Kendall’s Merger Crusade: Bad Idea?
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WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is “weeks” away from taking a tougher line on mergers between defense contractors — but two top defense industry analysts told Breaking Defense that was a bad idea. “Their only possible response to M&A [Mergers & Acquisitions] is S&P[:] Signaling & Posturing,” said the Teal Group’s Richard Aboulafia. “As with so many… Keep reading →
Whoa, Lockheed & Co.! Kendall Urges Congress To Protect Innovation
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WASHINGTON: The Defense Department has told its big industry partners for most of the last 15 years that there’s no need for consolidation at the top. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman are big enough, they said. Mergers of prime contractors would limit competition, Ash Carter, Frank Kendall and other… Keep reading →
Future Vertical Lift: Industry Urges Common Cockpit
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WASHINGTON: The military’s Future Vertical Lift initiative aims to replace a range of aging helicopters from all four services. No, wonder, then, that FVL is evolving, not into a single acquisition program, but into (at least) five different programs. With an eye on the problems such a broad effort can generate, the head of the industry group… Keep reading →
Lockheed Bids $9B For Sikorsky; May Spin Off IT, Tech Services
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WASHINGTON: Lockheed Martin’s planned purchase of Sikorsky Aircraft, the biggest U.S. helicopter manufacturer, is a natural fit that will mean a lot more to buyer Lockheed and seller United Technologies Corp. than it will for the military rotorcraft industry, present or future. Here’s why. First, the two companies have worked together on military helicopter programs for decades.… Keep reading →
V-280 Valor: Bell Starts Building Joint Multi-Role Prototype
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Somebody’s finally doing something tangible about the future of Army aviation. Bell Helicopter subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kan., has started assembling the composite fuselage for the first prototype V-280 Valor, Bell’s new military tiltrotor. The Valor is sleeker, smaller, and, by design, more Army-friendly than the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, which was built to fit… Keep reading →
Marine One, Take 2: No New Bright Ideas!
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VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.: The new presidential helicopter made its first flight in December, the Marine Corps colonel in charge of the program revealed this morning. That was only seven months after contract award, a stark contrast to the multi-year delays that killed the previous program, the VH-71. But don’t get too excited. No miracles are… Keep reading →
Army Looks To Build Two Forms of Medium Future Vertical Lift
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ARLINGTON: And then there were five. There were already going to be four different aircraft in the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) family, from light to medium to heavy to “ultra.” Now it’s almost certain that the medium FVL will be split into two separate versions: a smaller attack/reconnaissance aircraft and a larger troop-carrying assault craft.… Keep reading →
It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! No, It’s Aircraft That Fly Like A Bird!
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In the 1934 film “It Happened One Night,” fictional slime ball “King” Westley shows off by floating to a landing on the lawn of his fiancée’s daddy’s estate in a newfangled autogiro – an airplane with a rotor to enable short take offs and landings. Today, two Defense Department programs are striving to meet the… Keep reading →
Sikorsky Unveils S-97 Raider: Road To FVL?
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The company that built the first workable helicopter rolled out a (potential) revolution in chopper technology yesterday: Sikorsky’s high-speed S-97 Raider. A year ago, Sikorsky made a splash at the huge Association of the US Army conference with just a life-size mock-up. Now, just in time to talk it up at AUSA 2014, they’ve built a working… Keep reading →
Sikorsky & Boeing Team Up For Joint Multi-Role VTOL
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Sikorsky, Boeing signed Jan. 13 teaming agreement for 1st phase of Army’s Joint Multi-Role (JMR) tech demo, part of Future Vertical Lift ColinClarkAol