A new facility opened by GKN Aerospace Services Structures Corp. for work on the Joint Strike Fighter is likely to attract additional aerospace business, company president and CEO Tony Cacace said Sept. 25. GKN Aerospace Services Structures Corp., an independent subsidiary of GKN of London, opened a new 29,000-square foot facility on Sept. 22 in Cromwell, Conn., to manufacture engine vanes and air inlets for the Pratt & Whitney F135 engines in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
U.S. Air Force researchers are close to naming a team to develop a common data link for bombs and missiles that is modeled on a miniature version of the Link 16 Tactical Data Link, a spokesman said Sept. 24. The Advanced Guidance office at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Munitions Directorate, based at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., is in source selection for a demonstration program that sources close to the program say could be worth as much as $30 million.
Sikorsky Aircraft's UH-60M Black Hawk No. 1 had a successful first flight last week in Florida, the company said Sept. 23. The UH-60M is slated to replace the UH-60L as the standard configuration for U.S. Army Black Hawks in 2007.
PRAGUE - Eurocopter will supply eight EC-135 helicopters to the Czech police air service in a deal worth $41 million. The Franco-German Eurocopter consortium said Sept. 24 that the first of the helicopters should be delivered before the end of this year and the order should be completed by 2008. Eurocopter won the tender in December 2002 but details were not released until now. According to the Czech press, Eurocopter bested competition from Italy's Agusta and the Netherland's McDonnell Helicopters to secure the order.
NEW DELHI - To meet the threat from rival Pakistan's ballistic missiles, the Indian government has sanctioned the creation of two missile groups within the Indian army and the conversion of the short-range Prithvi missile from liquid fuel to solid fuel. "The 334 missile group in the army would manage the 700-kilometer [435-mile range] Agni-1 while the 335 group would manage the 1,500-kilometer [932-mile range] Agni-2 missile," said an army official.
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has urged Navy Secretary-nominee Gordon England to make cruise missile defenses one of his "top priorities." During a Sept. 23 committee hearing on England's nomination, Warner expressed concern that carrier task forces could be vulnerable to cruise missiles launched from shore or from small vessels.
The U.S. Defense Department's shift to a two-year budgeting cycle is receiving new scrutiny as it begins to confront its first off-year budget planning process, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said Sept. 24. The Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) process was amended last year to replace an annual system with a two-year cycle. A two-year baseline is created during the first year, and only "exceptions" can be inserted into the second year of the plan.
The Defense Department is expressing renewed support for the U.S. Air Force's plan to lease 100 KC-767As, telling key senators in a letter that an alternative proposal to lease 25 planes and buy 75 would be less affordable in the near term.
PRAGUE - L-39 fighters have been replaced by Mi-24 combat helicopters as guardians of Czech airspace around the Dukovany nuclear power plant, according to Czech military officials. Martin Hejra, commander at the Namest Nad Oslavou air base, told The DAILY Sept. 23 that two Mi-24 helicopters would be on alert for the next two weeks while minor repairs are carried out on the air base's runway. One helicopter will be on permanent standby while the second will act in a support role if required.
DSN WORK: ITT Industries of White Plains, N.Y., has won a $274 million contract for the operation and maintenance of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) facilities in the United States and for support of DSN facilities overseas. The five-year contract has options for an additional five years of work worth $306 million. The DSN is a network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe.
NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is to meet with President Bush on Sept. 24 in New York to discuss cooperation on missile defense. Vajpayee is to tell Bush that the transfer of missile defense technology to India could lead to greater stability in the region, according to senior defense ministry officials here. Since January 2002, India has been asking the U.S. to supply Patriot air defense systems and allow Israel to sell India the Arrow missile defense system.
The Boeing Co. has asked major defense and information technology companies to consider adopting common standards for developing military equipment for network-centric warfare. Adopting such standards could improve the operating efficiency of network architectures used to run the military service's communications and information-sharing systems, the company said. Representatives from industry, the military and academia are scheduled to meet within the next 45 days to discuss the issue, Boeing spokeswoman Diana Ball told The DAILY.
LONDON - The No. 656 Squadron of the British Air Army Corps' 9th Regiment began converting from Westland Lynx helicopters to Boeing/AgustaWestland WAH-64 Longbow Apache AH Mk 1 attack helicopters on Sept. 1. The move is a step toward a planned initial operating capability (IOC) for 67 of the helicopters by late 2004. Each of the AAC's three Attack Regiments of the 16 Air Assault Brigade will be equipped with two squadrons of eight Apaches and one squadron of eight planned next-generation Battlefield Light Utility Helicopters (BLUH).
The Missile Defense Agency is considering adding an integrated flight test before Sept. 30, 2004, to demonstrate that its upgraded Cobra Dane radar can track ballistic missiles. In a response to a General Accounting Office report released Sept. 23, the Department of Defense said MDA is considering the test, although it said, "accomplishing such testing before September 2004 would be very challenging."
LONGBOW: Longbow Ltd., a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, will provide eight Longbow fire control radars and support to the government of Kuwait, the companies said Sept. 23. The $46 million award is part of Kuwait's purchase of 16 Boeing AH-64D Apache helicopters.
Although the Bush Administration's new $87 billion fiscal 2004 supplemental appropriations request mainly is for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, the proposal contains hundreds of millions of dollars to replenish the U.S. inventory of aerospace-related equipment, including aircraft parts, missiles and command-and-control systems.
The U.S. Air Force is expected to pick a winner before the end of the month in its competition to upgrade the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), a system of ground stations that process intelligence from a variety of sources. Competing for the $160 million prize are Northrop Grumman and a team of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Defense stocks took a beating Sept. 23 after a report released by Smith Barney showed a drop in public support for increased defense spending. The report, written by senior aerospace and defense analyst George Shapiro, said public support for increased defense spending had fallen from 80 percent in 2001 to 31 percent today. The results were based on a public opinion survey taken by the firm.
A multinational team bidding for NATO's Airborne Ground Surveillance (AGS) system is betting that a high-altitude platform that is smaller and cheaper to operate can beat a rival's proposal for a modified commercial jet. The 3.2 billion euro ($3.5 billion) AGS program aims to develop a capability similar to the U.S. Air Force's E-8 Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).
