While Senate and House leaders are still at loggerheads over how to fund the government, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather satellite system is just one of a number of potential casualties.
After an early program stall, the CH-53K Super Stallion helicopter program is back on course, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says. “The CH-53K program has made progress addressing the difficulties it faced early in system development,” GAO says in its report, released this week. Program officials “held a successful critical design review in July 2010 and (have) adopted mitigation strategies to address future program risk.” (See chart p. 6.)
LOS ANGELES — The embattled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is facing the threat of $3 billion or more in higher costs related to taxes and tariffs on components and subassemblies traveling around its international supply network.
The U.S. Navy is approaching its 60-month construction goal for its Virginia-class submarines, despite a recent redesign of the bow to accommodate larger and more versatile weapon tubes, according to Capt. Michael Jabaley, Virginia-class program manager.
NASA is considering a commercial proposal for long-term tests of advanced environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) hardware on the International Space Station (ISS), backing up the original station equipment with potentially more reliable life-support gear designed for human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit.
PIONEER PASSES: Dr. Baruch “Barry” Blumberg, a Nobel laureate in medicine who served as the first director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, died April 5 of an apparent heart attack. He was 85 years old. Blumberg shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine with D. Carlton Gajdusek for their work on infectious viral diseases. He was best known for identifying the Hepatitis B virus. In his early life his focus was mathematics. After achieving distinction in medicine, his focus later in life broadened to questions of how to move humanity from its home planet to other worlds.
PROTON PAIR: Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Melco) will use Proton vehicles to launch Turksat 4A and Turksat 4B under a contract with International Launch Services (ILS). Both spacecraft will be based on Melco’s DS2000 satellite bus. Turksat 4A, to be launched in 2013, will be sent to the main Turksat AS orbital slot at 42 deg. E. Long. Turksat 4B, set for a 2014 launch, will be sent to 50 deg. E. Long. Each satellite will weigh about 3,800 kg.
NEW DELHI — Air Works India has landed the contract to maintain the Indian air force’s VVIP squadron of three Boeing Business Jets. Operated by the Indian air force’s communications squadron, the aircraft carry the president, vice president, prime minister and other top-level officials. The maintenance contract for the Indian version of Air Force One will be a big boost for the company, which launched independent MRO services in the civil aviation sector in 2008.
GENOA, Italy — As expected, the Italian government decided to change Finmeccanica’s top management, with AgustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi to take the reins as CEO, and previous CEO Pier Francesco Guarguaglini to remain as chairman. Guarguaglini took the helm at Finmeccanica in 2002 and has created a central management structure that gave him direct involvement in both managing the company and crafting broader strategies.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The International Space Station’s original Node 1 module, which became a structural test article after manufacturing errors, may end up in orbit after all. Boeing is conducting a study for NASA on using the module as a docking hub for visiting vehicles and experimental spacecraft, such as a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable habitat.
Northrop Grumman has thrown yet another wrench into the U.S. Army’s attempt to get its new intelligence aircraft procurement program back on track, with the March 28 filing of a second protest. The company was among three losing bidders to originally protest Boeing’s November 2010 win of the $323 million Enhanced Medium-Altitude Surveillance and Reconnaissance System (Emarss). L-3 Communications and Lockheed Martin/Sierra Nevada also protested.
The top two U.S. Navy officials say that the forthcoming unmanned aircraft eyed for service on an aircraft carrier in 2018 must be capable of operating in hostile airspace, which means the aircraft design must feature low-observable traits. They also say they want an aircraft and command-and-control system that can be integrated into the carrier air wing rather than creating a separate system for data than exists today.
HOUSTON — The success of NASA’s future human exploration plans, as well as their spin-off potential, depends on a more strategically focused and resourced life and physical sciences research program, according to a new National Research Council (NRC) report. The April 5 report, one of a series of decadal surveys prepared for NASA by the NRC, concludes that the scale and scope of both research arenas have slipped in response to shifting agency priorities and increased competition for funds.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley says the service is “not there yet” in declaring that the Combat Search and Rescue and Common Vertical-Lift Support Program (CVLSP) helicopters will be commercial derivatives. As senior Air Force officials firm up acquisition strategies for the two efforts, they are trying to find the “sweet spot” between an off-the-shelf option and the service’s requirements. “It is not all about cost [and] it is not all about requirements,” Donley told reporters at a Defense Writers’ Group breakfast in Washington April 5.
Even if Congress manages to pass the fiscal 2011 budget this week, U.S. military leaders and analysts say the continuing resolutions that have kept the Department of Defense afloat for much of the past year have already done serious and possibly permanent damage to their modernization programs.
COST CUTTING: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is praising House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to cut $4 trillion from the federal deficit over a decade — which largely spares Pentagon weapon programs (See story p. 3) — but has his own idea for reining in the runaway costs of military gear. “When you develop a weapon system in the future, this should be a fixed-price contract, not a cost-plus contract, and the contractor should have 25 percent cost sharing in the development cost,” Graham says.
HOUSTON — The U.S., Russian and Italian crewmembers of the International Space Station came within an hour of taking shelter in their docked Soyuz TMA-20 “lifeboat” spacecraft on April 5 as debris from China’s January 2007 anti-satellite test passed within 3 mi. of the orbiting science laboratory.
Pentagon weapons programs win big in a pair of budget proposals floated by Republicans on Capitol Hill, escaping sweeping cuts applied to much of the federal government to curtail the deficit. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) rolled out a proposal that would fund the Defense Department for the rest of the year along lines previously approved by the House and put the rest of the government on another stop-gap spending bill for one week.
A heavy-lift version of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Falcon 9 could enter the launch services marketplace in the next few years, offering commercial and government customers the long-sought $1,000 price to send a pound of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO).
NEW DELHI — After years of hesitancy, India is likely to take up with the newly elected Myanmar government the issue of increasing incidents of poachers sneaking in from the Southeast Asian country. “Poachers from Myanmar have set up hideouts in India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands and are increasingly preying on the fragile marine ecology,” says a senior naval officer of the archipelago.
IRAN AIR: U.S. lawmakers are looking at using aviation business ties to continue to try to squeeze Iran. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, are calling on the Obama administration to withhold pending licenses for the inspection and repair of 15 U.S.-made engines on Iranian aircraft until the regime there abandons its nuclear weapons program and support for terrorism. “There is no reason we should be helping the Iranians keep these planes in the air,” Sherman says.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Pratt & Whitney has updated progress on a four-point plan to help Lockheed Martin correct issues with the F-35B short take-off and vertical landing (Stovl) variant, development of which has been placed “on probation” by Pentagon leadership.
