The National Defense Industrial Association, a top lobbying group for the U.S. aerospace and defense sector, said Jan. 13 it is spearheading its own industrial base review, which will be led by recently retired Pentagon industrial base czar Brett Lambert. “Brett will lead a team of industry stakeholders to provide fact-based perspectives on how we can best manage and preserve our critical industrial capacity,” said NDIA Chairman Arnold Punaro, a former Marine Corps major general and himself a well-known veteran of numerous blue-ribbon panels.
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Aviation Week Laureate Awards March 6, 2014 National Building Museum Washington, D.C. Join Us! Aviation Week’s 57th annual Laureate Awards will recognize individuals/teams for their extraordinary accomplishments. Their achievements embody the spirit of exploration, innovation, vision or any combination of these attributes that inspire others to strive for significant, broad-reaching progress in aviation and aerospace.
HOUSTON — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened hatches to access the “Orb-1” Cygnus resupply capsule Jan. 12, following a successful rendezvous and berthing of the Orbital Sciences Corp. resupply craft launched last week on the first of an eight-flight, $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) agreement with NASA.
NEW DELHI — India is hoping to launch its Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) so-called fifth-generation fighter by 2018, a senior defense official says. “The product design work of AMCA has been started” by the Defense Research and Development Organization, says K. Tamilmani, director general of India’s Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), based in the southern city of Bengaluru. The vehicle is expected “to be ready” within next four years, he adds. The multi-role fighter was developed by the ADA at the request of the Indian air force (IAF).
NEW DELHI — India is trying to expedite the long-stalled process of acquiring 145 Ultra Light Howitzer artillery guns for its army. The government is proposing buying the guns through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales route. Last August, the U.S. Department of Defense notified the U.S. Congress of a possible sale of 145 155mm towed Howitzers in response to a request from India. The deal’s estimated cost is $885 million, which also includes providing associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support.
The White House decision to extend International Space Station (ISS) operations until 2024 found widespread support among a global gathering of space-agency chiefs meeting in Washington this week, but in some cases mainly as a way to gain more time to prepare national space programs to participate in China’s planned space station later in the 2020s.
BEIJING — South Korea is going ahead with its LCH-LAH light helicopter program, following parliamentary and ministerial approval of full-scale development for the 4.2-5.3 ton (9,300-11,700 lb.) aircraft in cooperation with a foreign partner. Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) will handle the South Korean side of the development and has beefed up its program office for the project, making it one of the main divisions of the company.
HOUSTON — Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy are potentially scheduling late January for a second attempt to install two Canadian-furnished commercial Earth-observing cameras outside the International Space Station, after transmission problems thwarted their efforts during a marathon Dec. 27 spacewalk. The latest excursion is tentatively planned for Jan. 27, according to Dan Hartman, NASA’s deputy International Space Station program manager.
LONDON — Aero-engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce is planning to cut 400 jobs in its defense business in both the U.S. and U.K. The company says the moves are in response to ongoing reductions in defense budgets in the U.S. and Europe as well as part of a drive to reduce costs and boost competitiveness.
BEIJING — The South Korean parliament has approved limited 2014 funding for the KF-X indigenous fighter subject to conditions that implicitly threaten to kill the program if it goes off the rails. Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), meanwhile, is restructuring its internal organization to sharpen its focus on the KF-X and the LCH-LAH helicopter program.
OMNIBUS: Top U.S. House and Senate appropriators said Jan. 10 they are confident they can introduce an omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2014 this week, but they need more time for it to pass both chambers of Congress before the Jan. 15 deadline to keep the government running. In turn, they are pushing a short-term extension of stopgap funding, which continues 2013 appropriations, until Jan. 17. Congress has to pass at least a continuing resolution (CR) of 2013 spending by Jan. 15, the day the current CR expires.
With the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) satisfied that a variant of Lockheed Martin’s newest stealthy cruise missile can accurately attack moving and protected ship targets, program officials are focusing on fielding the system on the B-1B and F/A-18 Hornet and laying the foundation for mating it with the U.S. Navy’s ship-launch canister system.
Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic have taken another step toward flying SpaceShipTwo (SS2) in suborbital space, following the completion of a third powered flight that evaluated a new thermal protection system and a reaction control system (RCS) for re-orienting the vehicle outside the atmosphere.
As the recent loss of two sailors’ lives and a Sikorsky MH-53E “Sea Dragon” helicopter off the Virginia coast shows, there are no routine U.S. Navy aviation missions. Daytime training mishaps such as the Jan. 8 MH-53E incident are far from uncommon, an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis of service accident data shows.
A Jan. 8 story on Airbus misstated the death toll from the Alaska DeHavilland DHC-3T crash that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska.). Five people died in the accident.
MERIGNAC, France — Dassault Aviation is beginning work on a four-year contract to develop a new F3-R standard for the Rafale combat jet. The $1.1 billion software upgrade will enable the integration of new weapons and a next-generation laser targeting pod on the multirole aircraft. The agreement was signed Jan. 10 by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier during a visit to the company’s aircraft production facility in Merignac.
