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must come from the sea,” said the chief of naval operations, Adm. Gary Roughead, recently about any new U.S. Navy procurement, leaving open to interpretation the programs and projects that will be included in coming budgets. The Navy is “reimagining naval power,” he said. “With cyber-power and unmanned systems we must ask ourselves fundamental questions.” If new capabilities proposed for procurement do not “come from the sea,” Roughead is not interested. The Navy no longer has the luxury of being interested in every new program or platform. The defense budget is getting slimmer. And pressure is coming from above to...

A spot-on rotation after an 8s take-off roll should have excited - or at least relaxed - the high-ranking programme officials lining the runway at the US Navy's Patuxent River NAS in Maryland on 17 March. BAE Systems test pilot Graham Tomlinson had just proved that the Lockheed Martin F-35B can indeed take off from amphibious carriers and small runways. Checking-off the test point also would clear the way for Lockheed to stage the F-35B's first vertical landing the next day. Coming six weeks after a major restructuring caused by a $100 billion increase in cost projections, the F-35 Joint...

At a time when international partners are skittish about rising costs for the Joint Strike Fighter program and allies have complained about access to program information, the Pentagon has decided that not a single Joint Strike fighter will head to the Farnborough Air Show and no one from the JPO will attend the show. We confirmed the JSF and Joint Program Office rumors late this afternoon with a Pentagon spokeswoman. Separately, we hear that the head of Pentagon acquisition, Ash Carter, may attend the show though we have been unable to confirm this. Carter’s presence would at least give the...

Flight testing of the F-35 joint strike fighter finally seems to be gaining momentum as Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department try to show that development of the next-generation combat jet is finally on track. Lockheed flew the ninth of the initial 13 flight-testing jets recently, counting the original prototype, which has already been retired. By week's end, the test program had completed 146 flights this year compared with the 128 planned, a pace that, if, sustained, would enable the full-year goal of 394 flights to be met or exceeded. Another measure of progress is the number of specific tests...

Phantom Works offered a first glimpse of Phantom Eye, the hydrogen-powered unmanned demonstrator built to stay aloft at 65,000ft for up to four days at a time, 12 July in St. Louis. In September, Phantom Eye will move to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, California, to begin a series of ground and taxi tests in preparation for its maiden flight in the first quarter of 2011. The debut flight is expected to last 4 to 8hr. We still have a ways to go," said Drew Mallow, Phantom Eye programme manager, including continuing wing testing, integration work and...

Directed-energy weapons and advanced sensors in next-generation combat aircraft will demand power and cooling beyond the capabilities of today’s technology and could prompt a fundamental change in the design of aircraft systems. Keen to avoid the thermal-management “nightmares” that confronted developers of the stealthy fifth-generation F-22 and F-35, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is launching the Energy-Optimized Aircraft program to demonstrate a new approach to generating, storing, consuming and dissipating energy on aircraft. Separately, the Air Force and Navy have begun defining their requirements for sixth-generation fighters under the label “next-generation air dominance” (NGAD). The Navy is looking...

European aerospace giant Airbus has cut its prices in a bid to win a fight with US rival Boeing for a 40-billion-dollar US Air Force contract, a German business daily reported on Monday. Airbus has cut the proposed cost for the contract to build 179 aerial refuelling tankers by at least 10 percent from the level in a previous offer in 2008, the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) reported, citing industry sources. Last week, the two competitors submitted their offers to Washington, setting the stage for a high-stakes transatlantic trade scrap. It will be the third time the contract has been...

One year ago, a nascent F-15 Silent Eagle programme needed to be rescued from what seemed like an internal crisis of confidence given away by a stray comment made by a top Boeing executive. Tom Bell, a business development director briefing reporters at the Paris air show, pronounced as "premature" a previously announced flight-test schedule to certificate the Silent Eagle's three key technologies: conformal weapons bays; an electronic warfare upgrade; and possibly canted tails. Bell's statement also contradicted a lower-ranking Boeing official, F-15 director Brad Jones, who had only a week earlier said that its first flight was planned in...

As the USA's sole Level One partner on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the UK has a pivotal role in the Pentagon's largest ever procurement effort as a customer and as an industrial participant. Thanks to its status as one of Lockheed Martin's production partners on the Lightning II, BAE Systems is dramatically expanding its manufacturing capabilities in the north-west of England to prepare for a major ramp-up in work to occur by the middle of this decade. With its responsibilities including the production of the aft fuselage and horizontal and vertical tails for every F-35 built, BAE has a...

The US Air Force has started the countdown to the KC-X contract award after having received three bids to build 179 tankers, including a last-minute offer from a California company selling Antonov aircraft. The contest is likely to remain a face-off between the Boeing KC-767NewGen Tanker and the EADS North America KC-45, even though Antonov-bidder US Aerospace touted a possibly lower $29.5 billion price tag for its proposal.

