Friday, July 16, 2010

DTN News: JF-17 To Represent Pakistan In Farnborough Air Show

DTN News: JF-17 To Represent Pakistan In Farnborough Air Show
Source: DTN News / The News
(NSI News Source Info) ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - July 17, 2010: Indigenously developed aircraft by Pakistan with the help of China will make its maiden appearance at an international show being held in the United Kingdom.
In line to make their physical appearance in Farnborough Air Show 2010 along with other modern aircraft, being held 19-25 July in the UK, two JF-17 Thunder combat aircraft of PAF on Friday flew into the UK from a PAF Base.
These aircraft are manufactured at Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) Kamra. The JF-17s would be displayed for the first time in the Farnborough Air Show alongside other modern aircrafts of the world.
The JF-17 Thunder distinguishes PAF as the only air force in the world that manufactures combat aircraft. It is an all-weather, multi-role, combat aircraft that has the potential to be the mainstay of any modern air force.

DTN News: Boeing, Jacksonville Community Celebrate Arrival Of F-16s For Aerial Target Program

DTN News: Boeing, Jacksonville Community Celebrate Arrival Of F-16s For Aerial Target Program
Source: DTN News / Boeing
(NSI News Source Info) JACKSONVILLE, Fla., - July 17, 2010: Boeing [NYSE: BA] employees joined congressional representatives, local government officials and community leaders on July 9 at Cecil Field in Jacksonville to celebrate the arrival of the first F-16s for the QF-16 aerial target program. Boeing received a $69.7 million contract from the U.S. Air Force in March to convert up to 126 retired F-16s into QF-16 Full-Scale Aerial Targets that can fly either manned or unmanned. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2014. "This is an important program for the Air Force and Boeing," Steve Waltman, Boeing director of Aircraft Sustainment & Maintenance, told the audience. "This is a significant off-platform project for our company, and we have confidence that our Cecil Field teammates will deliver the aerial targets to our customer on budget and on time."
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DTN News: Canada To Buy 65 F-35 Jet Fighters In C$9 Billion Deal

DTN News: Canada To Buy 65 F-35 Jet Fighters In C$9 Billion Deal
Source: DTN News / Reuters By David Ljunggren
(NSI News Source Info) OTTAWA, Canada - July 17, 2010: Canada will buy 65 new fighter jets from Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) for C$9 billion ($8.6 billion), one of the biggest arms deals in the nation's history, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said on Friday. The first Joint Strike Fighter should be delivered in 2016. The F-35s will replace Canada's CF-18s, which are due to reach the end of their working lives in about 2020. MacKay brushed off criticism from opposition legislators who say the planes are too expensive and who question why Lockheed Martin received a sole-source contract. "This is the best aircraft we can provide our men and women in uniform ... This is one of the largest defense procurement projects in Canadian history," MacKay told a news conference. The C$9 billion also covers weapons, training and equipment. MacKay said media reports of a separate C$7 billion 20-year maintenance deal were wrong and said an agreement would be concluded once the jets started going into production. The Joint Strike Fighter program is being funded by the United States, Canada, Turkey, Britain, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Australia and the Netherlands. Canada, which was involved from the start, says it has already spent C$168 million. The JSF is set to be the world's costliest arms acquisition program. The United States alone is scheduled to buy 2,443 of the planes for more than $300 billion. Industry Minister Tony Clement said Canadian companies would be able to bid for business for all the planes, not just the ones Ottawa will buy. Don Boitson, vice-president and general manager at Magellan Aerospace Corp (MAL.TO), said the deal should be worth more than C$1 billion to his firm over the life of the program. "The announcement today gives Canadian companies like ourselves and the other 85 (firms) the opportunity to produce parts, and we have been and will continue for all 3,000 aircraft that are currently on order," he told Reuters. The opposition Liberal Party promises to freeze the deal if it takes power. But polls show it trails the ruling Conservatives and would have little chance of winning an election now. In a statement, the left-leaning New Democrats said "there needs to be accountability and some justification for spending this amount of money and we have not seen that". MacKay dismissed the criticism, saying Lockheed Martin had won an open competition in 2001 to supply the JSF -- a time when Canada's previous Liberal government was in power and already helping to fund the project. "I am questioning the hypocrisy which seems to soar higher than this aircraft in now criticizing purchasing the very plane that the previous government signaled ... very early on, that they were going to do," he said. But a former top Canadian defense official involved in the decision to help fund the JSF said Ottawa's development role did not automatically mean Canada had to buy the plane. "If you sole-source, everybody loses," said Alan Williams, estimating Conservatives had effectively sole-sourced almost C$40 billion worth of defense contracts in recent years. "We're supposed to buy a product that best meets the military's needs. How do you know that without doing a rigorous comparison? ... Just because we took part in a program does not mean that it's the best one for us," he told Reuters. ($1=$1.05 Canadian)
(Additional reporting by Susan Taylor and John McCrank; editing by Rob Wilson)

