PARIS — Mounting budget pressure is forcing France to curb defense spending, slowing deliveries of major military programs rather than killing them outright. Under the nation’s new military program law – a €190 billion ($256 billion) budget for the period 2014-19 – key aerospace platforms that will see reduced or delayed orders include Dassault Aviation’s Rafale combat jet, Eurocopter’s Tiger and NH90 helicopters and Airbus Military’s A400M tactical airlifter.
U.S. Navy officials are examining the results of a third — and previously unplanned — round of sea trials for the stealthy, unmanned X-47B after the team returned to port Nov. 19.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee approved legislation this month urging intelligence agencies to relax resolution limits on commercial radar and electro-optical satellite imagery after U.S. companies requested the move. In a Nov. 13 report accompanying passage of its version of the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act (S 1681), the committee said it is concerned that commercial imagery providers outside the U.S., notably EADS Astrium Services, may soon be able to provide satellite imagery sharper than the currently allowed U.S. limit of 50 cm.
NUKED: A move by the Democratic leadership of the U.S. Senate to curb the minority Republican party’s ability to filibuster has sidelined passage of the chamber’s version of the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill. Consideration of the so-called nuclear option, in which Senate rules are changed to lower the vote threshold for taking action, preoccupied the upper chamber’s agenda on Nov. 21. While Senate passage this week of the defense policy bill was always tenuous, the nuclear option debate appears now to have pushed a final vote on the bill into December.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier deactivations may come as close as it gets to guaranteed future defense contracts. The U.S. Navy cannot simply park a nuclear reactor-equipped carrier somewhere. “You have to do the inactivations,” says Chris Miner, vice president for in-service aircraft carrier programs at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding unit.
LONDON — The Netherlands is to become the fourth European country to purchase the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. The Hague announced plans on Nov. 21 to introduce four MQ-9 Reapers and an unknown number of ground stations into full operational service by 2017, not only for use on deployed operations but also to support civil authorities in disaster relief and counter-narcotics operations. The ministry estimates the deal will cost €100-250 million.
Additive manufacturing has captured industry’s imagination, but even as the first parts appear inside jet engines, the technology’s possibilities are only just being realized. As researchers experiment with new materials and optimized designs made possible by 3-D printing, the potential scale of the revolution in manufacturing is becoming clearer.
Quality continues to be a problem for delivered ships in key U.S. Navy shipbuilding programs and the service needs to improve the way it tracks, finds and corrects issues, a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says. “The Navy expects to spend about $15 billion per year to provide its fleet with the most advanced ships to support national defense and military strategies,” GAO says in a recent report. “Problems with recently delivered ships have focused attention on quality issues.”
NEW DELHI — AgustaWestland has decided to proceed with arbitration over the scandal-plagued sale of 12 AW101 helicopters to India for VIP transport, even as the Indian Defense Ministry continues to discount the threat as it moves to terminate the award, saying “these proceedings are not applicable on the breach of the pre-contract integrity pact.”
Lockheed Martin is proposing to take retired U.S. Navy S-3 Vikings out of desert storage and refurbish and refit them with a new, larger fuselage suited to the cargo role to meet the Navy’s emerging requirement to renew its carrier onboard delivery (COD) fleet. Northrop Grumman is already proposing to remanufacture the Navy’s existing C-2 Greyhound COD aircraft, while Bell Boeing is offering new V-22 Osprey tiltrotors.
LASER POINTERS: The U.S. Air Force Research laboratory is seeking ideas for laser systems that could be used on a post-2030 future air dominance platform. Information is being sought on low-power lasers for sensing, targeting and defeating sensors; medium power for self-protection; and high power for laser weapons. ARFL is interested in systems that could be demonstrated on a technology readiness level of 5 (basic prototype in a relevant environment) by 2022.
Uncle Sam’s sequestration could be about to accomplish what no nascent Chinese or Russian anti-satellite capability can do yet: put U.S. space capability on the verge of flaming out. That is one of the emerging conclusions of an extraordinary industrial base assessment by the Commerce Department, shared recently with Aviation Week.
The U.S. Air Force’s Operationally Responsive Space-3 (ORS-3) demonstration mission lifted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Nov. 19, placing the Space Test Program Satellite 3 (STPSat-3) primary payload and 28 cubesats into orbit.
PARIS — European nations have agreed to create common standards for developing medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and to establish a community of European drone users that could support development of remotely piloted vehicles that could compete with U.S. and Israeli technology in the 2020-25 time frame.
DUBAI — Raytheon’s Talon guided rocket system looks set to re-emerge as a weapon option for the UAE armed forces, with the signing of a new deal with UAE aerospace firm Tawazun. Under the new agreement, signed at the Dubai air show on Nov. 19, Tawazun will integrate the weapon into the UAE armed forces’ existing rocket systems and deliver a training program.
A BQM-74 aerial target drone crashed into the guided-missile cruiser CG-62 USS Chancellorsville during a Nov. 16 radar tracking exercise, Navy officials say. The Chancellorsville recently was outfitted with the Advanced Capabilities Baseline (ACB-12) Aegis Combat System upgrade. The tracking exercise that led to the mishap was part of the ship’s Combat System Ship Qualification Trials (CSSQT), Navy officials say. CSSQT provides the opportunity to test and validate the ship’s combat and weapon systems performance, officials note.
The Italian air force (AMI) is planning to send an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance-capable Alenia C-27J Spartan tactical airlifter to Afghanistan to support the final months of Italian operations in the west of the country. The C-27J will be modified with a command-and-control mission system in the rear of the aircraft and an under-nose electro-optical system to support ground operations in theater.
Debate on the Senate’s version of the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill is underway, and lawmakers are considering a long list of amendments, including one that proposes to limit the retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolt. The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), would prevent the Air Force from retiring or placing the A-10 in storage until the F-35A is fully operational — a milestone that Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh has said he hopes will happen in 2021.
Republican defense hawks in the U.S. Senate are proposing a major change to the 2011 Budget Control Act — an overhaul of its mechanism of automatic annual cuts known as sequestration —in what could be an early test of pro-Pentagon sentiment under nascent efforts to find a way out of Washington’s budget quagmire.
CYBERSECURITY RULE: Following high-profile cyber-pilfering of some U.S. weapons and defense data, the Pentagon has published a new rule that requires defense contractors to buttress cybersecurity in their unclassified networks. “We cannot continue to give our potential adversaries the benefits in time and money they obtain by stealing this type of information,” Pentagon acquisition czar Frank Kendall said Nov. 19. He said the new rule is just one of many “significant” follow-on actions after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel issued a memorandum Oct.
After years of exercises preparing for such an event, the U.S. Navy is making good on its promise to provide aircraft, ships and other assets to help a partner in the Asia-Pacific region survive a major natural catastrophe.
DUBAI — Boeing and Sikorsky have formed Boeing Sikorsky International Services (BSIS), a joint venture to support Saudi Arabia’s military helicopter fleet. BSIS was launched at June’s Paris air show, with each partner holding a 50% share. It is providing logistics, supply chain management, maintenance, aircraft support and aircrew and maintenance staff training for Saudi Arabia’s growing fleet of helicopters purchased under the Foreign Military Sales program, and those that are already in service.