Belgium-based firearms manufacturer FN Herstal hereby refutes the allegations recently found on the web that USSOCOM abandoned the 5.56 version of the SCAR rifle and reconfirms USSOCOM's decision to acquire the full FN SCAR family of weapons, including the 5.56mm rifle. The FN SCAR family of weapons consists of the 5.56mm SCAR rifle, 7.62mm SCAR rifle and 40mm LV Enhanced Grenade Launcher Module (respectively designated as MK 16, MK 17 and MK 13 by USSOCOM). These three components were developed by FN Herstal in close cooperation with USSOCOM and have each met all the operational and fielding tests required by...

Demonstration satellites built by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon successfully tracked a ground-based missile launch in a systems test last month. Tracking data generated by satellite sensors was transmitted to the Missile Defense Integration and Operation Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., which serves as the ground station for the two demonstration spacecraft, Northrop Grumman said in a news release "The STSS satellites operated as expected and the system generated high-quality track data during the boost phase in this first missile test of capabilities," said Gabe Watson, vice president, missile defense and missile warning programs for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials often had to rely on grainy satellite photos to decide whether facilities on the ground were intended for producing weapons of mass destruction. Now imagine that instead of overhead satellite imagery -- or even high-flying unmanned aircraft -- they could send in a flock of microdrones that could actually fly right over, or even inside, such facilities. Even better, these drones -- equipped with chemical sensors that could pick up possible weapons work with near certainty -- would resemble typical birds, like pigeons, making them nearly impossible to spot. This...

Boeing anticipates that changes announced recently to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme will inadvertently help its overseas campaigns for fighters. If the JSF programme slips it will affect the overseas partners in the programme "and that gives us tremendous opportunity to go in there, particularly with the Super Hornet", says Boeing Integrated Defense Systems vice-president international business development Mark Kronenberg. He says five years ago F-35 programme partners Canada and Denmark would "have been rock solid", but now there is an opportunity for Boeing to talk to them and focus on aspects such as the price and...

Two F/A-18 Hornets screamed onto the runway here, June 30, marking yet another “first,” in this historic deployment for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward): a safe landing thanks to newly-installed arresting gear to catch the fast-movers. The Hornets, flown by Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 based at Kandahar Air Field, face a rigorous and unforgiving environment, making the arresting gear a possible ‘saving grace’ should pilots need it. Afghanistan’s dynamic, rapid weather patterns and rough environment can cause increased wear on jets. Brakes failures, hydraulic system issues or even bad weather may cause aircraft to divert and take arrested...

As the venerable Tomahawk missile becomes too vulnerable for certain targets, naval observers have wondered why the Navy isn’t racing to fill the U.S. surface fleet’s 7,804 Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells with a new generation of anti-ship or fast land-attack munitions. Our wait is over. The big brains at DARPA are aiming to appropriate VLS cells for the Prompt Global Strike Mission. Meet ArcLight–the weapon that will change the way the world thinks about U.S. surface combatants: “The ArcLight program will design, build, and flight test a long range (> 2,000 nm) vehicle that carries a 100–200 lb payload(s)....

The U.S. Navy selected Northrop Grumman to supply infrared missile warning systems for fleet of heavy lift helicopters. The contact is worth $80 million, the company said Thursday. Under terms of the agreement Northrop Grumman more than 450 IRMWS and 90 processors to Naval Air Systems Command beginning in May 2011 and concluding in the second quarter of 2013. The hardware, in conjunction with Northrop Grumman's Guardian laser transmitter assemblies and control indicator units delivered under the same U.S. Air Force indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, will complete the initial Department of Navy Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures installation requirements on 156 aircraft...

Boeing Co said it has applied for an export license to sell a stealthy variant of its F-15 fighter jet to South Korea, which is expected to release terms of a competition for 60 new fighters next year. Brad Jones, Boeing program manager for the F-15 "Silent Eagle" model, said South Korea has already ordered 60 K models of the F-15 fighter, and has expressed interest in the newest variant of the successful fighter, which has special coatings to help it evade enemy radar, for the next phase of its fighter procurement. Jones said Boeing had provided flight evaluation data...

F/A-18 Hornets started to take off in waves just after 5 p.m. yesterday as more than 100 crew members wearing different colored shirts—including brown for maintenance, yellow for handlers and purple for fuelers—worked the deck of the ship, mostly using hand signals in the noisy and windy environment. Fifty miles south of Oahu, a two-seater Hornet powered up with enough force to cause a vibration in the chest and launched off the deck in less than three seconds at 150 mph. With 4,500 sailors and about 60 aircraft, the aircraft carrier Reagan is the centerpiece of the "Rim of the...

Northrop Grumman has formally entered the race to win a US Army contract to deliver a new fleet of signals intelligence aircraft. The announcement adds the company to a growing list of declared rivals - including Boeing and L-3 Communications - bidding for the enhanced medium-altitude reconnaissance and surveillance system (EMARSS). The army wants a prime contractor to integrate a small but sophisticated suite of multiple SIGINT collectors on to Beechcraft King Air 350ERs. Payloads include an electro-optical camera and low-band communications interceptors. Northrop has not revealed details about the proposal submitted to the army before the 25 June deadline....