The potential new designs for the U.S. Navy’s LPD-17 San Antonio-class amphibious dock ships detailed recently by Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) may have come at a fortuitous time, at least on the international scene. As the production line looks to ramp down for the ships, HII unit Ingalls Shipbuilding is eyeing other possible variants for the ship that could perform missions including ballistic missile defense (BMD), hospital work or sub tending.
ANOTHER SOLUTION: Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is offering yet another bill to replace impending reductions to the federal budget that would reduce defense spending by $167 billion between 2014 and 2021. It would reduce total discretionary spending by $320 billion over the same time frame.
PARIS and BERLIN — In the coming years, as the U.K. replaces Italy as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) third-largest contributor, the Astrium space division of EADS stands to benefit from Britain’s 25% increase in ESA spending approved last November. With major operations in the U.K., Astrium will take advantage of a funding boost targeted mainly at developing next-generation telecommunication satellite technologies and supporting Earth observation and meteorology programs.
ABU DHABI — Ankara has chosen Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) to lead the development of the country’s first truly indigenous helicopter. An executive committee of senior government officials, including Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, gave the go-ahead for the project in late 2012. According to Yilmaz Guldogan, VP of strategy and technology management at TAI, a deal should be signed in the second half of this year, with the aircraft’s development expected to take between four and five years.
Amid continuing uncertainty over delays to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Australian government has opened up a long-anticipated study with the U.S. into the “potential purchase” of 24 additional Boeing F/A-18E/F aircraft.
FALSE CLAIMS: Federal investigators and prosecutors could be on the lookout for an increase in dubious claims by government contractors now that federal budgets appear to be headed downward. That is because contractors could become anxious to land new awards and “may feel the need to stretch their claims,” potentially violating the False Claims Act, according to David Laufman, formerly associate general counsel to the U.S. Special Investigator General for Iraq reconstruction, who spoke online during an Ethisphere Symposium about procurement compliance Feb. 26.
U.S. MH-60R Seahawk helicopters equipped the AN/AQS-22 Airborne Low-Frequency Sonar (ALFS) and MK-54 lightweight torpedoes are proving to be quite a lethal anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission package, according to the service and its contractors. Over the past two years, service leaders have been talking up the ASW potential of the MH-60R, or “Romeo,” especially with the advancements in sensor and torpedo technology providing an efficient end-to-end capability.
NASA’s inspector general and the lawmaker who chairs the subcommittee that controls the agency’s purse strings in the House are reviewing the Space Act Agreements (SAAs) that have been the agency’s procurement vehicle of choice for support of the emerging “new space” industry, in part because they require less rigorous oversight than standard government purchases of goods and services.
TEL AVIV — Israeli officials are revealing new details of their national space program, including plans for a new spaceborne computer. During a recent international space conference, Menachem Kidron, manager of the Israeli Space Agency (ISA), said the computer should be operational in a few years. It will provide processing capabilities that are currently very hard to achieve in space, as a computer in space must withstand extreme cold and heat as well as powerful radiation. The computer’s development is budgeted at NIS 180 million ($45 million).
SINGAPORE — Satellite manufactures are responding to the challenge of tight fiscal budgets by adopting new business models, such as public-private partnerships, and looking further afield for partners.
House Republicans will meet Feb. 27 to discuss the budget, sequestration and a proposal to keep the government running after current legislation providing funding expires on March 27.
HAGEL CONFIRMED: The Senate on Feb. 26 confirmed former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as the next defense secretary, ending a long and controversial nomination process full of questions about his policy positions and financial past. Taking over at the Pentagon will be that much harder, as the military prepares itself for more than $40 billion in cuts to defense spending for fiscal 2013 to take effect March 1.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, is being awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (FA8611-13-D-2850) with a ceiling of $6,900,000,000 for F-22 modernization. The locations of performance are El Segundo, Calif.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; San Diego.; Nashua, N.H.; and Wayne, N.J. The work is expected to be completed by Feb. 20, 2023. This award is a result of a sole source acquisition. The contracting activity is AFLCMC/WWUK, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
BRIGHT SIDE: Clark Murdock, a senior adviser for the defense group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the Budget Control Act’s sequestration penalty, which slices a set amount from each eligible program, is still better for the Pentagon than if officials were assigned the task of simply cutting to an overall topline amount. In that case, rational planners likely would have proposed harsher cuts up front.
Orbital Sciences Corp. hopes to launch its new Antares rocket on its first flight at the end of March or early in April, following a successful 29-sec. hot-fire test on its new launch pad at Wallops Flight Facility, Va. Orbital engineers believe they have dealt with a fairing-separation issue that cost NASA two Earth-observing satellites in back-to-back launch failures on the company’s Taurus XL rocket, and don’t expect similar problems with the frangible-joint separation mechanism on the much larger Antares fairing.
DESPERATE TIMES: It’s not new, and it’s not likely to go anywhere. Still, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) is proposing a bill that would remove military spending from sequestration and allow the remainder of about $500 billion in budget cuts over 10 years to fall on the rest of the federal government. But the proposal from Forbes — who chairs the House Armed Services sea power and projection forces subcommittee — is merely symbolic.
If sequestration takes place March 1, military furloughs are not expected to begin at that time. Rather, they would start around April 25, according to a proposed Pentagon timeline.
