To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) April 27 - 29 — 2nd Annual Tactical Vehicles Summit, “Enhancing Survivability in All Terrain,” Washington, D.C. For more information go to www.idga.org/us/tvs April 27 - 30 — 7th Annual Maritime Homeland Security Summit, “Builds Partnerships for Maritime Security and Enhanced Domain Awareness,” For more information go to www.maritimehssummit.com
CARGO CANCELLATION: Rumors that the U.S. Army’s Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program will be canceled caused frustration April 23 during a House Armed Services Air Land Subcommittee hearing on Army aircraft programs. The story was first reported April 21 in The Hill, and Chairman Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) accused the Pentagon of leaking the information. He was annoyed the Army could not answer more questions about the program during the hearing because the defense budget has not yet been made public. Brig. Gen.
Federal lawmakers will almost certainly have to again consider whether to export F-22s to Japan, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says. “The debate over the export of F-22s, though not new, has become more pointed as the end of procurement funding (FY2009), and the closure of the assembly line, nears,” the CRS said in its report. “Whether to continue production of the F-22 is an issue that will confront the 111th Congress early in its first session.” It’s a tough issue, the CRS said.
The U.S. Coast Guard is hoping the Great Lakes Icebreaker Replacement Act (H.R. 1747) will help it build a new ship to add to its small icebreaker fleet.
The U.S. Army’s revived Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) program may not end up being a helicopter at all, depending on the results of the service’s analysis of alternatives (AOA) on its aircraft fleet.
The slowdown in civil aerostructures business is forcing Saab to restructure and lay off another 300 employees, with more furloughs possible. “There has been too low production volume,” says SAAB Chief Executive Officer Ake Svensson. As a result, “we are reviewing the organization of the whole aeronautics segment.” More focus will be put on aerosystems and the continued push to sell more Gripen fighters.
LOS ANGELES – Scaled Composites has taken the unusual step of going public with an update on flight-tests of its WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) mothership for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo space tourism venture following a tail-scrape incident on the latest test flight at Mojave, Calif., on April 20.
DALLAS – The four-star general in charge of the U.S. Air Force Materiel Command told Aviation Week’s MRO Military conference here that his top spending policy concerns entail maximizing competition for work, pricing data rights early in a program, and securing FAA certification for parts used in USAF maintenance, repair and overhaul.
DEFENSE REVIEWS: The Pentagon kicked off the 2010 Quadrennial Defense and Nuclear Posture Reviews process April 23, which will culminate in final reports to Congress due in early 2010. The process for the 2010 QDR, according to the Pentagon, will “embrace a whole of government approach” and include analysis and input from numerous departments and agencies. The NPR will be conducted in consultation with the Departments of Energy and State and will establish U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, strategy and posture for the next five to 10 years.
In an unusual twist given the current state of proposed defense budgets, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently estimated that changes to the U.S. Coast Guard’s contracting practices will not adversely affect the service’s bottom line.
China has launched a remote-sensing satellite on Long March 2C from Taiyuan launch center in the north of Shanxi province. According to Xinhua news service, the satellite, Yaogan VI, is one of a series that has been used for data collection for “scientific experiments, land resource surveys, crop yield estimates and disaster prevention and reduction.”
Senior Airbus and EADS management met with British government officials April 22 to discuss the vexing issue of the Airbus A400M airlifter. Fabrice Bregier, Airbus chief operating officer, met Quentin Davies, the British government minister for defense equipment and support, at the Defense Ministry’s main building in Whitehall. Bregier was believed to be accompanied by Tom Williams, the Airbus executive vice president for operations, and Robin Southwell, the EADS U.K. chief executive officer.
German armored vehicle provider Krauss-Maffei Wegmann says revenue last year reached 1.4 billion euros ($1.83 billion), a 100 million euro increase over 2007. The vehicle maker also managed to book 2.7 billion euros in orders. The bulk of those, more than 70%, were for export customers. KMW slightly increased its work force, up 200 positions to 3,400. But KMW management concedes that market conditions will likely be difficult due to the ongoing global economic slowdown.
ONE TRILLION: The U.S. is looking at a $1 trillion increase in the interest on the national debt over the next 10 years, according to predictions made by Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf. An estimated $150 billion of that amount will go toward defense discretionary spending. When all the numbers are totaled, the resulting budget deficit for 2010 through 2019 could be more than $9 trillion.
Workers at Kennedy Space Center started loading new instruments, gyros batteries and other hardware for the Hubble Space Telescope into the space shuttle Atlantis April 22, as the preliminary flight readiness review cleared the final servicing mission to the orbiting observatory for a May 12 liftoff. Payload installation started at 7 a.m. EDT, and launch-preparation crews were working no issues that might delay the launch, according to a KSC spokesperson.
NASA engineers are “on the verge” of pulling two crew seats from their design for the Orion crew exploration vehicle, at least at first, to save weight. That would mean that when NASA regains the ability to fly astronauts to orbit in the post-shuttle era, it will start with a crew of four instead of six. Four seats have been the baseline for the version of Orion that would take astronauts back to the moon, but the initial operational capability (IOC) to deliver crew to the International Space Station (ISS) currently calls for a six-seat version.
PACT INKED: Hellenic Aerospace Industry has inked a memorandum of understanding with Boeing outlining potential industrial cooperation between HAI and Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems business. Areas of collaboration include depot-level maintenance of rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft avionics and systems, aircraft upgrades, aerostructures, wiring, maintenance training and logistics.
May 6-7, 2009 Hilton Suites Chicago Magnificent Mile Chicago, IL Proven Tactics on Bird Strike Risk Mitigation Learn more at www.aviationweek.com/events or call +1.212.904.4483. Click here to view the pdf
Due to the strains of simultaneously fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan while running other missions around the world, the U.S. Marine Corps is nearly tripling the planned utilization rates of many of its aircraft platforms, Gen. James Amos, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Senate Armed Services Committee April 22.