DTN News: ITT/Boeing Next Generation Jammer Team Wins $42 Million Navy Award To Mature Technology

DTN News: ITT/Boeing Next Generation Jammer Team Wins $42 Million Navy Award To Mature Technology
Source: DTN News / ITT
(NSI News Source Info) CLIFTON, N.J.- July 17, 2010: The team of ITT Corporation (NYSE: ITT - News) and The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA - News) today announced an award of $42 million from the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) to proceed to the Technology Maturation stage of the Next Generation Jammer program, designed to be the world’s most sophisticated airborne electronic attack system. The program, valued at over $2 billion, will replace the current inventory of aging ALQ-99 jamming pods on the Navy’s newest airborne electronic attack aircraft, the Boeing EA-18G Growler. The Next Generation Jammer pod will also be a stepping stone to an F-35, Joint Strike Fighter, Electronic Attack capability. “Electronic attack capabilities have been integral in maintaining U.S. and allied air superiority in the past four decades,” said Chris Bernhardt, President of ITT Electronic Systems. “And, as the capabilities of potential enemies continue to grow, our own technologies must continue to outpace them.” The Next Generation Jammer will help ensure that U.S. forces have complete dominance of the electronic spectrum, providing a comprehensive capability to disrupt and disable enemy communications and radars. “Beyond its superior work in designing and delivering the EA-18G on-time and on-budget, Boeing brings unparalleled experience in pod design and systems integration, both critical aspects of the total NGJ package,” Bernhardt added. In the NGJ Technology Maturation phase, the ITT and Boeing team will conduct analyses and design of critical technology elements of the system to ensure the proposed solution is affordable, low risk and capable of delivering superior operational effectiveness. ITT’s solution will be based on significant technological advantages achieved in the critical areas of broadband electronically steerable antenna arrays and advanced digital exciters, providing the U.S. Navy the programmability, scalability, modularity and open systems architecture that will allow the Growler to stay ahead of the ever changing threat for years to come. One of the most important improvements will be ITT’s advances in broadband electronically steerable antenna arrays and advanced digital exciter technology. The Next Generation Jammer is also being designed with modular open systems architecture (MOSA), enabling simpler upgrades throughout the system’s lifespan. “ITT is regarded worldwide as an industry leader in successfully transitioning advanced Electronic Warfare technologies from concepts to fielded systems,” said Rick Martin, Director, Electronic Warfare Solutions, Boeing Phantom Works. "The ITT-Boeing team brings together tremendous resources to develop the NGJ and integrate it into the joint electronic attack system of systems.” The ITT/Boeing effort will be led from ITT Electronic Systems in Clifton, N.J. with work also being performed at Boeing’s Phantom Works facility in St. Louis. ITT Electronic Systems is a leading supplier of information and electronic warfare (EW) technologies, systems and services that enable mission success and survivability. Key technologies include integrated EW systems for a variety of aircraft, reconnaissance and surveillance systems for air and sea-based applications, force protection and counter-IED systems, precision landing and air traffic systems for military applications, and under sea systems encompassing mine defense, naval command and sonar systems, and acoustic sensors. Integrated structures produces aircraft armament suspension and release equipment, electronic weapons interface systems, and advanced composite structures and subsystems. A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world's largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world's largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $34 billion business with 68,000 employees worldwide. About ITT Corporation ITT Corporation is a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company operating on all seven continents in three vital markets: water and fluids management, global defense and security, and motion and flow control. With a heritage of innovation, ITT partners with its customers to deliver extraordinary solutions that create more livable environments, provide protection and safety and connect our world. Headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., the company generated 2009 revenue of $10.9 billion. www.itt.com

