Democrats in the House and Senate have named the anticipated new members of congressional committees. In the Senate, Mark Begich (Alaska) joins the appropriations committee. Maize Hirono (Hawaii) is likely to join the armed services committee, along with other freshmen Tim Kaine (Va.) and Angus King (Maine).
Aviation Week Events - Defense Technology And Affordability Requirements March 5-6 2013 Hilton Arlington Arlington, VA Join senior defense officials and discover where priorities and opportunities exist beyond the FY 2014 budget and hear First-hand how programs are implementing affordable and effective designs! Register now at www.aviationweek.com/events/dtar
AIR FORCE FedCon/South Bay Joint Venture, San Antonio, Texas, (FA3089-13-D-0001) is being awarded a $75,000,000 multiple award construction contract for general construction category to include maintenance, repair, alteration, mechanical, electrical, heating/air conditioning, demolition, painting, paving and earthwork. The location of the performance is Randolph AFB, Texas. The work is expected to be completed by Jan. 4, 2018. The contracting activity is 902 CONS/LGCA, Randolph AFB, Texas.
The Pentagon wants to improve the way it audits closeouts of major contracts to curb financial risks to the Defense Department. The department has a large volume of contracts that have not been closed on time, confirms a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, noting that closing a contract includes tasks such as verifying that the goods and services were provided and making final payment to the contractor.
LONDON — Airbus Military has confirmed that it has been selected as the preferred bidder for the Indian air force’s (IAF) aerial refueling tanker program. India is discussing the purchase of six aircraft in a deal worth around $1 billion. India selected the Airbus A330 multirole tanker transport (MRTT) aircraft over the Russian-built Ilyushin Il-78 tanker aircraft, a variant of the Il-76 transport plane already in service with the IAF.
HOUSTON — U.S. and Russian medical experts will draw from seven broad areas as they establish a research agenda in early 2013 for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station flown by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, test cosmonaut from RSC Energia. The ISS veterans were selected in late November by the U.S. and Russian space agencies to train for the long flight expected to launch in March 2015 and potentially reveal health or performance concerns for future human deep space exploration.
ABOARD THE USS FREEDOM — At near 40 kt. the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom creates a “rooster tail” of water out of its stern strong enough to swamp small boats and knock people off the vessels. “The rooster tail is a weapon,” says Joe Shifflett, who manages the LCS Navy training center in San Diego. Cruisers and destroyers have used wakes to disrupt small craft in the past, but neither of those vessels — in fact, nothing else in the U.S. Navy fleet — creates the hydrant-like spray the way an LCS can.
planet candidates: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered 461 new planet candidates, NASA announced Jan. 7. Four are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their respective stars’ “habitable zone” in which liquid water can exist on the surface, the agency says. The observations, gathered from May 2009 to March 2011, “show a steady increase in the number of smaller-size planet candidates and the number of stars with more than one candidate,” NASA says.
LONDON — Finmeccanica arm Alenia Aermacchi has been awarded a $140 million contract to provide logistic support to the Israeli Air Force’s M-346 jet trainers. The contract, awarded by Elbit Systems on Jan. 2, will see the two companies jointly performing the logistics support contract for the training aircraft including supply and maintenance and overhaul of spare parts for the M-346s, 30 of which were ordered by the Israeli Air Force in July 2012.
President Barack Obama is nominating former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as the next defense secretary and White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan as the next CIA director. The battle lines over Hagel’s nomination are already being drawn, as at least two no votes from senators were registered before Obama’s pick was official.
The Pentagon is facing a “confluence of unfortunate events,” says the Pentagon’s top budget official, including the possibility of sequestration, a full-year continuing resolution and the need to protect funding for the war in Afghanistan.
A new “block buy” deal for the U.S. Air Force to buy the next two satellites designed by Lockheed Martin to provide nuclear-hardened communications for the president and military commanders is estimated to save the government almost $1.5 billion. But the cost of each Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite, used for routine secure communications globally as well as presidential command and control of nuclear forces, still exceeds the $1 billion mark.
SUSTAINED: The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Comptroller General this month sustained a protest by Kollsman, an Elbit Systems of America company based in McLean, Va., of a Navy award to L-3 Communications for handheld laser markers. Kollsman challenged the Navy’s evaluation of price and L-3’s past performance. “Because we find that the agency failed to adequately support and document its past performance evaluation of L-3, we recommend that the agency re-evaluate L-3’s past performance,” GAO says in its decision.
The U.S. Department of Defense is finding it more difficult to move its equipment and materiel out of Afghanistan than when it faced a similar drawdown in Iraq. The Pentagon says it has more than 750,000 “major-end items” worth more than $36 billion in Afghanistan and estimates the cost of transferring equipment out of that country could reach about $5.7 billion because of logistical and geopolitical hurdles.
SAN DIEGO — While the U.S. Navy brass says its new Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) will be combat ready, the debate still goes on concerning what kind and what degree of combat the ships are truly designed for. Over the past two years, defense analysts and Pentagon evaluators have called into question the ships’ combat value. The Navy brass has recently sought to squelch such questions, saying the LCS vessels — and perhaps other Navy ships or assets — will have to brave more combat than in the past.
As the incoming top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.), sees his top priority as avoiding cuts to the defense budget under sequestration. Those cut are scheduled to be implemented in late March, unless Congress acts before that time.
NEW DEHLI — India’s armed forces will soon field advanced multi-caliber artillery guns as part of their modernization drive. The guns, being developed by a unit of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), will fulfill requirements of the Indian army for loading and firing both small and large munitions, DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat says. Each artillery gun will feature multiple barrels for loading and firing different sizes of shells.
Unmanned vehicle operations could benefit from research and development of more efficient ways to compress sensor data, according to a recent report by the so-called Jason group, the independent scientific advisory panel that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology.
HOUSTON — Robonaut 2, a NASA and General Motors collaboration to develop an astronaut-friendly humanoid, is due a pair of legs and a battery backpack later this year to give it more mobility inside and eventually outside the International Space Station. The two-armed, camera and force-sensor-laced torso launched to the station aboard a February 2011 space shuttle mission. It has been restrained to a stanchion in the station’s U.S. Destiny laboratory since it was awakened electronically for the first time late the following August.
