BIG SUBS: The U.S. Navy says shipbuilding giant Northrop Grumman continues to improve on building massive, complicated submarines - a change that comes after the company suffered setbacks over the past few years and had to re-acquire such skills. A program executive made the observation as the company delivered the USS North Carolina this month, which is the fourth Virginia-class sub and second where Northrop led the manufacturing versus program-partner General Dynamics. Capt.
AUSTRALIAN DEFENSE: Australia is crafting a “vital” planning document that will serve as the foundation of its future defense capabilities, according to relatively new Australian Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. “The white paper will help the government make fully-informed and cost-effective decisions about the military capabilities we need to defend Australia and to promote our interests,” Fitzgibbon says.
AIRBORNE LASER: Boeing’s Airborne Laser (ABL) industry team has installed all major laser components - six chemical oxygen iodine laser modules - on its ABL test aircraft and the program remains on track for a ballistic missile shootdown demonstration planned for 2009, according to Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. Overall laser integration is more than 70 percent complete.
WINDS: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has rescheduled the launch of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Wideband Internetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite (WINDS) to Feb. 23 between 16:20 to 17:55 Japan time. Initial plans for a Feb.15 launch had to be scrapped after a leaking diaphragm was discovered in one of the second-stage fuel tanks Feb. 12 (DAILY, Feb. 14). According to JAXA, it will be the world’s fastest telecommunications satellite, allowing direct connections with small antennas on the ground.
NASA engineers are adding instrumentation to the first full-scale flight version of the Ares I crew launch vehicle to gather real data about vibrations from its solid-fuel first stage that initially were predicted to be seriously out-of-spec.
EW FORECAST: An estimated $23 billion will be spent on the development and production of major electronic warfare (EW) programs over the next decade, consultancy Forecast International predicts. More than 35,800 units of leading electronic countermeasures, radar warning receivers, electronic support measures and other EW systems are expected to be produced through 2017. Forecast says market leaders are Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Raytheon, ITT, and Lockheed Martin. Based on a projection of the current U.S.
NEW DELHI - Indian defense minister AK Antony says “no decision has been made” yet on the creation of an Indian Aerospace Command, despite statements from the Indian air force indicating that the command was being established. Antony spoke to Aerospace Daily at the Defexpo land and naval show here.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) March 3 - 7 — 2008 Directed Energy System Symposium, Monterey Marriott Hotel and Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif. For more information go to www.deps.org March 4- 5 — Fulfilling the Warfighters Vision Conference, Grand Hyatt, Tampa, Fla. For more information go to www.afei.org/brochure/8A04/index.cfm
Qatar will become the latest country to buy the Boeing C-17 Globemaster cargo aircraft, according to a program source. Commenting earlier on the sale, Bruce Lemkin, deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force for international affairs, wouldn’t identify the purchaser but said the order would be for two aircraft, with an option for two more. Meanwhile, in Washington, one proposal for even more C-17s was rebuffed by the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, John Young.
BIGGER HEADQUARTERS: The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee wants Defense Secretary Robert Gates to expand the scope of the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan. Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) has written Gates urging him to bump up headquarters to a three-star command, based in Kabul, to improve the coordination of military, political and economic assistance throughout Afghanistan with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. Currently, the U.S.
DOT&E CONCERNS: The Pentagon’s major tactical combat aircraft programs need some additional tinkering, according to the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E). The nation’s F-22 Raptor, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) fleets all have issues the office says need to be addressed, according to the recently released DOT&E 2007 annual report (See stories p. 4).
The new radars for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets are not ready for duty, according to the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) office, though radar contractor Raytheon has said the the problems have been addressed.
The Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) is faulting Lockheed Martin’s two fifth-generation fighter programs, the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, citing worries about the effort needed to maintain the Raptor’s stealth and plans to drop two test aircraft from the JSF’s System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase.
SHIP UPGRADES: The U.S. Navy plans to upgrade all Ticonderoga-class cruisers by 2017. Destroyer modernization will begin in 2010, marking the first time a ship class has begun a major modernization program while more ships of the same class are still being built. The cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) recently became the first guided-missile cruiser to begin combined hull, mechanical and electrical upgrades, as well as updates to its combat systems under the CG/DDG Modernization Program, according to Naval Sea Systems Command.
The Defense Department’s inspector general (IG) plans to investigate whether the U.S. Air Force improperly changed a key performance parameter (KPP) in its $15 billion combat, search and rescue helicopter replacement program.
SURPLUS SALE: Norway is selling 15 Northrop F-5A/D Freedom Fighter jets to Northern General Leasing of Fort Worth, Texas, under a deal valued at approximately 100 million Norwegian kronor ($18.8 million), the country’s Defense Logistic Organization confirms. According to export license documents, the aircraft will be leased to Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training and Support for introduction to fighter fundamentals training, initially to United Arab Emirates pilots.
BUY AMERICAN BOOST: Buy American advocate Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, says he is pleased that 3Com Corp., Bain Capital Partners and Huawei Technologies have withdrawn their joint filing with the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). “In the future, we must weigh American security interests before potential profits,” the former Republican presidential contender says. Hunter says foreign acquisition of U.S.
The U.S. Navy wants a single, intelligence-gathering aircraft – the EPX – that can use a powerful radar and at the same time operate an array of sensitive receivers to collect faint electronic emissions or communications from hundreds of miles away. The multisource information collected by the EPX would be fused to locate and identify objects of interest as fleeting and elusive as the low-power cell and satellite telephones used by terrorists and insurgents.
NEW DEHLI – Raytheon Tactical Intelligence Systems has started a dialogue with the Indian Defense Research Development Organization on the company’s Universal Control System (UCS), an unmanned aircraft ground control system that Raytheon promises can boost operator tasking, cut accidents and improve training.
Congressional leaders on Feb. 21 applauded the U.S. Navy’s apparently successful destruction of a faulty reconnaissance satellite but warned against pursuing further anti-satellite weapons development. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said downing the failed satellite “before it could potentially cause injury, was the responsible course of action.” The intercept “is further validation of America’s sea-based missile defense capability,” he added.
With fixed-wing costs once again topping off Pentagon contract and modification expenditures in 2007, it comes as little surprise that the rulers of the roost remain Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Boeing leads in total contract or modification tallies, 726, and with the total overall dollar amount, about $8.4 billion, according to an Aerospace Daily analysis of more than 1 million Defense Department transactions from a database provided by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (See charts pp. 6-7).
The U.S. military has “a high degree of confidence” that the Navy Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) fired on the evening of Feb. 20 struck a targeted satellite at its hydrazine fuel tank, and officials believe the toxic fuel load has been broken apart to burn up on deorbit, according to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Missile launch took place at 10:26 p.m. EST, and confirmation of the strike was received at 10:50 p.m.
INTEGRATION AWARD: Northrop Grumman said Feb. 18 that it was endorsed by U.S. Naval Air Systems Command for the second phase of the APR-39 radar warning receiver (RWR) integration program for the Navy and Marine Corps’ planned CH-53K helicopter fleet. Under the $17 million contract, Northrop will incorporate “all” electronic warfare integration capabilities of the A(V)2 and B(V)2 versions of its APR-39 RWR now in production – including EW controller and integration interfaces to multiple missile and laser warning sensors – into CH-53Ks.