DTN News: Afghanistan TODAY July 16, 2010 - The U.S. Goes Local in Anti-Taliban Fight

DTN News: Afghanistan TODAY July 16, 2010 - The U.S. Goes Local in Anti-Taliban Fight
Source: DTN News - this article / report compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources including TIME By MARK THOMPSON
(NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON, USA - July 16, 2010: The good news is that the U.S. government is on the verge of creating thousands of jobs. The bad news is that they're in Afghanistan. But General David Petraeus is hoping that hiring up to 10,000 Afghans and arming them to keep the Taliban out of their villages will help turn things around in the nine-year-old war. Petraeus won the tepid backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the plan, nurtured by his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, after just two weeks in command of allied forces in Afghanistan. It requires a delicate balancing act - the creation of local forces strong enough to shut the Taliban out of areas where neither Afghan nor NATO troops operate, but not so strong as to undermine the authority of Karzai's central government. While progress is slow in fielding Afghan national security forces to fight the Taliban, U.S. officials believe that a growing number of Afghans are receptive to this more localized initiative. Marine Major General Richard Mills, running operations in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province, said Thursday he is seeing locals growing increasingly anti-Taliban. "We have strong anecdotal evidence that as Taliban tax collectors enter Marjah at night and enter other parts of this province, that they are repulsed and sent away by the people," he told reporters at the Pentagon in a teleconference. Taliban recruiters also are "being rejected and told to disappear," Mills added. "We're beginning to see the emergence of the people wanting to defend themselves." (Watch an audio slideshow about Afghanistan.) Petraeus won Karzai's backing for the plan by giving the Afghan Interior Ministry control of the new localized police forces, which will supplement the 130,000-strong Afghan army and the 100,000 members of the Afghan national police. While their role is supposed to be defensive, that may be easier to promise than deliver in a country run by warlords and their local militias for the past 30 years. Some fear that the new rental cops could be easily turned into militias. "These would be local community policing units," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell insisted Wednesday. "They would not be militias." (See how a U.S.-backed Afghan militia transformed a valley of death.) Petraeus' calendar for showing progress is another challenge. A major review of the U.S. war strategy for Afghanistan is less than six months away, and President Obama wants to begin reducing U.S. troops there a year from now. Building even rudimentary security forces takes time, giving this latest initiative just a whiff of desperation as the clock ticks down. It's "a temporary solution to a very real, near-term problem," Morrell said, adding that the force shouldn't take long to train. "This is about putting locals to work so that they can be on watch in their communities for people who shouldn't be there," he said. "And then work with the established security organizations - the army, the police, the coalition - to make sure they don't menace their communities." But the local police forces won't always be operating solo, Petraeus explained at his Senate confirmation hearing last month. Some of them will be "working around our great special-forces A teams who are out there very courageously in villages, and helping to empower and to support local elements that want to resist the Taliban." Petraeus performed a similar, if not identical, magic trick when he and 30,000 additional U.S. troops surged into Iraq in 2007. Many credited that surge with turning Iraq around. But many U.S. military officers say a more important factor was the willingness of the so-called Awakening movement - Sunnis in western Iraq, many of them former insurgents - to fight al-Qaeda. Ultimately, about 100,000 Iraqis ended up on the U.S. payroll through the Awakening movement. But in Afghanistan, any "awakening" is to begin - and remain - under the control of the government. Similar units have recently been created in different regions of Afghanistan, largely in the east and south, with mixed results. Such homegrown security forces tend to work better than those imported as part of a central army. "It encourages neighborhood responsibility for their own security," Mills said. It gives locals "an opportunity for them to defend their own territory, in which they have, of course, a very, very vested interest." Not only are locals intimately familiar with the topography, they also know the local bad guys better than any outsider does. But the challenge for Petraeus and Karzai will be to keep local bad guys off the police payroll.
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News, contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

