IMPROVING ITAR: Lawyers say changes in management introduced at the U.S. State Dept.’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) are having a “modest positive impact” on International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). ITAR specialist John Ordway, a partner in the law firm Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, says the changes, backed by a presidential directive in early 2008 providing DDTC with more financial and intelligence support, are leading to faster processing of requests — the new target is 60 days — more transparency and more consistency in decision-making.
INCREMENTAL APPROACH: General Dynamics C4 Systems is promoting a recent Limited User Test (LUT) of the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) Increment 2, which is designed to provide on-the-move Internet-like broadband networking to military units spread across wide geographic areas. The Army’s Evaluation Center will determine if the LUT was successful, at which point the Army would approve low-production of the system, fielding new equipment to the first unit in late 2010.
CARRIER ACCEPTANCE: The USS H.W. Bush (CVN 77) is ready to begin fleet service following the formal conclusion of acceptance trials April 10. The U.S. Navy Board of Inspection and Survey tested and evaluated the ship’s systems and performance during acceptance trials off the Virginia Capes April 7 through 9. The Bush is the nation’s 10th and final Nimitz-class carrier, designed to carry all current and future aircraft in its embarked air wing until the completion of her service life in approximately 2059.
AUGMENTING GPS: The European Commission (EC) has taken over Europe’s Egnos GPS augmentation network from the European Space Agency, its developer, and contracted with ESSP, a consortium of air traffic management service providers, to supply the service. EC officials said the initial contract is for six months and will only cover open service to give the two sides time to nail down certain details, notably with respect to legal liability. A full 5-year contract covering commercial as well as open service is expected in the autumn.
BOND MARKET: Finmeccanica has again returned to the bond market to help seek more of a reduction of the bank loans obtained from a banking consortium to buy DRS Technologies, as well as increasing the average duration of the company’s financial debt holdings. The new 10-year bond has been issued for a total amount of £400 million and is granting 8 percent interest, a spread of 470 basis points on U.K. treasuries of the same duration. The bond was fully subscribed, confirming good market response for Finmeccanica’s position.
NO GUERILLA WARFARE: Irregular warfare may be the new buzz word for Pentagon planning, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates doesn’t want any it in his own house. Gates says he won’t tolerate what he calls “guerilla warfare” — uniformed service officials independently arguing for their parochial interests on Capitol Hill. The worst offender recently was the U.S. Air Force, which publicly argued last year for more F-22 Raptors than the number the president endorsed.
MARINE NAVY: Everything old was new again when a bill was proposed renaming the Department of the Navy the Department of the Navy and Marine Corps. Bill backer Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), whose territory includes Camp LeJeune, is on his seventh attempt to have the title of the department changed to include the Marines. H.R. 24 was introduced in the House on Jan. 6. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of implementing the bill would be under $500,000 per year over the next several years, using appropriated funds.
U.S. Defense Department networks are attacked thousands of times a day, according to leading combatant commanders in the field, and defending DOD’s Global Information Grid (GIG) from cyber attacks has cost the U.S. military more than $100 million over the past six months alone.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Apr. 14 - 15 — AVIATION WEEK Management Forums, Helicopter Safety & Operations Management Forum, Hilton San Diego Airport, Harbor Island, San Diego, Calif. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/conferences
GENOA, Italy Italy plans to send more troops, helicopters and aircraft to Afghanistan in response to NATO and U.S. calls for reinforcements ahead of the Afghan general election Aug. 20.
PUSHED BACK: European Space Agency officials say the Herschel-Planck twin telescope mission, expected to be launched atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket towards the end of April, may now be pushed back until mid-May. The mission already has suffered repeated delays, most recently from a scheduled April 16 launch date.
COMMON CONTROL: The next quarterly Interoperability Control Working Group meeting, a collaboration between industry and government on creating architecture and standards for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) common ground stations (CGS), will be held April 20-21. The meeting is part of a larger effort on the part of the Pentagon, and departing Pentagon acquisition chief John Young in particular, to adopt a common DOD architecture for UAS. The goal is to enable competition among more companies to provide visualization, data archiving and tagging and auto tracking.
NAS PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — The brand-new EA-18G Growler has additional advances for airborne electronic attack (AEA) already on the way. High on the list is the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ), which is to add even longer-range electronic attack, spoofing and advanced information and network attack options. With the new digital telecommunications used by opponents, U.S. planners have to be much more detailed about how electronic attack is conducted against networked, computer-controlled threats such as integrated air defenses.
CIVIL AIR PATROL: Lawmakers in Congress are looking into bolstering the Civil Air Patrol’s role in U.S. homeland security. Similar House and Senate language promoted by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would ask congressional auditors to report on the auxiliary Air Force branch’s ability to better help Homeland Security Dept.-led aerial reconnaissance, border security, and search and rescue. An initial effort a year ago passed the House but died with the 110th session of Congress.
SEATTLE Even though its first flight still isn’t slated until the second quarter of this year, the U.S. Navy’s P-8A Poseidon is already being redesigned. Poseidon’s Increment One is the basic aircraft. However, the Navy has designed a software baseline that can be upgraded every 2-3 years. To support these serial upgrades, the aircraft has 50 percent extra electrical, cooling and computing power. There also is room for 12 tons of growth.
ROCKET SET: The top 100 student rocketry teams in the country will compete in the final round of the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) May 16. The seventh annual TARC will take place at Great Meadow in The Plains, Virginia. The final competition gives middle and high school students a chance to earn part of a total package of $60,000 in scholarships and other prizes. A total of 653 teams from 45 states and the District of Columbia took part in the competition’s qualifying rounds.
NAME GAME: NASA will announce the new name for the Node 3 module aboard the International Space Station on April 14. The agency will make the announcement with the help of ISS astronaut Suni Williams on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” which will air at 11:30 p.m. EDT. Fans of host Stephen Colbert, at his urging, flooded NASA’s naming contest website with write-in requests that the module be named after him rather than the NASA-suggested names Serenity, Legacy, Earthrise or Venture. “I certainly hope NASA does the right thing,” Colbert says.
MINSK GROWLER: Belarus could become the first export customer for the Russian Almaz Antey S-400 (SA-21 Growler) surface-to-air missile system, according to Russian news agency RIA Novosti. It cites a senior air force official as suggesting the S-400 will be supplied as part of a broader agreement to create an integrated air defense network covering the two countries.
ZUMWALT COMMENT: Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who chairs the House Armed Services seapower and expeditionary forces subcommittee and has been openly critical of the U.S. Navy’s handling of its shipbuilding programs, expressed his support April 7 for the service’s decision to end DDG-1000 production in favor of restarting the DDG-51 line. “The Navy will realize additional cost savings through economies of scale in constructing larger numbers of DDG-51s in series production rather than three or less DDG-1000s,” Taylor said in a statement.
The U.S. Air Force together with Northrop Grumman will mark the 50th anniversary of the first test flight of the developmental YT-38 on April 10. The milestone comes as the Air Force waits for companies to respond later this month to a request for information (RFI) for a future Advanced Pilot Training (APT) “family of systems” that will replace it.
THAAD DAY: Lockheed Martin says it will roll out the first Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) weapon system launcher and fire control system April 13 at the company’s THAAD launcher integration complex in Camden, Ark. The defense contractor said “several governmental and civic dignitaries” were invited to participate, although it did not name who would appear.
