Boeing delivers Harpoon missiles with updated guidance control
Boeing in June delivered the first four Harpoon Block II missiles equipped with a redesigned guidance control unit (GCU), which provides growth capabilities and resolves obsolescence issues. The missiles were delivered to the U.S. Navy for transfer to two foreign military sales customers. The GCU, which controls most of the missiles’ functions, incorporates a Selective Availability Anti-
Spoofing Module (SAASM) Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to improve GPS security. In addition, the GCU can accommodate possible future implementation of a military data link for network-centric operation. All Harpoon missiles will incorporate the redesigned GCU. Harpoon Block II executes both anti-ship and land-strike missions. The 500-pound blast fragmentation warhead delivers lethal firepower against a variety of land-based targets, including coastal defense sites, surface-to-air missile sites, exposed aircraft, port/industrial facilities, and ships in port.
MEADS Program receives hardware design approvals, enters system-level CDR
The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program has completed critical design reviews (CDRs) for all major components, clearing the way for production of radars, launchers, tactical operation centers, and reloaders needed for system tests at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Lockheed Martin officials say. Under its design and development contract, MEADS International will provide six battle management, command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence tactical operations centers, four launchers, one reloader, three surveillance radars, three multifunction fire control radars, and 20 PAC-3 missile segment enhancement missile rounds for the tests, expected to begin in 2012. MEADS International’s participating companies are MBDA in Italy, LFK in Germany, and Lockheed Martin in the U.S. Today, 1,900 employees from these companies are completing final engineering designs for MEADS program. With completion of the component-level design reviews, the MEADS program has met criteria to begin a series of system-level CDR events. The tri-national AMD system continues to demonstrate progress toward final design approval expected next year. A total of 15 system-level CDR events will be completed in the year ahead and permit final evaluation of MEADS survivability, logistics, safety, integration and test, life cycle cost, and performance. The final system-level CDR event will be held in August 2010 in accordance with government direction. Initial flight tests are planned for 2012.
Boeing rolls out U.S. Navy’s P-8A Poseidon
Boeing and the U.S. Navy formally unveiled the service’s newest maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft, the P-8A Poseidon, during a ceremony at the Boeing facility in Renton, Wash. A derivative of the next-generation 737-800 jetliner, the P-8A is a long-range anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft capable of broad-area, maritime, and littoral operations. As the replacement for the Navy’s P-3C Orion aircraft, the P-8A will provide greater payload capacity, flexibility, and interoperability, and advanced mission systems, avionics, software, and communications. “The P-8A program is an outstanding example of evolutionary acquisition at work,” says Capt. Mike Moran, U.S. Navy Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft program manager. “The team has worked hard to stay on schedule and within cost in this development effort, and we all should be extremely proud of the results.” The P-8A is built by a Boeing-led industry team that includes CFM International, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Spirit AeroSystems, and GE Aviation. The team is assembling and testing the first five P-8As as part of the program’s System Development and Demonstration contract, awarded in 2004. The integrated Navy/Boeing team will begin formal flight testing of the P-8A later this year. The Navy plans to purchase 117 P-8As, and initial operational capability is planned for 2013.
Altera extends temperature range of Stratix III FPGAs to support military applications
Officials at Altera Corp. in San Jose, Calif., announced the company has extended the temperature range for selected members of its Stratix III field-programmable gate array (FPGA) family to support military applications operating in rugged environments, such as radar, electronic countermeasures, and ground-combat communications equipment. Selected members of Altera’s Stratix III FPGAs support these applications by enabling operation between -55 to 125 degrees Celsius. Altera’s military-grade Stratix III FPGAs deliver a core clock performance as fast as 600 MHz, offer 533-MHz DDR3 DIMM support, and have as much as 150,000 logic elements (LEs), 8 megabits of embedded memory, and as much as 896 embedded multipliers. Stratix III FPGAs also have Altera’s Programmable Power Technology, enabling customers to minimize power consumption.
