X-47B UCAS Completes Testing
Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Leader’s owners or staff.
The Navy’s X-47B UCAS completed its final test aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt last week and returned to its home base at NAS Patuxent River after eight days at sea, reports SEAPOWER Magazine. While underway, the X-47B flew in the carrier pattern with manned aircraft for the first time and conducted a total of five catapult launches, four arrestments and nine touch-and-go landings, including a night time shipboard flight deck handling evaluation. Captain Beau Duarte, Unmanned Carrier Aviation program manager, said, “We have set the bar for the future of unmanned carrier aviation.”
A Chinese naval officer believes that fighter pilots intercepting US surveillance planes should fly even closer in the wake of a recent controversial incident over the South China Sea last week, according to Yahoo News. The officer’s comments reflect China’s determination to shield its expanding ballistic missile submarine fleet from US spy planes. He said, “We didn’t give them enough pressure (before). A knife at the throat is the only deterrence.”
The DoD is awarding $1 million to help protect 2,259 acres of forest, wetlands and farmlands along the Nanticoke River which contain a high diversity of plants and animals, reports the Bay Journal. The lands are important to NAS Pax River because they are part of the Atlantic Test Range. Protecting the lands from development will reduce noise and safety concerns in the test range and deter potential future restrictions or delays in training and testing.
Pratt & Whitney is close to performing tests on a design change for its F135 engine following a June incident that led to a fire on an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, reports Navy Times.
C4ISR&Networks interviews Victor Gavin, the Navy’s program executive officer for Enterprise Information Systems, in which he identifies security as his top priority. Mr. Gavin oversees a $2 billion portfolio of programs designed to enable common business processes and provide standard IT capabilities to the Navy.
The Pentagon’s next-generation successors to the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor will have extensive artificial intelligence capabilities, according to USNI News. Although the F/A-XX initial capabilities document remains entangled in Pentagon bureaucracy, the Navy is proceeding with preparation work for an analysis of alternatives for the new fighter. The service’s F/A-XX effort to replace the Super Hornet is planned for 2030.
Although sequestration reductions are on the back burner, federal employees and military service members are still seeing their bonuses and special duty assignment pay cut or eliminated, reports Government Executive.
DoD data shows that one-third of reports of domestic abuse within active-duty military families concerns male victims of female offenders, reports Military Times. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps cumulatively have averaged just under 8,000 domestic violence complaints per year over the past five years from families that include at least one active-duty service member.
