Defense and Space

The House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee is seeking to restore or augment funding for carrier-based and missile-related programs.

Advances in materials and manufacturing have outgrown today’s design tools, making it difficult to fully take advantage of the expanded design enabled by new materials and fabrication methods, Darpa says.

NASA is studying what - and how - astronauts will need to eat to sustain themselves on future deep-space voyages.

NASA researchers at the agency’s supercomputing facility have produced aeroacoustic simulations to predict noise sources for contra-rotating open rotors.

The manufacturer’s revenue grew by 29.5% up to 220 billion rubles ($3.4 billion), but deliveries continued to shrink for the third year in a row,

In a maneuver called a “superlift,” Newport News Shipbuilding recently placed a 965-ton structure for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN 79 John F. Kennedy into dry dock.

Shortly after the aircraft arrived in Kiruna in northern Sweden for the test flights, flight permissions for the aircraft were withdrawn and the authorities demanded the aircraft leave the country.

Safran will sell U.S. subsidiary Morpho Detection LLC to London-based Smiths Group for $710 million.

European launch consortium Arianespace has for the third time scrubbed the launch of five satellites atop a Soyuz launch vehicle from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) is preparing to perform the first flight of its new Anka-S medium altitude, long endurance (MALE), unmanned air system (UAS).

In effect, Israel has written the first “app” for the F-35 and, arguably, set a precedent for software independence for F-35 users.

NASA’s exoplanet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope on April 22 resumed its role in a novel gravitational microlensing campaign to seek out extrasolar planets in the outermost orbits of their host stars and Jupiter-sized planets called free floaters that drift between the stars.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is seeking design proposals from U.S. industry for an advanced Mars Orbiter concept to support a range of future exploration activities, including a robotic sample return mission and human landing site selection.

India is in the final stages of its negotiations with France to purchase 36 Dassault Rafale fighters, Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar says, but the deal has not yet been finalized.

The Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) X-2 fighter-technology demonstrator flew on April 22, around five years later than expected when the program was launched in 2007.

Australia has shortlisted BAE Systems, Fincantieri and Navantia for the design of nine locally built frigates.

The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis used the South Korean destroyer Gang Gam-chan to land aircraft recently during Exercise Foal Eagle in the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Navy says.

Whether you buy a UAS from Lockheed Martin or Amazon, the essential components of the system are the same.

Drones, UAS or RPAs—what’s the good word?

Bell’s 280-kt. V-280 Valor tiltrotor is in final assembly, and parts manufacture is in full swing for Sikorsky/Boeing’s 250-kt SB-1 coaxial rigid-rotor compound helicopter. Teams are making progress toward the Army’s Joint Multi Role flight demo in 2017.

Software design highlights the tension in the mammoth multinational F-35 program—how to achieve independence without disrupting interoperability.

Chairman hopes his idea will speed defense bill passage | Will F-22s resume production? | Key NASA programs in line for more money | Flying without registration

Concerned that funding support for the Pentagon’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) initiative is inadequate, a House Armed Services panel’s markup of the fiscal 2017 defense budget would require the U.S. Army to report on technology development efforts by January 2017.

U.S. Navy submarines are to be equipped with a small UAV, Blackwing, produced by AeroVironment.

Hanwha Thales has been selected to develop a prototype radar for the Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) KF-X fighter, beating rival LIG Nex1, a company that previously seemed to be the country’s anointed fighter-radar specialist.