Asian investors continue to take big stakes in the aircraft leasing market. A consortium of three Chinese investors plans to close on a deal to acquire the International Lease Finance Corp. That follows earlier sales of Jackson Square Aviation and the Royal Bank of Scotland's aircraft leasing business to Japanese buyers and Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise's acquisition by the Bank of China.
Unmanned vehicles able to accompany troops and alleviate their loads have made a debut in Afghanistan, but if autonomous systems are truly to carry the burden they must be able to go wherever the soldiers go. Darpa's Agency's Legged Squad Support System (LS3) program aims to develop a four-legged robot that can carry 400 lb. and follow soldiers over rugged terrain, interacting like a trained animal with its handler. After initial outdoor trials early in 2012, Boston Dynamics is refining its LS3 for a U.S. Marine Corps field exercise in 2014.
Nothing reveals the political nature of this year's debate over across-the-board budget cuts as much as the dramatic change of discourse in the weeks leading to the deadline for preventing them. After a year of hearings, press conferences and road shows clamoring for a stop to sequestration, lawmakers and the Obama administration are now met with the deadline. Late last week, they appeared to have rationalized missing it.
Unmanned vessels are about to take a leap in capability, on the surface and beneath. The desire for persistent sensing is driving the need to develop fully autonomous, long-duration vehicles that can covertly patrol coastal waters or overtly follow submerged submarines. The U.S. Office of Naval Research plans to build prototypes of the Large-Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV) to address the autonomy, sensing and energy challenges of a vessel able to operate independently for months.
North Korea's successful launch of a satellite in December after 14 years of attempts put the hermit kingdom one step closer toward deploying an intercontinental ballistic missile. And Iran's nuclear weapons program—and the threat of an Israeli attack to cripple it—will keep tensions simmering in the Middle East.
When I began writing this column eight years ago, airlines were reeling as oil prices soared above $50 a barrel. Lockheed Martin was hoping to ramp up production of the Joint Strike Fighter in 2009, and Wall Street analysts were beginning to question whether a run-up in defense stocks had much steam left. Airbus was preparing to launch development of the A350 in response to Boeing's 7E7 (now 787), and the business jet market was embarking on a sales surge that would end in a spectacular crash.
The bifurcation of the business jet market is expected to continue in 2013, with strong demand for larger and pricier jets and sluggish sales of small and mid-sized aircraft. A Chinese company's failed bid in 2012 to acquire bankrupt Hawker Beechcraft is unlikely to slow Beijing's bid to become a significant player in the market.
Can ad hoc design teams collaborating via the Internet produce a better infantry fighting vehicle quicker than traditional industry engineering organizations? Darpa aims to find out when it launches the first of three Fast, Adaptable Next-Generation (FANG) ground-vehicle design challenges in January 2013. Using new model-based design tools, virtual collaboration and foundry-style manufacturing, FANG aims to produce an amphibious combat vehicle in one-fifth the time of a conventional program.
The FAA's NextGen air traffic control modernization effort is a top priority, and 2013 will be a crucial year for its en-route automation modernization and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast programs. Deployment of both is to be largely completed by the end of the year. If that does not occur, there could be serious headaches for other NextGen initiatives.
Five years ago, the idea of easing export controls on commercial satellites was politically unthinkable. That mindset has changed during the last half-decade, as the idea that those restrictions are harming both national security and the U.S. industrial base has gradually gained traction. And now, during a year in which the U.S. Congress barely passed even routine bills, lawmakers came together to shed long-standing restrictions on the export of commercial satellites.
Engineers reached a milestone in the development of the parachute recovery system for NASA’s Orion deep space crew vehicle on Dec. 20, as a 21,000-lb. spacecraft simulator floated to an intact landing at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, following an intentional drogue chute failure. Drop tests of the four-person capsule are scheduled to resume in February with an intentional main chute failure.
An engineering board has cleared the first element of NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) for preliminary manufacturing, keeping the big new government-owned rocket on track for a first flight with the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle in 2017.
It's a classic chicken or egg dilemma. Small satellites are not being built because there is no cheap way to launch them, and small launchers are not being built because there are no satellites to launch on them. So the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is attacking the problem from both directions simultaneously, with dual programs to develop $500,000 imaging satellites of less than 100 lb. and air-launched boosters to place them in low Earth orbit for $1 million a flight.
Lawmakers are constantly caught between balancing the needs of the federal government while staying true to the voters at home. Such is the case in this year's fight to maintain the Air National Guard (ANG) and Reserve, which lends a hand to the active duty military while also standing ready to serve all 50 states. Congress balked at the Air Force's initial proposal to cut 287 aircraft and 11,600 personnel, ordering a freeze on retiring or transferring aircraft.
A year-end deadline for the Air Force and Navy to disclose the target initial operational capability (IOC) dates for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was extended until June 1, 2013, in the last days of congressional conference negotiations over the 2013 defense budget. Programs are considered to have reached the benchmark once they complete initial operational test and evaluation.
After a year of bureaucratic dithering by others, a core group of scientists and engineers has agreed to spearhead utilization of the U.S. National Laboratory on the International Space Station. The permanent board of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis) has a steep learning curve, but its members appear willing to spend some serious time putting out the word that there's a unique microgravity research facility available in orbit to anyone with a good idea for using it, free of charge.
In November 2008, the year Wanda Austin became CEO of The Aerospace Corp., Aviation Week & Space Technology featured her on the cover with a three-page profile inside. “The fact that Austin is a woman and an African-American is impossible to miss,” the magazine wrote.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), currently the longest-serving woman in Congress, will now become the first woman to lead one of what is perhaps its most powerful panels, the Senate Appropriations Committee. Mikulski takes control of the committee after the recent death of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who had chaired the full committee since 2009 and led Democrats on the defense subcommittee since 1989. And she will serve alongside Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), who will lead Republicans on the panel.
Teeing up an issue for Congress in 2013, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), have introduced a bill that would push the FAA to begin setting privacy rules for the use of UAVs in civilian airspace. UAVs can carry “infrared thermal imagers, radar and wireless network 'sniffers,' with the capability to collect sensitive detailed information while operating in the skies above,” according to Markey. As such, he is seeking to regulate their use.
Two of the leading contenders for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize have merged, pooling their technical and marketing resources to push for a robotic mission to the Moon’s surface early in 2015. Moon Express Inc., a Silicon Valley startup going after the X Prize as its first step toward a commercial payload-delivery business, acquired the Rocket City Space Pioneers team in an acquisition agreement with Dynetics.
A system developed to provide precise positioning in areas denied signals from navigation satellites is to be deployed to enable testing of military GPS receiver performance during jamming. The ground-based non-GPS positioning system from Locata is also being looked at as a backup at critical national infrastructure sites that use GPS for precise timing, such as mobile communications, electronic commerce and power-grid synchronization.