DTN News: The Russian-Indian BrahMos Supersonic Cruise Missile

DTN News: The Russian-Indian BrahMos Supersonic Cruise Missile * Russia-India partnership Source: DTN News - - this article / report compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources including Ria Novosti (NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - July 16, 2010: The BrahMos PJ-10 is a short-range, ramjet powered, single warhead, supersonic anti-ship cruise missile developed and manufactured by India and Russia. Ship-, air-, ground-, and submarine-launched versions exist. It is currently among the most formidable cruise missiles in development. The BrahMos, which derives its name from the Brahmaputra and Moscow rivers in India and Russia, is based on the earlier Russian design for the SS-N-26 (3M55 Oniks) cruise missile. In 1998, a joint venture was set up between the Indian Defense Ministry’s Defense Research and Development Organization and Russia’s Mashinostroyeniye Company. The two entities formed a company now known as Brahmos Aerospace, which would develop and manufacture the BrahMos PJ-10. Sources indicate that by 2006 India and Russia had already invested $300 million in the company. Also, the BrahMos program has been working extremely well -- a development that may go far to offset the fiasco of the enormous delays and cost overruns on the Admiral Gorshkov carrier renovation project. Co-production in Indian of Russian weapons systems may well therefore be the way ahead to revitalize the venerable Russian-Indian arms sales relationship for the 21st century. BrahMos cruise missile co-production could therefore prove to be the prototype for further such deals. This could go far in repairing the traditional weakness of Indian high-tech arms development and procurement. India's Defense Research and Development Organization has a decades-long consistent record of producing prototype missiles and weapons that on paper are as good as any in the world. But it has consistently failed to bring many of them anywhere near operational and production standards. That is why India still has to buy Russian Main Battle Tanks and excellent French Scorpion diesel submarines off the shelf after decades of unsuccessful efforts to manufacture its own. But the BrahMos program has broken free of those old constraints. It has already entered its production and operational deployment stages with the first mark of these weapons. This achievement is an epochal step forward for the Indian arms industry, and it augurs well for future such Indian-Russian co-production agreements. Finally, India's achievement in reaching production and operational deployment reliability on the BrahMos cruise missile will change the nature of its strategic relations with the United States -- and possibly with Israel, too. For India is now about to find itself in the novel position of having a military technology far in advance of the comparable U.S. technology. U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles are subsonic, with a maximum speed of around 700 miles per hour at ground level. But the most advanced marks of the BrahMos, based as they are on a successful, mature Russian cruise missile technology, can go more than 2.5 times as fast as that -- at Mach 2.8 at ground level. Will India be willing to share this technology with the United States? And if its leaders were willing, would the Kremlin permit it? And if -- as seems likely -- India refuses to share such technology with Washington -- how will that affect future U.S.-Indian relations? Will it signify that technology-sharing agreements in practice will remain a one-way street? *This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News, contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

DTN News: Israelis See Obama As Pro-Palestinian: Poll

DTN News: Israelis See Obama As Pro-Palestinian: Poll
Source: DTN News / AFP
(NSI News Source Info) JERUSALEM, Israel - July 16, 2010: Forty-six percent of Israelis believe US President Barack Obama is more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, according to an opinion poll published by the English-language Jerusalem Post on Friday.
Only 10 percent of the 515 Jewish Israelis interviewed thought Obama was more pro-Israel, 34 percent said he was neutral and 10 percent did not express an opinion. The poll suggests the July 6 White House meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama did not significantly change Israelis' perceptions of the US president. A similar survey in March showed that 48 percent thought Obama was more pro-Palestinian and nine percent thought he was more pro-Israeli. The poll was taken between Monday and Wednesday and has a 4.4 percentage point margin of error.