A CDN$155 million ($123 million) deal with Bell Helicopter is the second contract for helicopters placed by the Canadian Department of Fisheries & Oceans—the umbrella agency for the Coast Guard—following a May 2014 order for 15 Bell 429s.
The government’s fiscal year closes at the end of September, leaving little time to resolve the question of how to level the playing field between dissimilar competitors United Launch Alliance and SpaceX as they compete for launch contracts.
India plans to purchase 36 Rafale jets in fly-away condition “as quickly as possible,” though both the Indian and French governments said further negotiations are still underway.
Canberra also has decided to add facilities at RAAF Amberley, the major Royal Australian Air Force base that accommodates the C-17 unit, 36 Squadron. The aircraft and new facilities will cost AUS$1 billion ($770 million), Defense Minister Kevin Andrews says, confirming the intention to order.
During his Asia-Pacific tour, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter showed continued U.S. support for Japan’s plans to revise its military stance and the U.S. ally’s importance in the region.
Additional instruments will be switched on in the coming week, but the agency says close flybys of the comet scheduled through the end of April will have to be reworked, in order to avoid a similar loss of navigational control.
Dassault Aviation stock was up almost 4% Friday morning on reports that New Delhi is pressing a compromise in a three-year-old deal to purchase Rafale combat jets, one that would see India spend several billion euros to purchase made-in-France fighters.
“With delivery of our second trainer, the unit will add the capability to provide in-depth avionics troubleshooting, along with test and check procedures,” says Chief Aviation Machinist’s Mate Dan Singer, CNATTU division chief.
U.S. defense contractors will have to notify and seek the endorsement of a Defense Department official regarding some of their self-funded research efforts under the latest implementation of the Pentagon’s Better Buying Power initiative.
The Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) has received GPS signals at an altitude of 70,000 km, well above the GPS constellation’s 20,200-km operational altitude, and has generated navigation solutions there based on the GPS signals.
While the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy have been prepping their amphibious ships to accommodate the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the services also are preparing to meet the C5I challenges—and potential—associated with the aircraft.
The U.S. Navy is using the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 3 USS Fort Worth to help craft the concept of operations (Conops) for unmanned helicopter use for the fleet’s ships, says Rear Adm. Charlie Williams, commander of U.S. 7th Fleet’s Task Force 73 (CTF 73).
Convention suggests the Moon formed in the late planet-forming stages of the 4.6-billion-year-old Solar System, when a Mars-sized impactor struck the Earth—the final “giant impact” in an accretion process involving primarily small protoplanets.
The $925 million deal, revealed this week by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), covers 15 AH-1Zs and also includes the purchase of 1,000 Hellfire missiles to arm them.
ELBIT SYSTEMS OF AMERICA has SAIC contract for color helmet display and tracking system for evaluation on U.S. Navy’s MH-60S. MEXICAN NAVY ordered (as launch customer) two winglet-equipped C295Ws. SAAB booked follow-on order from HAL, India, for serial production of integrated EW self-protection system for India’s Dhruv helicopter.
William Gerstenmaier, associate NASA administrator for human exploration and operations, is getting a little touchy about quick-fix approaches for going to Mars. “Probably every other day I read another concept with pictures of stick rockets launching to orbit and how they’re going to go to Mars in X amount of time,” he tells the NASA Advisory Council. “We’re kind of stepping back and saying, ‘Let’s get all the big-picture assumptions nailed before we start homing in on a solution,’” he says.
The U.S. Marine Corps is preparing for its first and only operational testing period for the F-35B in advance of declaring initial operational capability for the stealthy, single-engine fighter as early as July.
