Less than two weeks after the U.S. Navy issued a draft request for proposals covering its Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) program, the House of Representatives seapower subcommittee has moved to prevent a contract from being issued before the requirements are reviewed by the secretary of defense.
The aerospace and defense groups of Orbital Sciences Corp. and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will be combined in a stock transaction valued at $5 billion, the companies announced April 29. The merger will form a space, defense and aviation systems development and manufacturing company of 13,000 workers that the companies said is worth about $4.5 billion. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year.
India’s attempt to intercept a target ballistic missile at an altitude of 120 km "attained mission objectives," a senior defense scientist says. "In a significant milestone achieved in developing a two-layered Ballistic Missile Defense system, the Defense Research and Development Organization [DRDO] successfully carried out the maiden ‘Prithvi Defense Vehicle’ [PDV] mission, meeting the objectives perfectly," a DRDO scientist says.
Draft legislation circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives would bar the use of Russian rocket technology in launching Pentagon payloads as early as this year. The language — drafted this month as the U.S. considers additional sanctions against Moscow over aggression in Ukraine — aims squarely at the NPO Energomash-built RD-180 engine that powers the first stage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5, a Lockheed Martin-built rocket that launches most U.S. government missions.
Dassault said available cash amounted to €3.5 billion at the end of the first quarter, compared to €3.7 billion for the same period in 2013, down €205 million.
HOUSTON — The Earth is randomly struck by uncharted but potentially destructive asteroids with perhaps three to 10 times the frequency previously estimated, according to a visual Earth Day presentation unveiled by the nonprofit B612 Foundation that features records of 26 high-altitude detonations triggered by impacts over the last dozen years.
Recent Naval War College wargames underscore the importance of developing robust and efficient command-and-control (C2) operations for air-sea battle (ASB), but also warn against depending too much on technology to do the job. Wargaming leaders at U.S. Naval War College (NWC) in Newport, R.I., released the chief of naval operations’ (CNO) annual Title 10 War Game (Global ’13) series report earlier this month, following six months of post-wargaming analysis.
