FAA officials estimate that they will select six sites for integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the national airspace by December. Since early May, the agency has been accepting public comments that will help it shape the test sites. The comment period runs through May 8, officials said in a web-based conference April 10.
Despite directives to the contrary, the U.S. Army and Air Force still have been farming out certain “inherently governmental” tasks to contractors, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the services’ own reviews of fiscal 2009 contracting, which GAO auditors call “incomplete” because the Navy failed to participate, there were 1,935 instances in the Army and 91 in the Air Force in which contractors were performing inherently governmental functions, according to GAO.
AIR FORCE SAIC, McLean, Va., is being awarded a $32,876,384 firm-fixed-price, time-and-material contract to procure the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing (480 ISRW) has a requirement in support of the AF DCGS intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission. The location of the performance is 480 ISRW, Langley Air Force Base, Va. The work is to be completed by May 30, 2014. Air Force Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, San Antonio, is the contracting activity (FA7037-12-F-0062).
As the Pentagon begins a 10-year reduction in its spending plans, its database of the vast network of suppliers that feed its prime contractors is helping spare vulnerable companies. The effort may provide some small measure of reassurance to lawmakers, who are concerned about maintaining high-quality jobs in a presidential election year during a time of high unemployment. The aerospace and defense industries employ more than 1 million people, according to a study conducted by Deloitte for the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).
NEW DELHI — India’s nuclear-capable, long-range Agni-V missile, with a strike range of more than 5,000 km (3,100 mi.), is scheduled to be tested this month. “The Agni-V will be tested sometime in the middle of April. The exact date has not been fixed, though,” says Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) chief Dr. V.K. Saraswat.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, are scheduled to begin a U.S.-Brazil Defense Cooperation Dialogue on April 24. Their first meeting was part of President Barack Obama’s April 9 meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. As an example of how close the two nations have become, the White House is pointing to the U.S. offer to sell Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets to the Brazilian air force.
AIR FORCE Al Raha Group for Technical Services, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is being awarded a $95,000,000 firm-fixed-price and cost-no-fee contract for third-party logistics services supporting repair and return of F-15 assets for the Royal Saudi Air Forces. This contract includes repair services for 4,500 national stock numbers. The location of the performance is Riyadh. The work is to be completed by Nov. 30, 2013. WR-ALC/GRWKB, Robins AFB, Ga., is the contracting activity (FA8505-12-D001). U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
RELIABLE DELIVERY: Two Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-Max unmanned helicopters supporting the U.S. Marine Corps in Afghanistan have flown some 240 missions and delivered around 600,000 lb. of cargo to remote bases since deploying in December, achieving a high operational tempo. Availability is “near 100%,” Lockheed says, adding that the aircraft have expanded into retrograde operations, picking up cargo at the forward base and bringing it back to the main operating base, and are beginning to fly to different locations.
EXTRA EYES: U.S. Army Boeing AH-64D Apaches will deploy to Afghanistan this year equipped with Radiance Technologies’ WeaponWatch ground-fire acquisition system. The deployment will assess the podded prototype’s ability to detect and locate hostile ground fire, but will also look at use of the system’s six infrared cameras for other purposes, such as augmenting the crew’s situational awareness and the Apache’s targeting sensors, says Col. Shane Openshaw, the Army’s Apache program manager.
Warming of the world’s polar regions could lead to a greater need for U.S. icebreaking ships, especially in the Arctic, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) notes in a recent report about the U.S. Coast Guard’s icebreaker program. “Although polar ice is diminishing due to climate change, observers generally expect that this development will not eliminate the need for U.S. polar icebreakers, and in some respects might increase mission demands for them,” says CRS in its report released this month.
Upgrades for the U.S. Air Force’s B-1 and B-2 bomber forces have passed major milestones with production of a new navigation system beginning for the B-1 and validation of a computer upgrade for the B-2 recently completed. Boeing is acquiring the first navigation system upgrade kits for the B-1 following the award of a $55.3 million production contract to replace the original navigation hardware with a new ring-laser gyro system. Under the 3.5-year contract, Boeing will perform retrofits at Dyess AFB in Abilene, Texas, and Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City, S.D.
The U.S. Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) program is spending its old money for now, stretching out technical development and planning for funding that is 10% of what was expected just two budget years ago. The Army alone is funding the joint Army/Navy program, seeking $10 million for fiscal 2013, and only $20 million over the following two fiscal years. In the fiscal 2011 budget request, the Army’s 2013-15 funding plan totaled $303 million. (See chart p. 2.)
U.S. Air Force leadership and auditors with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) agree that timely certification and flight testing remain key risk areas in Boeing’s KC-46A tanker program.
Operating the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will force the service to re-evaluate its traditional staffing paradigm, according to the LCS Concept of Operations (conops), which was obtained by the Aviation Week Intelligence Network. “Many existing Navy policies and regulations must be revised to accommodate LCS for various reasons, principally seaframe design and/or minimum manning,” says the current LCS “Platform Wholeness” conops, Revision C, dated September 2009.
A recent report by Canada’s auditor general questions the process its government used to select the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to replace its F-18s. The auditor cites a lack of coordination among Canada’s relevant defense and procurement officials, a downplaying of the F-35’s actual cost and a seemingly fast-tracked process that led to a sole-source decision for the stealthy Lockheed Martin fighter.
Insitu has become the latest unmanned aircraft manufacturer to fly a fuel-cell powerplant in one of its designs. A 1,500-watt (2 hp) fuel cell produced by United Technologies and a hydrogen fueling system developed by the Naval Research Laboratory were integrated into a ScanEagle UAV, which met its performance targets on a 2.5-hr. test flight.
LEARNING EXPERIENCE: The U.S. Army is watching closely as the first General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned-aircraft unit to deploy as part of a combat aviation brigade begins operations in Afghanistan. “Will it be the brigade commander tasking those 12 Gray Eagles or will they become divisional assets?” asks Col. Grant Webb, UAV capability manager for Training and Doctrine Command.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Bell has received a U.S. Army contract for nonrecurring engineering on a “new-metal” cabin for the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, with the first new-production cabin to be delivered late in 2014. Although the new cabin is planned only for wartime-replacement aircraft converted from OH-58As, restarting airframe production is a key element in Bell’s strategy to meet the Army’s Armed Aerial Scout (AAS) requirement to replace the OH-58D.
The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) is funding a program to develop a fleet of “smart robocopters” to hunt down pirates in congested seas. A new sensor on unmanned aircraft will be able to distinguish small pirate boats from other vessels, ONR officials say. The Multi-Mode Sensor Seeker (MMSS) is a mix of high-definition camera, mid-wave infrared sensor and laser-radar (ladar) technology, ONR says.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — MD Helicopters Inc. (MDHI) has made an unexpected bid to enter the race for the U.S. Army’s Armed Aerial Scout (AAS) requirement, with an upgraded version of its MD 530F light helicopter. First flown in March, the MD 540F has the six-blade rotor from the larger MD 600 and new composite blades, giving it a 4,000-lb. gross weight, up from the 530F’s 3,100 lb., and almost 500 lb. more useful load.
While the U.S. Navy says the “critical technologies” for the service’s proposed Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) are “expected to be nearing maturity and demonstrated in a relevant environment” before the Navy has to make vital decisions about the program, those technologies are “currently immature,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) notes in its recent update on major Pentagon programs.
