BUYING WEIGHTLESSNESS: NASA researchers will conduct experiments later this year on two low-gravity flights operated by the Zero Gravity Corp., the aerospace agency says. The flights will allow NASA to evaluate the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company's ability to provide parabolic research flight services, which use special maneuvers to temporarily mimic weightlessness. The flights, set for mid-September, will be similar to those NASA has performed for years with its own specially equipped research aircraft.
LE BOURGET, France - Inventors of the FanWing technology, which uses "squirrel cage" fans mounted across the length of an aircraft's wings, have shown a prototype here at the Paris Air Show and are developing a version they hope could fly for up to 10 hours. The fans are driven by a motor connected to a belt drive. As they rotate, they pull in air from the front and project it over the rear of the wing, creating a lot of lift with little power.
COSMOS 1: The Cosmos-1 solar sail spacecraft is set to launch atop a converted ICBM from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea on June 21. A joint effort by the Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios, Cosmos-1 will attempt the first controlled flight of a solar sail in orbit. The spacecraft was mated to its Volna ICBM on June 15 and soon will be placed inside the Russian Delta III sub. After Cosmos-1 is checked out in orbit, it will begin deploying its windmill-shaped sail panels on June 26.
United Defense Industries Inc. of Arlington, Va., has been awarded a $44.1 million contract modification to produce three Mk 45 Mod 4 Naval Gun systems, the company said June 17. The 5-inch, 62-caliber Mk 45 Mod 4 is a fully-automated naval gun that can support anti-surface, strike, fire support and anti-air warfare missions. The guns will be installed aboard the Navy's DDG 110 through DDG 112 guided missile destroyers. Production work will be done in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., and is expected to be finished during 2007.
PRAGUE - The Czech defense minister asked U.S. representatives in Prague for help in a failed attempt to get Switzerland-based American subsidiary Mowag involved in a tender to supply armored personnel carriers to the Czech military. Czech defense minister Karel Kuehnl wrote to U.S. Ambassador William Cabaniss recently requesting him to ask Mowag owner General Dynamics to enter the Swiss company in a new multimillion dollar tender for at least 199 vehicles.
SITE SELECTION: EADS North America plans to announce this week its selection of a U.S. site for building tankers for the Air Force, should it win any new competition for such aircraft. Even if it doesn't, the new site will be used as an engineering center to support Airbus aircraft, the company has said (DAILY, Feb. 15).
France's Thales has been selected by prime contractor Dassault Aviation to develop the data link system for the Neuron unmanned combat aerial vehicle technology demonstrator.
LE BOURGET, France - A new vacuum assisted process (VAP) to make carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic structures without the use of an autoclave has been developed by EADS Military Aircraft-Augsburg, already the largest external supplier to Airbus of aerostructures for the A380 airliner.
READY TO DETECT: Mars Express, Europe's first spacecraft sent to the red planet, has deployed the second 20-meter (65.6-foot) boom of its Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument and should be ready to begin both searching for water beneath the planet's surface and studying its upper atmosphere, says the European Space Agency. A third boom has yet to deploy, but it mainly will correct radio waves and is not considered critical.
LE BOURGET, France - General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. said it is negotiating to sell five more Predator B unmanned aerial vehicles to the U.S. Air Force. The company already is under contract to supply the Air Force with 15 Predator Bs, which are being delivered. Meanwhile, GA-ASI continues to say little about the latest version of the Predator it is developing, other than that the new UAV, tentatively named Predator C, will take its first flight by year's end and will fly higher and faster and be stealthier than Predator B.
MARS DESCENT: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is seeking proposals for the sensor that will guide the final descent of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, which is to land a rover on the red planet in October 2010. Proposals for the Ku-band Doppler velocimeter/altimeter are due to JPL on July 29. The full request for proposals can be found on the Web at http://acquisition.jpl.nasa.gov.
NO NUKE: The U.S. Air Force has not found a missing nuclear weapon in the Wassaw Sound, near Savannah, Ga., the service says. In 1958, a B-47 bomber dropped a Mk15 Mod 0 nuclear bomb in the water after colliding with an F-86 fighter. The Air Force tried to find it but couldn't, and in 2001 a study said the bomb should be left alone and categorized as "irretrievably lost." In 2004, a citizens group discovered elevated radiation levels in the area that they said could have been from the bomb.
