THUNDER ROLLS: Pakistan has begun final assembly of the JF-17 Thunder lightweight fighter, co-developed with China, with the first locally assembled aircraft scheduled to fly by year’s end. The air force is already taking delivery of JF-17s manufactured by Chengdu in China, where the fighter is designated the FC-1, and in March signed a contract for an initial 42 JF-17s financed by China.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ upgraded AH-1Z Cobra aircraft will benefit from a next-generation targeting system, as Lockheed Martin begins to deliver its Target Sight System (TSS) to the service. The first of 16 TSS under contract was delivered June 30, two months ahead of schedule, said Tom Simmons, Lockheed Martin vice president for Fire Control programs. The new TSS represents a leap forward technologically from the targeting system on the AH-1W aircraft.
The U.S. and Japan on June 29 jointly released the most extensive digital topographic map of the Earth ever created, based on measurements from NASA’s Terra spacecraft. According to NASA, the new map covers more of the Earth than ever before — 99 percent of the Earth’s landmass — and was created from almost 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by Japan’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument carried aboard Terra.
EMPIRE CHALLENGE: U.S. Joint Forces Command will conduct the sixth annual live joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration between July 6 and July 31 at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif. Distributed locations like the Joint Intelligence Lab in Suffolk, Va., the Combined Air Operations Center-Experimental at Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Va., and coalition sites in the U.K., Canada, Australia and other countries will be linked in to the exercise, called Empire Challenge.
LONDON — France’s route to a future air combat capability will begin to be drawn up late this year or early in 2010, with the launch of a key study into how it plans to proceed in the development of an operational unmanned combat air vehicle. The work will pave the way for what happens beyond the present Neuron program, a multinational effort being led by Dassault, in determining the shape of the air force’s Future Combat Air System (FCAS). Sweden, Italy, Spain, Greece and Switzerland are all supporting the Neuron program.
Lockheed Martin’s F-16 industrial partner in Turkey, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), will upgrade 42 F-16s for the Pakistani air force. The company says it secured a $75 million program to undertake the upgrade. The culmination of formal talks that began in 2006, the deal will run 46 months, with work to start in October 2010.
RADAR EXTENSION: An Australian defense project to upgrade its army’s Weapon Locating Radar has achieved initial operational capability, according to a defense official. The AN/TPQ-36 provides the Australian Defense Force (ADF) with the ability to locate enemy mortars, guns and rockets, enabling early warning for ground forces, according to Greg Combet, minister for Defense Personnel, Materiel and Science. “I am pleased to see that this project is performing on schedule and on budget and is due to achieve its full operational capability by March 2010,” he says.
Controllers switched off the Ulysses joint European Space Agency/NASA solar orbiter June 30, almost 19 years after its launch on the space shuttle Discovery in October 1990. The end-of-mission command from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) turned off the spacecraft’s radio into monitor-only status, and no further commands are planned. Mission engineers managed to eke out an extra year of operations by firing Ulysses’ thrusters every two hours to keep the fuel from freezing as the onboard radioisotope power system degraded.
LONDON — The U.K. is already facing a £1billion ($1.66 billion) cost increase for its two next-generation aircraft carriers (CVF), with more than half of the rise believed to be due to a two-year delay in the program. The BBC on June 29 revealed it had obtained an industry memo suggesting that the CVF program for two 65,000 ton-class carriers is running on the order of £1 billion more than its £3.9 billion budget.
TALK RADIO: The U.S. Army’s Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) has awarded a Northrop Grumman-Cobham team a 10-year contract worth up to $2.4 billion for the VIS-X Vehicular Intercommunication System Expanded. Under the contract, the team, called Northrop Grumman Cobham Intercoms, is required to deliver up to 500 VIS-X systems per month during the first year following completion of First Article Testing, and up to 2,000 systems per month in subsequent years.
GUIDED ROUNDS: The U.S. Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin a $16.5 million order to deliver paveway II Enhanced Laser Guided Training Rounds (E-LGTRs), exercising the fourth option of a 2005 contract valued at more than $114 million. Under the award, Lockheed Martin will extend production deliveries of E-LGTRs to the Navy in 2001, bringing the total quantity of rounds awarded on the contract to more than 50,000.
Disparate efforts at the Pentagon to field a multirole missile suitable for carriage in F-22 and F-35 weapons bays are showing signs of consolidation under U.S. Air Force leadership, according to industry sources. Air Force officials are planning to begin fielding the Joint Dual-Role Air Dominance Missile (JDRADM), which would handle the HARM’s anti-radiation strike mission and the AIM-120’s medium-range anti-aircraft role, around 2024, say officials at the Air Armament Center, the service’s development hub for weapons in Florida.
LONDON — Amidst increasing interservice rivalry and warnings of military budget cuts, Britain’s main defense and aerospace lobby group is calling for the Labour government to launch a full-blown review.
AIR FORCE The Air Force is awarding a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, Electromagnetic System Laboratory, of San Jose, Calif., for $71,047,776. This contract action will provide MQ-1 unmanned aerial system communications intelligence airborne signals intelligence Payload-1 C scaled sensors for the Predator UAS. At this time, $69,851,657 has been obligated. Reconnaissance Systems Wing (ASC), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8620-08-C-3004).
TRY, TRY AGAIN: BAE Systems Australia has secured hull work on the navy’s Air Warfare Destroyer. BAE’s bid was revived following one of the companies initially selected for the work having to restructure its business, according to local press reports. BAE will now build bow and stern sections of the ships, along with the machinery compartments. The navy has three Air Warfare Destroyers on order — the Spanish F100 design. The ships are due to be delivered between 2014 and 2017.
LONDON — Having missed two target dates, BAE Systems is now mum as to when it expects to fly the Mantis medium altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle demonstrator. Mantis was originally due to be flown in the first quarter of 2009, then by the end of the second quarter. The air vehicle remains on the ground and the manufacturer is being circumspect as to a revised flight schedule.
ARMY Rolls-Royce Corp., Indianapolis, Ind., was awarded on June 19, 2009 a $8,986,055 firm-fixed-price contract for the production of 40 gas turbine engines (Model 250-C30/R3) (part No. 23065550) and engine containers (Part Number 23088248). The work is to be performed in Indianapolis, with an estimated completion date of Feb. 28, 2010. One bid was solicited with one bid received. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aviation and Missile Center, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-09-C-0049).
Researchers are looking forward to two more close flybys of Saturn’s strange moon Enceladus by NASA’s Cassini Saturn orbiter in November to resolve continuing questions about the source of spectacular water jets emerging from cracks at the moon’s south pole.
TANKER TOUCHDOWN: Australia’s first prototype commercial Airbus A330-200 aircraft marked for conversion into a multirole military tanker transport, MSN747, completed the second subphase of developmental flight-testing, according to officials there. The testing entailed boom-free flight data gathering and validation of the planned KC-30 receiver and tanker flight control laws. The aircraft is being acquired as part of Project Air 5402, under which five such aircraft are being purchased from Europe’s Airbus Military.
