To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Apr. 21 — AVIATION WEEK Management Forums, 2009 Lean Six Sigma For Military, Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, Grapevine/Dallas, Texas. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/conferences
Calling the move unprecedented, outgoing Pentagon acquisitions chief John Young told reporters at a roundtable April 17 that General Dynamics will build the second of three DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyers under a fixed-price contract. Young also said he would press Northrop Grumman for a fixed-price contract on the DDG-51 destroyers, whose production will be restarted at the company’s Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. “I’ve felt like when you understand the risk, you should push for a [fixed-price] contract,” Young said.
INTELLIGENT CAREER: The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence is seeking about 30 “highly motivated” graduate students and college seniors interested in careers in intelligence analysis to study and work with current intel analysts for an “intensive” two-week residential seminar. The seminar, ODNI’s first, will be July 13-24 in Washington and will address political instability and international systems in transition. Students who qualify will receive secret-level security clearances for the duration of the seminar.
LES MUREAUX, France – EADS Astrium officials are urging that Europe begin preparing a design for a medium-lift launch vehicle that could provide an eventual replacement for the Russian-built Soyuz.
CYBER VS. EW: Defense Secretary Robert Gates says cyber warfare is going to be “one of the significant new realms of conflict.” He tells students at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., he plans to establish a sub-unified cyber command within Strategic Command that would involve the National Security Agency and various other entities. Gates plans to “significantly increase” the training of cyber experts. We graduate about 80 students a year from our cyber-schools right now. We’re going to quadruple that by fiscal 2011,” he said.
FIRST FLIGHT SLIP: The first flight of the first carrier-capable F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, aircraft CF-1, has slipped to December, from October, because of parts deliveries. The U.S. Navy’s F-35C is the last of the three JSF variants to fly. Despite the slip, Lockheed Martin says the schedule still supports the overall flight-test plan and initial operational capability in 2015.
The increase in contractor bid protests of Pentagon contract awards in fiscal 2008 should raise little cause for alarm, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says.
TORNADO TOUCHDOWN: The United Kingdom plans to withdraw the bulk of its remaining Tornado F3 air defense aircraft starting in September as a savings measure. The country will keep the ability to field 12 aircraft for the air defense role until the fighter type is withdrawn from service at the end of March 2011. A total of 35 aircraft are available to provide air defense and quick-reaction alert (north) tasks, based out of RAF Leuchars in the east of Scotland.
‘UNDER THE GUN’: The three-stage ballistic missile North Korea launched April 5 went higher and farther than originally believed. The Taepodong-2 missile traveled 3,230 kilometers before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket’s flight path indicated it was carrying a satellite and separated in its final two stages, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee said last week. “The performance of this vehicle was far better than we realized,” says Charles P. Vick, a senior technical analyst with Globalsecurity.org.
TALKING TRADE: Trade officials in Washington and Brussels are having informal talks on a range of issues, including the continuing U.S.-European Union battle over the aircraft subsidies that each side alleges the other gives to its respective aircraft makers, Boeing and Airbus. European officials are trying to assess whether Ron Kirk, the new U.S. Trade Representative, may be agreeable to opening a discussion on the issue to avoid continuing with the World Trade Organization legal battle, industry officials say.
SATELLITE SHIPPED: Boeing has shipped the IndoStar II/ ProtoStar II/ telecom satellite to Baikonur, Kazakhstan for a Proton M launch in May. The Boeing 601-based Ku-/S-band spacecraft will replace Indonesia’s aging Indostar I while providing additional direct-to-home capacity for Protostar, a Bermuda based startup that is supplying broadcasting services throughout southeast Asia. Protostar has also concluded a preliminary agreement with PLDT/Mabuhay of the Philippines to use its Agila 2 spacecraft as Protostar III.
As the U.S. Air Force gets ready to recapitalize its current combat, search and rescue (CSAR) fleet, service and industry officials are hoping that history will repeat itself and the Defense Department will again realize the importance and need for a more modern dedicated CSAR fleet.
DUTCH DECISION: The Netherlands parliament this week is expected to decide whether the country should go ahead with buying two test F-35As. But a decision on a production buy would not come until later. The F-35 procurement has met stiff opposition in parliament. The Dutch research agency, NLR, also is to provide a noise assessment on JSF. One of the sticking points for F-35 opponents is the lack of a firm purchase price for F-35s.
CARRIER ORDERED: France has ordered a third command ship/helicopter carrier to augment its force projection capability. The 21,000 metric ton displacement vessel, which also carries surgical units, amphibious landing craft and troops, will be built by STX France and DCNS with funding from a 2.4 billion euro aerospace and defense economic stimulus package approved late last year. The first two ships were delivered in 2006-07.
NASA is not getting enough money to hold the so-called “gap” in U.S. human access to space to five years, and even if it does get more funding it may not be able to improve the situation much, two reports issued April 16 suggest.
SAN FRANCISCO – After years of talk that space-based electrical energy generation could aid everyone from troops on the battlefield to homemakers in the kitchen, a Northern California utility has become the first customer of a Southern California satellite startup that says it can deliver space solar power (SSP).
Defense analyst and author Robert Kaplan says the security situation in Europe, Asia and the Middle East has become complicated by increasing population and less space, specifically pointing out that in Eurasia, “every country from Israel to Korea with the exception of Iraq” has managed to build some kind of ballistic missile capability. And given the constrained geographic area, these “missile ranges overlap with each other. There’s no room to breathe, there’s no room to move.”
Japan’s SkyPerfectJSAT Corp. has ordered its seventh Lockheed Martin A2100 communications satellite for the JCSAT program and second since December. Launch of JCSAT-13 is set for 2013. To be located at 124-deg. East longitude, the spacecraft will use the A2100AX platform and have an all Ku-band payload of 44 fixed high-power communications channels. Up- and downlinks are to provide coverage over Japan, Asia and Oceana. Two steerable antennas will be used for new and emerging markets.
GENOA, Italy – Italian defense export license applications are on the rise, indicating continued growth in overseas sales that were already up 39% last year to €1.77 billion ($2.33 billion), according to the annual government report sent to the Parliament this month. Italy is increasing its stake in the world defense export market notwithstanding strict export regulations, and the trend is going to continue in the next few years since the volume of the export authorization licenses is steadily increasing.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems asked to make two corrections to the interview about the company’s new, stealthy Predator C Avenger UAV (DAILY, April 16). The correct dimensions of the aircraft are 41 ft. in length with a 66 ft. wingspan. The V-tail consists of two all-flying vertically-oriented fins each with twin servos for redundancy.
PARIS – A new lawsuit is threatening to add fuel to a protracted legal battle pitting minority investors in ImageSat International, operator of Israel’s Eros imaging satellites, against ImageSat’s industrial shareholders.
