Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

LONDON — The Netherlands government is restarting deliveries of naval versions of the NH90 helicopter six months after halting them over concerns about corrosion. Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said new agreements were now in place with the aircraft’s manufacturer, NHindustries – a joint venture of AgustaWestland, Airbus Helicopters and Fokker – which gave her confidence that the corrosion issues would be resolved.

View the PDF

Orbital Sciences Corp. will buy directly from Russia’s NPO Energomash a new rocket engine with a long heritage, to replace the surplus Russian

U.S. AIR FORCE approved full-rate production for LOCKHEED MARTIN Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile – Extended Range (JASSM-ER); company has

Credit analysts at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services forecast that credit quality for U.S. airlines will continue to improve in 2015 due to cheaper

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to conduct three ambitious “firsts” in the next five years for its Boeing-led Ground-Based Midcourse

Karem Aircraft is to continue work on an unmanned version of its Optimum Speed Tilt Rotor (OSTR) concept under a Defense Advanced Research Projects

The South Korean finance ministry has approved 8.8 trillion won ($8.1 billion) for full-scale development of the KF-X indigenous fighter, leaving

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope remains on track for a launch in October 2018, but with diminished cost and schedule reserves and a range of

The U.S. Navy completed tests earlier this month on the GhostSwimmer unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort

The U.S. and its allies need to develop even more integrated military forces to ensure security in Asia, according to the Center for Strategic and

/site-files/aviationweek.com/files/uploads/2014/12/asd_12_17_2014_spacescope.pdf

Boeing is planning for first flight of its 767-2C – upon which the U.S. Air Force’s new KC-46 tanker will be based – by year’s end, six months late.

PRATT & WHITNEY CANADA plans to invest >C$1b in R&D over next 54 months on next-gen high-performance aircraft engines; Government of Canada is funding

LONDON – Airbus Helicopters, Cobham and Elbit have been downselected to compete to provide the U.K. armed forces with its next-generation training

After days of debate, lawmakers passed a fiscal 2015 spending bill that again weighs in on the back-and-forth over the U.S. Air Force U-2 surveillance

Aerospace and aviation supplier Alcoa is continuing its rollup of metals providers — and critical link-forming with giant manufacturers Airbus Group

Russia’s drive to re-establish a superpower-like weapons industry continues to pay off, literally, according to the latest version of a widely watched

HOUSTON—For the third year in a row, NASA is perched atop the rankings as the best place to work in the U.S. federal government, according to a 2014

LONDON—Poland has inked a $250 million deal to buy the Lockheed Martin AGM-158A Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm) to equip its F-16

The U.S. subsidiary of British aerospace and defense giant BAE Systems and Esterline of Washington state have agreed to a $28 million deal over

/site-files/aviationweek.com/files/uploads/2014/12/asd_12_16_2014_dossier.pdf /site-files/aviationweek.com/files/uploads/2014/12/F3Design%20Concept.jpeg Name: F-3 Description: The F-3 is the provisional name for Japan’s indigenous, fifth-generation fighter program.

Selected U.S. military contracts for the week of Dec. 8-12, 2014. Selected U.S. military contracts for Dec. 8, 2014 U.S. ARMY Lockheed Martin Corp

COM DEV INTERNATIONAL agreed to acquire U.K.-based MESL MICROWAVE (high-reliability components/subsystems) for £12.8m. SAAB extended deal with Sweden’s FMV to provide support/upgrade of 14 Gripen fighters for Czech Republic for 12 more years. ELBIT SYSTEMS OF AMERICA and OGDEN AIR LOGISTIC COMPLEX teamed to offer support services for fighter aircraft. LOCKHEED MARTIN opened collaboration center in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, for innovation and security systems in the UAE.

In settling on a new Small Surface Combatant (SCC) ship that will be derived from the existing Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) template, the U.S. Navy is going back to LCS basics. Keeping the weight down has always been a mantra for LCS, and that mindset is proving to be key in developing what might best be called LCS-Next. (See story p. 4.) One of the “cardinal rules” from the LCS concept of operations (conops) going back to the previous decades says: “Do not add weight to LCS. For anything added, something else must be removed.”