French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is expected to leave his post if he wins a regional election in Brittany in December, according to French media reports. Le Drian, who was appointed defense minister by President Francois Hollande in 2012, has been lauded by the French general staff and the nation’s aerospace and defense industry for his role in promoting exports of defense equipment, notably ships, aircraft and spy satellites in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Foreign air forces using the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are being compelled to build and fund U.S.-based software laboratories that generate data crucial to the fighter’s ability to identify threats.
With its new Bloostar concept,Spain-based Zero2infinty hopes to meet growing demand from the burgeoning nanosat community for an affordable, dedicated ride to space.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, current commander of the International Space Station, sailed to a new U.S. record for time accumulated in space on Oct. 15.
Gloria Flach will become COO of Northrop Grumman in January, a move that could set in motion a succession plan for the Pentagon prime contractor’s CEO position.
The first hints have emerged that the U.K. Royal Air Force may be planning to keep some of its early-model Tranche 1 Eurofighter Typhoons in service for longer.
India has signed a contract with Slovenia-based Pipistrel Aircraft to buy 194 Virus SW80s and is likely to buy an additional 100 aircraft after three years.
North America AeroVironment says it has been dropped from Darpa’s Tern medium-altitude long-endurance UAV program after a competition for the third and final phase of the program to demonstrate a Predator-class unmanned aircraft that can operate from smaller warships. Subscale flight tests were about to begin when the company was deselected. Northrop Grumman was the other contractor involved in Phase 2 of Tern, but says it has not received confirmation from Darpa that it will receive a contract for Phase 3.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is calling for a “new playbook” that prizes highly mobile forces, hybrid warfare, cyber battles and nuclear deterrence to counter Russian aggression.
The U.S. Army could cut years and billions of dollars from the planned Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Medium advanced-rotorcraft program by going straight into development after completion of the Joint Multi Role (JMR) technology demonstration, Bell Helicopter President and CEO John Garrison says.
Following performance issues during recent testing, the U.S. Navy’s planned unmanned underwater minehunter is facing greater scrutiny, the service says.
NASA is weighing a robotic Mars-landing mission as early as 2026 to flight test critical technologies with subscale components in preparation for a human landing.
NASA has asked the European Space Agency and Airbus Defense and Space to build and deliver a second European service module to power the U.S.-led Orion crew vehicle.
Mark Kirasich, deputy manager of NASA’s Orion program since 2006, will manage the $1.1 billion-a-year effort to develop a new U.S. human spacecraft for future deep space exploration.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is expected to leave his post if he wins a regional election in Brittany in December, French media reports say.
India is planning to launch an advanced meteorological satellite in July 2016 to augment the country’s weather forecasting and disaster warning capabilities.
The U.S. Army has purchased an initial set of Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System laser-guided rockets from BAE Systems. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps use the system, but these, bound for Iraq and Afghanistan, will mark the Army’s first deployment of the weapon. The Army is taking the rockets from the Navy’s inventory and working with the contractor for additional rockets. It plans to use the laser-guided munition on AH-64 Apache helicopters.
A Dutch-led investigation has concluded that the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 shot down by a Russian-produced Buk surface-to-air missile system in 2014, killing 298 passengers and crew.
The next chapter in the long life of Boeing’s Chinook should open soon with the release of a U.S. Army request for proposals for development of an improved Block 2 version of the latest CH-47F model of the helicopter.
