TEL AVIV — Sources in Israel’s defense establishment say that the German Bundeswehr is close to choosing Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Heron TP UAV over General Atomics’ Predator B, with formal negotiations on the buy to take place soon. The need for a large aircraft with flexible potential is considered an urgent requirement for the Bundeswehr contingency plans. The Bundeswehr forces deployed in Afghanistan already are making use of the smaller IAI Heron-1 UAV, following a successful cooperation between IAI and the Germany’s Rheinmetall Defence.
T-50 AESA: Russian fighter producer Sukhoi has begun flight tests of a T-50 prototype equipped with active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. The AESA, developed by Tikhomirov NIIP, is installed on the third prototype of the so-called fifth-generation fighter. This aircraft made its first flight on Nov. 22, 2011, in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in Russia’s Far East, then it flew to Zhukovsky, near Moscow, where the radar installation took place.
The U.S. Air Force may have canceled its persistent-surveillance airship, but the U.S. Army has kept the faith, and Northrop Grumman’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) made its delayed first flight this week.
The U.S. Naval Surface Warfare (NSWC) Dahlgren Division is becoming a major center for chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) warfare agent detection work. The Navy has transferred all CBR detection services from Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, located in Indiana, to Dahlgren, Va., which provides technical, engineering, test, evaluation, maintenance and logistics support to the fleet after installing the CBR detection systems.
The U.S. Marine Corps is looking for unmanned systems to provide more help in lightening the loads Marines need to carry, and reducing their exposure to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Marines tested several different unmanned technologies in late July and earlier this month at Fort Pickett, Va., for counter-IED and logistical operations. Two of the featured technologies for the tests are the Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate (GUSS) and the seven-ton Cargo Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV).
NEW DELHI — India has released a global tender for roughly 60 utility helicopters to replace the Indian navy’s vintage Chetak helos. “A request for proposals [RFP] has been issued for buying mainly twin-engine helos. The deal is approximately worth $900 million,” a defense ministry official says. The official says Sikorsky, Eurocopter, Kamov and AgustaWestland are among the likely respondents.
The U.S. Navy has made strides in making its surface fleet ship-shape, but there is still plenty of work to be done, says Adm. J.C. Harvey Jr., commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. Of particular concern, Harvey says, is the condition of ships and equipment needed for the Navy’s ballistic missile defense (BMD) missions, but the Navy still faces challenges in restoring most of the surface fleet to required condition.
The Joint Strike Fighter program achieved a milestone Aug. 8 when a short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) F-35 was the first of the developmental, stealthy fighters to release a weapon during a test over the Atlantic Ocean. The inert, 1,000-lb. Joint Direct Attack Munition also was the first airborne weapon separation from the F-35 internal weapon bay. The event kicks off a lengthy weapons-testing campaign for the F-35.
Small backpack-carried UAVs with still cameras can create large-area, three-dimensional digital maps with better resolution than satellite imagery, and in far less time than traditional techniques. That is the lesson of a just-completed series of tests at a 13,000-ft.-elevation archaeological site in Peru—and researchers say the same technology could be used for crisis management and disaster relief.
The latest variant of Boeing's X-48 blended wing body (BWB) unmanned research aircraft flew for the first time from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, Calif., on Aug. 7.
Nearly 30 years ago, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan tasked the Pentagon with creating a unique shield to counter the growing threat of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. He kicked off a massive industrial effort backed by billions of dollars under the leadership of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization—the so-called Star Wars program. Though Reagan's vision of an impenetrable shield has never been realized, the Pentagon has navigated through a thorny political landscape to begin fielding a rudimentary framework of capabilities to protect the U.S.
Nearly $1 billion added to Raytheon's contract to build a new, larger SM-3 interceptor cooperatively with Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is expected to carry the program through to its initial flight test in preparation for deployment in 2018.
