WRIGHT COINS: The U.S. Mint is producing a series of gold, silver and copper-clad coins to commemorate the centennial of the Wright Brothers' flight. The coins are on sale now and a portion of the proceeds will go to repair, refurbish and maintain the Wright Brothers National Memorial Park in North Carolina.
The same systems being installed on the U.S. Navy's new DDG-51 destroyers for anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasures will be deployed aboard the first two Littoral Combat Ships, according Rear Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy director of surface warfare. "We're going to leverage off the organic systems that we are building for the DDGs," Edwards said Aug. 6 at a briefing in Arlington, Va., sponsored by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
The U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command took a new approach to solving its communications challenges for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Navy intelligence officer. Instead of importing or acquiring large amounts of new equipment, the command decided to change its operating culture by creating a "Mission Support Center."
Talks continue between Boeing and U.S. Air Force range officials at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a new date for the launch of the second Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) mission aboard a Delta IV rocket. "They were trying to consider ... launching this weekend, but I don't know where they are with those plans," Boeing spokesman Robert Villanueva told The DAILY. "The last I heard, they were looking at maybe the end of the month."
It's not clear what impact a United Kingdom buy of BAE Systems' Hawk trainers will have on India's pending decision on which advanced jet trainer to buy. The U.K. announced last week it would buy new Hawk Mk. 128s for $1.3 billion (DAILY, July 31). U.K. defense industry sources said the sale may have improved BAE Systems' chances for selling Hawk 100 trainers to India, which has been negotiating with the company for years.
LM BONDS: Lockheed Martin Corp. will offer up to $850 million in bonds, the company said. The bonds would be convertible to shares of Lockheed Martin common stock if certain conditions are met and the company decides not to settle such a conversion with cash, the company said Aug. 6. Initial buyers will have the option to buy an additional $150 million in bonds, the company said. Lockheed Martin also said it plans to buy back up to $1.15 billion in outstanding debt.
MOSCOW - Malaysia has agreed to buy 18 Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 MKM fighters for $900 million. The deal was signed during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the country this week. According to the agreement with the Russian export agency Rosoboronexport, 40 percent would be paid in cash, 30 percent would be paid with the trade of palm oil and the rest would be covered through technology transfer agreements. Additional contracts signed in Kuala Lumpur cover two Mi-17 helicopters and avionics from the Irkutsk Aircraft plant.
Nonlethal weapons and underwater mine detectors are crucial technologies needed by U.S. military forces, a Marine Corps official said Aug. 5 at the Naval-Industry R&D Partnership conference in Washington. Maj. Gen. Kevin Kuklok, assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations, offered industry members a short wish list of things that are "simple to talk about and not simple to do.
PRAGUE - The Slovak air force is preparing two bases Slovakia as defense hubs in preparation for its entry into NATO next year, according to defense officials. Slovak air force commander Jozef Dunaj named the bases as Kuchyna and Sliac after meeting with deputy commander of the Allied Air Forces North Europe, Jurgen Hoche, in central Slovakia last week. Dunaj also said the country's air force plans to have 18 MiG-29s available for combat duty once planned repairs on the aircraft are carried out by 2004.
The U.S. Navy launched the development phase of the E-2 Advanced Hawkeye (AHE) program late Aug. 4, awarding a $1.9 billion contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. The 10-year system development and demonstration (SDD) phase includes upgrading two E-2 Hawkeye 2000 aircraft to the AHE configuration.
NEW DELHI - The Indian air force has begun buying simulators for all its major military aircraft, in response to a recommendation from a parliamentary committee that said buying flight simulators should be done with "urgency." The equipment includes simulators for MiG-27s, MiG-29s, Jaguars, upgraded MiG-21 bis, Sukhoi Su-30s and other aircraft. India plans to buy at least $200 million worth of simulators and has sought bids from companies in France, Israel, Russia and the United Kingdom.
U.S. Army leaders have ordered warfighting experts to perform a fresh review of currently sanctioned tactics that allow AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to penetrate deep behind enemy lines. "We are taking a look at aviation doctrine and if it still makes sense to us," Gen. John M. Keane, vice chief of staff of the Army, said Aug. 5 at a Defense Writer's Group breakfast. Deep-strike missions are one of the fundamental combat roles of the military's attack helicopters, both the AH-64 and the U.S. Marine Corps AH-1 Cobra.
Mission Technologies Inc. of San Antonio, Texas, will provide three miniature unmanned aerial vehicles to the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J. The work will be done under a $5 million contract, the Defense Department said Aug. 5, and is expected to be completed by July 31, 2004.
U.S. Navy officials on Aug. 5 outlined several technical challenges related to the Navy's Sea Base concept that industry could help solve. Sea Base, or Sea Basing, is one of the three pillars of the Navy's SeaPower 21 transformation strategy. Sea Basing often is characterized as the use of multiple sea platforms to execute and sustain joint operations across thousands of square miles of ocean, but its exact definition continues to be refined.
IBM and Raytheon Co. say they will cooperate in the design of custom semiconductors and systems for defense and aerospace applications and market the results. The relationship links Raytheon's expertise in defense electronics technology and aerospace and defense and IBM's leadership in such areas as chip design, software development, large systems computer architecture and network integration, the companies said in an Aug. 5 statement.
Time-critical strike and smaller precision weapons are among the areas where the U.S. Navy has identified gaps in current science and technology (S&T), according to Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, director of the Air Warfare Division at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV).
NASA has selected the first Mars Scout mission to study the red planet, the agency said Aug. 4. NASA said Phoenix, a lander designed to study martian ice, soil, rock and the local atmosphere at its landing site, is scheduled to launch in 2007. Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson leads the mission in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. The Canadian Space Agency is contributing a sensor to study polar climate.
NEW DELHI - The Indian air force has modified more than 20 of its Mirage 2000-H fighters to allow air-to-air refueling after receiving its first Ilyushin IL-78 tanker from Uzbekistan in March. India bought six IL-78s from Uzbekistan for $170 million in 2001. The remaining five tankers are scheduled to be delivered within six months. Uzbekistan trained Indian air force pilots to fly the tanker aircraft, which can refuel up to three fighters simultaneously.
The Bush administration is pursuing a nuclear weapons policy that could jeopardize America's long-term national security, according to researchers with the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). The policy involves the development of new types of small tactical nuclear weapons that could be used to pre-emptively strike adversaries before they attack, a new regime of nuclear weapons testing, and the deployment of a missile defense system, PSR officials said.
HAWKEYE WORK: Lockheed Martin's site in Syracuse, N.Y., was awarded a $413.5 million contract Aug. 5 from Northrop Grumman for work on upgrading the E-2 Hawkeye's radar under the Advanced Hawkeye program (see related story on Page 6). Lockheed Martin leads the team working on the next-generation radar, which is slated to replace the existing Lockheed-built radar by 2010.
NEW DELHI - India's INSAT-3E communications satellite is scheduled to be launched Aug. 28 on an Ariane 5 from Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite, developed by the Indian Space Research Organization, is scheduled to be launched along with Smart-1, Europe's first lunar mission, and Eutelsat's e-Bird satellite.
At a July 30 meeting, the major players in the "Access Five" initiative to enable routine unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations in the national airspace agreed to move forward, despite lingering questions over the source of the necessary funding. The meeting, which took place in Washington, involved high-level representatives from NASA, the FAA, the Department of Defense (DOD), and the UNITE (UAV National Industry Team Endeavor) group, whose members are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, AeroVironment and Aurora Flight Sciences.
