REDELIVERY, POST-OVERHAUL: Northrop Grumman redelivered the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson to the U.S. Navy July 11 following the completion of a three-and-a-half-year refueling and complex overhaul. Sea trials were also conducted prior to redelivery, during which systems, components and operations were demonstrated at sea.
The top leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), backed by a White House veto threat, are urging their colleagues to vote against continuing F-22 Raptor procurement.
The most prominent lobbying association for U.S. aerospace and defense firms is advocating for industrial base considerations to be included in the Pentagon’s forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which will outline a strategic framework for the Defense Department for the next four years.
UNMANNED RESPONSE: Armed with a waiver from FAA to fly an unmanned aircraft over a mock disaster-struck city for search-and-rescue training, Kansas State University says it will soon be ready to request emergency authorization to fly the UAV elsewhere in the state in response to real-life disasters. K-State’s certificate of authorization allows an Aerosonde UAV operated by Flint Hills Solutions to be flown over the Crisis City training center under construction near Salina.
RAPTOR REDUX: “Several” U.S. senators plan to oppose a move on Capitol Hill to prolong the F-22 Raptor program during debate on that chamber’s fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill, antiwar lobbyists claim. The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a vocal Quaker lobby group that campaigned against U.S. involvement in Iraq, has since turned to defending many of the budget decisions proffered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates this year — such as ending the Raptor program as planned at 187 aircraft. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (Mich.) and Sen.
ROLL OUT: ThalesRaytheonSystems’ NATO Air Command and Control System Level of Operational Capability 1 (ACCS LOC 1) program will soon roll out to eight additional sites across Europe. The company received approval for the replication of eight sites on top of five currently deployed across Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
NASA is sending the space shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station for a delayed 16-day mission that will see representatives from all of the station partners in space together for the first time. With six crew members already on board, the arrival of Endeavour will bring the orbital population to 13 for the duration of the STS-127 mission. The primary goal of Endeavour’s crew will be to finish assembly of Japan’s Kibo laboratory module by attaching its porchlike exposed facility and installing the first experiments there.
New reports out of Russia contend that Russian forces lost eight or more aircraft — some of them to their own weapons — during the war with Georgia last year, despite repeated official claims that only four were lost. These shootdowns all occurred on the first day of the battle, Aug. 8, 2008. Two Russian airmen were captured and exchanged. Another five were killed, one by fratricide. Officially, Russia acknowledges losing only three Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft and a supersonic Tu-22M3 Backfire from the Black Sea Fleet.
Australia’s latest defense capability plan (DCP), which sets out expenditures expected over the next four years, confirms its intent to buy at least 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters but slips initial operational capability (IOC) by up to five years, to 2017-19. The previous DCP, in 2006, set the planned in-service date at 2012-14, and as recently as March the Royal Australian Air Force was still expecting to take delivery of its first F-35s in 2013, but Canberra’s recent defense white paper signaled a delay.
HAVOC DESCENDS: A Russian defense ministry special commission is believed to be investigating the emergency landing of a Mil Mi-28N Havoc attack helicopter, likely as the result of hot gas ingestion during weapon firing. The incident is thought to have occurred June 19, but as of last week there had been no official comment. Russian business daily newspaper Kommersant revealed the crash, in which both of the crew were uninjured. The Mi-28N was being flown using the Gorokhovets firing range.
The U.S. Air Force has established a senior-level panel designed to manage future basing decisions including what locations should house new aircraft — such as the Joint Strike Fighter and new intelligence and cargo aircraft — that are entering service in the coming years.
PAVEWAY PATH: Activity is ramping up on the U.K.’s Paveway IV dual-mode guided bomb with clearance trials underway on the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Royal Navy’s strike wing deploying with the weapon on board HMS Illustrious. The U.K.’s Instrumented Production Aircraft (IPA) 1 is being used for Raytheon Paveway IV jettison tests covering a variety of stores configurations. A total of 15 drops are planned, with three carried out to date.
DEEPER RED: The cost of the U.S. Coast Guard’s embattled Deepwater recapitalization program may grow 10 percent just from its 2007 estimate, according to congressional auditors. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the Coast Guard acknowledged that some of the assets it is procuring may cost more than anticipated. GAO first reported in April that the total cost of the program may grow by $2.1 billion, from the previous $24.2 billion estimate (Aerospace DAILY, July 8).
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) July 16 — AVIATION WEEK Management Forums, Demonstrating & Quantifying the Value of Business Aviation. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/events July 21 - 23 — Shephard Group’s UV 2009, The Celtic Manor Resort, Newport, Wales, and West Wales Airport. For more information go to www.shephard.co.uk/events
BOUNCING BACK: Boeing may have stumbled during the recent flight demonstrations for the hotly contested U.S. Navy/Marine Corps small tactical unmanned aircraft (STUAS) program when subsidiary Insitu’s Integrator UAS suffered a launch malfunction early in the demo, but an industry insider says the company believes the system performed successfully overall. Insitu is seen as the one to beat, as STUAS will replace its ScanEagle. Other known competitors at the demo were the AAI Aerosonde Mark 4.7, General Dynamics/Elbit Systems Hermes 90 and Raytheon KillerBee.
Members of the White House panel reviewing options for future U.S. human spaceflight have dropped site visits in the interest of efficiency as they work to meet an end-of-August deadline. The 10-member panel, headed by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, has visited Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where NASA is developing the Ares I crew launch vehicle; the Delta IV production facility in Decatur, Ala., the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, and the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, Calif., to gather data.
COMPUTER LITERACY: BBN Technologies AND Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) are both developing so-called machine reading technology under contracts from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Research Laboratory. The effort “seeks to advance the ability of machines to understand text by bridging the gap between human textual representations and those used by machine reasoning systems,” according to SAIC. BBN said in late June it was awarded $29.7 million.
AUSSIE VESSEL: The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service is looking for a new Southern Ocean Patrol and Response Vessel, with industry responses due by September 24. The vessel will be used for surveillance, patrol and response operations in Australia’s Southern Ocean and to protect natural resources like the Patagonian Toothfish. The boat’s speed has yet to be determined, but it should run at a minimum of 16 knots (18 knots preferred), have a 12,000 nautical mile range, and be fitted with deck-mounted weapons.
NASA is funding the development of a turbulence/severe weather detection system for use in remote ocean regions, where pilots have little access to weather information. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and the University of Wisconsin will design the system using satellite data and computer weather models with artificial intelligence techniques.
FIRE AWAY: Work on the second post-delivery availability for the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the Freedom, built by Lockheed Martin, will continue through September at the Colonna shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia. The ship conducted structural test firings recently, firing all the weapons aboard ship. The 57-mm gun was fired over 70 times, two rolling airframe missiles were fired, as were the 50-caliber machine guns and the soft-kill weapons system (decoys), according to company officials.
NO SUMMER BREAK: Lockheed Martin’s F-35 avionics flying testbed, the CATBird, is heading to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., for two months of flights over instrumented ranges to test the fusion of radar and electronic-warfare data and push the maturity of the systems before they fly in the fighter itself. A two-week trip to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in April focused on radar tests.
