NEW DELHI - Days after notifying Congress of the proposed sale of defense equipment to India, Washington has approved the sale of a major defense package to Pakistan, according to Pakistani diplomats here. The package includes seven used C-130E aircraft, which had been requested earlier (DAILY, July 19), as well as three P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft, Harpoon missiles and other equipment, totaling about $400 million.
LONDON - Protracted disputes between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and contractors here over shortcomings in the performance and capabilities of MBDA's high off-boresight advanced short-range air-to-air missile (ASRAAM) appear to have come to an end. Lord Willy Bach, the United Kingdom's defense procurement minister, praised the ASRAAM Sept. 13 when he announced the Royal Air Force's full acceptance of it.
MOSCOW - The president of Russia's National Reserve Bank (NRB), a private bank controlled by the Gazprom natural gas company, said it plans to buy controlling shares in the Voronezh Aircraft-Building Association (VASO). NRB already owns 37 percent of the shares of the Ilyushin Finance aircraft leasing company, which recently obtained state support for leasing civilian aircraft.
The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) successfully completed a development test last week that involved navigating through an intense jamming environment, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control officials said Sept. 16.
With both the Marine Corps and Air Force variants of the Bell-Boeing Osprey tiltrotor now back in the air, the management of the program is confident about the aircraft's future as it prepares for another operational evaluation (OPEVAL) in late 2004. "We're challenged with one of the most dynamic OPEVALs I think I've ever seen," V-22 Program Manager Col. Dan Schultz said in a press briefing in Washington Sept. 16. "We're going to do multiple ships, multiple places, at night, ungoggled. We're going to prove the V-22."
The Navy on Sept. 13 awarded General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman a $5 billion multiyear contract to build 10 guided missile destroyers through fiscal year 2005. Under the terms of contract, the Bath Iron Works division of General Dynamics will build six DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyers, at a cost of $3.1 billion. One ship will be built in FY '02, another in FY '03, two in FY '04 and two in FY '05. The last ship, the DDG-112, is scheduled for delivery in December 2010, General Dynamics officials said in a statement.
LESSONS LEARNED: Gen. William F. Kernan, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, will discuss "lessons learned" from the Millennium Challenge 2002 joint exercise on Sept. 17 at a Pentagon briefing, the Defense Department said Sept. 16. The exercise, which took place July 24-Aug. 15, combined live and virtual combat situations.
Three competitors are preparing to submit to the Air Force results of their studies of the Air Superiority Target (AST), a follow-on to the QF-4 target now used by fighter pilots in live-fire gun and missile runs to help sharpen their air combat skills.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe asked International Space Station crewmember Peggy Whitson to become the station's first science officer to help promote research on the orbiting laboratory. Whitson is a member of the station's Expedition Five crew, which is currently in orbit. Whitson has a doctorate in biochemistry from Rice University.
The National Defense Political Action Committee, which seeks to elect and re-elect military veterans to Congress, has added missile defense to the list of questions it asks candidates to answer to help it decide whether to endorse them. The group's "vetting" form asks candidates to indicate whether they would "aggressively pursue funding to finish the development, acquisition and deployment of a National Missile Defense system to defend America against incoming missiles."
NEW DELHI - One of the Indian air force aircraft that crashed Sept. 9 was a MiG-21 bis that had been upgraded by state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL). Indian air force spokesman Squadron Leader Rajesh Dhingra said there was no problem with the aircraft's engine. The aircraft was one of two upgraded MiG-21 bis aircraft HAL has supplied to the Indian air force's Ambala cantonment.
SLAM-ER: The Boeing SLAM-ER's Automatic Target Acquisition (ATA) capability has become operational with the completion of its operational test and evaluation (OPEVAL), Boeing said Sept. 16. The ATA for the SLAM-ER, or Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response, adds a second mission computer to the SLAM-ER missile, allowing the system to locate small targets in cluttered environments. It also gives the standoff control pilot real-time target cueing on the F/A-18's cockpit display. A test team from the U.S.
MOSCOW - NPO PM n.a.Reshetnyov of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is close to concluding a contract to build the first Vietnamese telecommunications satellite. A delegation from state-run Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Corp. (VNPT) is negotiating the contract in Krasnoyarsk, a Reshetnyov representative told The DAILY Sept. 16.
LONDON - Long-delayed Turkish naval aviation (TDH) and coast guard (TSG) acquisition plans for anti-submarine, maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft were implemented Sept. 12 under a contract the Turkish government awarded to France's Thales Airborne Systems. The contract is worth about $400 million.
House leaders have decided to cut about $200 million from the fiscal 2003 defense appropriations bill to fill a funding hole in foreign aid legislation. It was not immediately clear what impact the reduction to the $354.7 billion defense bill would have on specific programs, because the legislation already has received approval from the full House and is now before a conference committee with the Senate, which has passed a $355.4 billion version of the defense bill.
NEW DELHI - India and Malaysia will increase their level of defense cooperation, officials said after a meeting here last week. The agreement came during the fourth Malaysia-India Defense Cooperation (MIDCOM) meeting, which concluded in New Delhi on Sept. 13. As one example of cooperation, the Indian defense ministry is considering Malaysia's request that it provide maintenance for the Su-30MKM, which Malaysia is considering buying from Russia.
The Pentagon is urging a House-Senate conference committee to reject a $60 million cut that the Senate made to the Navy's fiscal 2003 request for the Raytheon Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) system, saying the money is needed to alleviate a shortage of F/A-18 targeting pods.
RUMSFELD ON IRAQ: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to testify two times in Congress on possible U.S. military action against Iraq. Rumsfeld will go before the House Armed Services Committee Sept. 18. On Sept. 19, he will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he will be joined by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
COOPERATION: The heads of India's Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Bhabha Atomic Research Center are urging more Indian-U.S. cooperation in space and nuclear energy. ISRO head K. Kasturirangan and Bhabha head Anil Kakodkar visited the U.S. ahead of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who met with President Bush in New York on Sept. 12.
Integrated Defense Technologies Inc. announced Sept. 13 it plans to buy BAE Systems' Advanced Systems unit for $146 million cash. Company officials said they expect the deal to close during the fourth quarter of 2002. Based in Gaithersburg, Md., Advanced Systems designs and produces radio frequency surveillance equipment used in signals intelligence operations. Its products include receivers, tuners, demodulators and signal analyzers that perform signal intercept identification, location and analysis functions.
GROUND VS. SKY: When the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) becomes operational at the end of the decade, its affordability may surprise skeptics and boost the case for space-based observatories over ground telescopes, according to NGST Project Manager Bernard Seery. "At some point it may become cheaper to send these things into space than do it on the ground," he says. "I think NGST may surprise people.
CLOSING THE GAP: Assembling a special transformation force - and packing it with the latest command-and-control systems and newly acquired precision weapons - will help European militaries close the technology gap with the U.S., says a new policy paper from a transatlantic think tank. The so-called "spearhead force" would serve as a hi-tech catalyst for resource-poor European militaries, according to the report by the Atlantic Council of the United States. The U.S.
