Friday, April 19, 2024
An urgent need for an unmanned aerial vehicle that can deliver cargo to Marines in Afghanistan is driving the Navy to hold a demonstration of such a system in December, three months earlier than originally planned, according to a service official.
The Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle will have an air-to-air radar that will allow it to detect and avoid conflicting air traffic, a top concern of unmanned aircraft testing and operation, the service's program manager said today.
Budget cuts and a recent Nunn-McCurdy cost breach have delayed the initial operational capability for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye maritime surveillance aircraft by more than three years, to fiscal year 2015, according to the program manager.
A rising threat from Iran is prompting the Missile Defense Agency to push for a great presence of ships equipped with the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles in the Atlantic, Rear Adm. Brad Hicks, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program director for MDA, said today at a Marshall Institute event in Washington.
The Navy has placed flight restrictions on 30 percent of the EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft fleet, including nine deployed airplanes as of last week, due to ruptures that were found in faulty hoses in the wing fuel tanks, according to Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the $8.3 million price jump for the Joint Strike Fighter's F135 engine is in fiscal year 2002 dollars.
The Senate sided with the Pentagon on the controversial issue of the Joint Strike Fighter alternate engine today, as lawmakers approved an amendment to the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill that would eliminate funding for the engine and use the money to restore 10 helicopters that were cut from the Marine Corps H-1 program.
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee wants to allow the Navy to buy a fourth Littoral Combat Ship and nine more F/A-18 Super Hornets in fiscal year 2010, according to its mark of the defense budget.
The Navy has issued a bulletin calling for the inspection of 566 F/A-18A-D Hornets after cracks were discovered in two planes' horizontal stabilator actuator support fittings, known as "bootstraps," according to a Navy official.
The Navy has told Congress the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye surveillance aircraft program has experienced a "critical Nunn-McCurdy breach," as program costs have surged more than 25 percent above the baseline 2003 estimate.
The Navy's strike fighter shortfall is now expected to peak in 2015 -- two years earlier than originally predicted -- due to a doubling of man-hours required to extend the lives of legacy F/A-18A-D Hornets, Rear Adm. Allen Myers, director of naval warfare integration, told the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee today.
Naval Air Systems Command formally announced today that the service has issued a long-expected stop-work order for both Increments 1 and 2 of the VH-71 program, putting to an end years of schedule delays and cost overruns for the next-generation presidential helicopter.
The Navy is requesting $14.9 billion in its fiscal year 2010 budget to buy eight ships and $18.4 billion for aircraft procurement, but the service's 30-year ship and aviation plans will not be submitted to Congress due to the ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review, the Navy's budget chief told reporters this afternoon.
Naval Air Systems Command this week ordered the temporary grounding of 84 Navy and Air Force V-22 Osprey tiltrotors after an inspection of one of 12 V-22s in Iraq revealed that loose bolts were causing damage to components in the aircraft's rotor assembly, according to a NAVAIR spokesman.
The Navy wants to buy 25 KC-130J aircraft to replace its fleet of 20 aging C-130T logistics support aircraft in the Navy Reserve on the basis that upgrading the legacy aircraft would not be worth the expense, according to a draft of the Defense Department's program objective memorandum 2010 (POM-10) obtained by InsideDefense.com.
The Navy has tapped the head of the Office of Naval Research to replace Rear Adm. Chuck Goddard as program executive officer for ships, the Pentagon announced today.
The Supreme Court announced today it will hear arguments on the controversial use of Navy sonar in training exercises through 2009, which has earned scorn from environmental groups who say the training harms whales and other marine mammals.
The first short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) Joint Strike Fighter test aircraft, BF-1, successfully flew for the first time today for 44 minutes at Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth, TX, facility.
The House Armed Services airland subcommittee made few changes to funding requested for Navy programs under the president's proposed fiscal year 2009 budget in its mark-up of the defense authorization bill today, adding money for a second Joint Strike Fighter engine and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles but changing little else.
The Navy is considering cutting the number of H-1 helicopters it is asking for in the fiscal year 2009 supplemental request from five or six to just three aircraft, Col. Keith Birkholz, the H-1 program manager, told InsideDefense.com today.