PRAGUE - Czech Republic aircraft maker Aero Vodochody has taken the radical step of offering to license foreign countries to produce its L-159 light combat aircraft, the company's spokesman has told the DAILY.
United Defense Industries Inc. has been awarded a contract modification worth up to $33.3 million to overhaul 101 Bradley Combat System vehicles for a return to combat in Iraq, the company said June 17. A total of 61 Bradley A3 and 40 Bradley A2 Operation Desert Storm vehicles will be returned to combat-ready status by United Defense and the Army's Red River Army Depot.
EUROFIGHTER: The United Kingdom's Smiths Aerospace recently reported orders for Eurofighter Tranche 2 equipment worth more than $180 million - part of some $500 million worth of new business described at the Paris Air Show this week. Smiths equipment for Eurofighter includes the multifunction head down display, right-hand glareshield, mission data loader/recorder, bulk storage device, direct voice input module and electrical connectors.
June 27 - 29 -- The ION 61st Annual Meeting, Cambridge, Mass. For more information go to www.ion.org. June 27 - 29 -- 4th Annual Government Symposium on Information Sharing & Homeland Security, New Orleans, La. For more information call 1-888-603-8899 or go to www.federalevents.com. June 27 - July 1 -- 2005 National Space & Missile Materials Symposium, "Betting on Materials: A Sure Win," JW Marriott Resort at Summerlin, Nev. For more information go to www.usasymposium.com/nsmms/.
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Minneapolis-based Alliant Techsystems a $1.5 million contract to build and test a transportable, high-powered microwave system that can disable improvised explosive devices, the company said June 17. The Directed Energy Directorate, High Power Microwave Division of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory will work with ATK to develop the Scorpion II Demonstration System.
TOO SOON TO TELL: Three new Defense Department programs are "appropriately targeted" at quickly moving promising technologies from laboratories and commercial use to warfighting, but it's "too soon" to tell if they're having the desired impact, the Government Accountability Office says. The Technology Transition Initiative, Defense Acquisition Challenge and Quick Reaction Fund had completed only 11 of 68 projects funded in fiscal 2003-2004, and have "limited measures" for gauging their success, the GAO says.
The White House supports passage of the House's version of the fiscal 2005 defense spending bill, although the Bush Administration said it is "concerned" with many of the changes a House committee made to its spending priorities. In a "statement of administration policy," the White House said it opposes the bill's overall $3 billion reduction, and is "concerned with the numerous funding reductions and guidelines for specific acquisition programs."
Weight remains a challenge for individual DD(X) destroyer subsystems and the ship as a whole, with the futuristic integrated power system, advanced gun system and integrated deckhouse all proving difficult to keep within weight limits, congressional investigators said June 14.
GET IT STRAIGHT: Eurofighter CEO Ays Rauen has taken a swipe at a cheeky little advertisement from Dassault that accuses Rafale's competitors of being "almost on budget, almost on schedule and almost ready to fly a full range of effective missions." Rauen says, "We are the number one best-selling next-generation combat aircraft on the market. That's worth repeating - we are the number one. Now that might be news to some people, but it shouldn't be. We have a signed contract for 620 aircraft, plus options, and we have sold 18 to Austria.
LE BOURGET, France - Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.'s HJT-36 intermediate military jet trainer prototype, making its European debut here, likely will be joined soon by a new and more potent project for advanced and lead-in fighter training, company chairman Ashok Baweja told Aviation Week's ShowNews.
Northrop Grumman has integrated a Global Positioning System receiver into its laser-guided Viper Strike munition, and successfully demonstrated GPS navigation in flight-tests, the company said June 15. The addition of GPS navigation is intended to provide accurate midcourse guidance, allowing the unpowered Viper Strike to be launched from a greater altitude and longer standoff range, the company said.
LE BOURGET, France - Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went through major changes in recent years, transforming operational tactics and elevating the level of cooperation between the combat forces and the Israel Securities Authority (ISA). This evolution was necessary to improve the continued war against Palestinian terror, Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, chief of staff and deputy commander of the Israeli air force, told Aviation Week's ShowNews at the Paris Air Show.
