chinese navy question is coloring U.S. military planning. In the debate over future U.S. defense spending, including deliberations taking place in the current Quadrennial Defense Review, a key issue is how much emphasis to place on programs for countering improved Chinese military forces in coming years,” CRS says in its July report.
U.S. Army Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is looking at the Boeing 160T Hummingbird unmanned aerial vehicle for some of its missions, and waiting for the funding to field it with support from the Army’s program office for unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Running mission control and gathering data from NASA’s Deep Space Network to support the Kepler planet-hunting mission is giving students at the University of Colorado at Boulder hands-on aerospace training that is hard to get. While the university’s mission support is not unique, its Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) has one of the richest heritages of any school in support of NASA missions and aerospace. Kepler’s prime contractor, Ball Aerospace, is located nearby in Boulder and traces its heritage to LASP.
