A U.S. Air Force review of the service's bomber modernization plans is slated to produce a set of recommendations "in a matter of weeks," an Air Force official said Jan. 20. The Air Force convened a "long-range strike summit" on Dec. 12 to synthesize findings from various past studies on current and future bomber fleets, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Goldfein, director of operational capability requirements for the Air Force. Air Force staffers are working to put the summit's conclusions in a form that can be presented to the service's leadership within weeks.
SPACE PRIORITIES: The European Space Agency (ESA) should increase its activities by 30 percent through 2007, agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says. "Europe is already a key actor in space but more can be and must be done to answer the needs of European citizens and of an enlarging Europe," he says. ESA welcomes the Bush Administration's new plans for missions to the moon and Mars, and its Aurora program already is exploring technologies that would be needed for such missions, according to Dordain.
AND TORNADO: The RAF's Tornado GR4 will be in service for about another 25 years, Ingram says. "We currently expect the Tornado GR4 to leave service around the end of the next decade," he says. The first GR4 squadrons begin forming in 1998. The offensive air capability of the GR4, Ingram says, would be replaced by the projected Future Offensive Air System. "No final decision has been taken on how the Future Offensive Air System requirement might best be met," he says.
STRONG STOCKS: An aerospace and defense analyst predicts that the price strength shown by most defense stocks last December can extend through the early to middle of this spring. "U.S. defense budget plans to be revealed in February should soothe concerns of a cyclical peak in modernization spending," Byron Callan of Merrill Lynch says in a new report. The Bush Administration's fiscal 2005 budget is scheduled for release Feb. 2.
SEA HARRIER: The United Kingdom's first Sea Harrier squadron will be deactivated March 31, according to Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram. The Sea Harrier made its first flight in August 1978 and entered service with the Royal Navy in April 1980. Fifty-seven were built for the U.K. Twenty-nine of the jets flew 2,376 sorties during the Falklands War in 1982, downing 22 Argentine aircraft. "The first Sea Harrier Squadron will be withdrawn from service on 31 March 2004," Ingram told Parliament.
OFFICERS: Boeing's Alan R. Mulally has been named chairman of the board of governors of the Aerospace Industries Association, AIA said Jan. 16. Mulally is president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Robert D. Johnson, president and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace, has been named vice chairman. John Douglass was re-elected president and CEO and Ginette C. Colot was elected treasurer-secretary.
AEGIS BMD: Although Japan is the only other country that has indicated it plans to acquire the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (Aegis BMD) system (DAILY, Sept. 4, 2003), several other countries are seen as potential candidates for buying the system to defend against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, according to U.S. Navy Capt. Mac Grant, deputy director of systems engineering and integration for Aegis BMD. Those countries include Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom.
EUROFIGHTER ATS: Spain's Indra will lead the final development of the automatic testing systems for critical elements of the Eurofighter aircraft's avionics, the company said last week. The Eurofighter consortium has approved a budget of 54 million euros ($68 million) for the 2.5-year contract.
JAGUAR: The Royal Air Force's Jaguar strike fighters, meanwhile, will soldier on. The RAF's first Jaguar flew for the first time in October 1969. "Based on current predictions, it is expected that the RAF's Jaguar fleet will be retired around the end of this decade," Ingram says.
BUSINESS IMPACT: The president's plan to retire the space shuttle by 2010 in favor of a new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) may only involve a "reshuffling of the deck chairs" among major aerospace companies, according to Bruce Mahone, space policy director for the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). "I don't see the fortunes of any one company necessarily going up or down because of this," Mahone says. "Boeing, [which] does work on upgrades on the shuttle, may lose that work, but they may get the CEV.
Jan. 20 - 22 -- Network Centric Warfare 2004, "Meeting the Challenges of Warfare in the Information Age," Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, DC. Call (800) 882-8684, fax (973) 256-0205, email [email protected] or go to www.ncw2004.com. Jan. 21 -- PSA Winter Roundtable, "Global Military Strategy in Support of Precision Strike," Crystal Gateway Marriott, Arlington, Va. Contact Dawn Campbell, (703) 247-2590, email [email protected] or go to www.precisionstrike.org.
NASA BUDGET: When Congress returns from its month-long recess Jan. 20, the Senate hopes to complete action on the fiscal 2004 omnibus appropriations conference report, which includes several appropriations measures, including the one that would fund NASA. The House approved the omnibus package Dec. 8 (DAILY, Dec. 9, 2003). The conference report fully funds the Bush Administration's $3.97 billion request for the space shuttle but cuts the $1.7 billion request for the International Space Station by $200 million.
RUSSIA'S READY: The Russian aerospace industry is ready and willing to participate in President Bush's new space initiative, according to industry leaders. Roald Kremnyov, deputy general director of Lavochkin Association, says his firm could build vehicles similar to their Lunokhod unmanned lunar rovers within three to four years for a budget as low as 600 million rubles (approximately $20 million).
OUT OF SERVICE: NASA has made the "painful decision" that it will not conduct any further servicing missions for the Hubble Space Telescope, according to agency spokesman Dwayne Brown. A fourth servicing mission had been scheduled for 2005 to perform repairs and install a new primary camera and spectrograph. The expected retirement date for the telescope had been around 2010, but without the mission it could be less.
Aerospace and defense industries likely did well in the fourth quarter of 2003 and the outlook remains positive for 2004, two aerospace and defense industry analysts said in recent reports. "Coming on the heels of a broadly tumultuous year in which performance was mixed for the aerospace and defense universe, we believe we are heading towards the light, to be exhibited by smoother results in 2004," Christopher Mecray of Deutsche Bank said in a Jan. 14 aerospace and defense earnings preview.
In the absence of budget specifics, questions remain over the administration's ability to successfully shift $11 billion of NASA's budget over the next five years to cover its new space exploration vision, according to the director of space policy at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). Bruce Mahone of AIA said he's "delighted" that NASA has been given clear long-term goals, though he remains concerned about the effort's viability over the next few years.
Rumsfeld to get Jan. 23 briefing on FY '05 budget request Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to receive a briefing from his underlings Jan. 23 on the Pentagon's fiscal 2005 budget request, according to an industry source. Leaders of the Defense Department's unified combatant commands are slated to receive their own briefings on DOD's budget proposal soon after Rumsfeld gets his, the source told The DAILY Jan. 16.
NEW DELHI - Indian defense planners have proposed setting up an additional aircraft manufacturing facility to take the load off Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL). A defense ministry official said state-owned HAL, currently the country's only aircraft manufacturing facility, is overworked, an assessment that HAL officials say is accurate. Defense planners are considering setting up another aircraft manufacturer that could include the participation of a major European defense company. Mirage 2000s
The U.S. Air Force is expected to award nearly $1 billion later this week to teams led by Lockheed Martin and Boeing to enter the next phase of DOD's Transformational Communications MILSATCOM (TCM) space segment program, according to Lockheed Martin.
CLARIFICATION: In the DD(X) story, the description of comments by Rear Adm. Mark Edwards may have incorrectly suggested that he was directly responding to several criticisms of the program by a congressional analyst. Instead, the Navy said Jan. 16, the admiral's statement addressed the ship's Advanced Gun System and "referenced future DD(X) capabilities.
The U.S. Air Force has revised its retirement plans for 68 KC-135E tankers to comply with new congressional restrictions, documents show. The Air Force had intended to retire 37 of the aging refueling aircraft in fiscal 2004, 16 in FY '05 and eight in FY '06. In addition, seven backup KC-135Es were to leave the fleet by FY '06.
