Contractors working on NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares I launcher will get more money this spring — about $1.8 billion for Lockheed Martin’s work on Orion alone — to account for schedule and design changes since the human-rated spacecraft developments started in 2006. “We’ve matured the design substantially, so there will be new costs because we made it harder to build,” Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley says, characterizing the Orion contract modification only as “substantial.”
NEW DELHI — On the eve of India’s elections, intelligence sources have warned that around 20 trained Pakistan-based militants, including seven or eight pilots, have entered India to carry out attacks and hijackings similar to the 9/11 attacks.
JIEDDO CONFERENCE: The U.S. Defense Department’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) will host a Technology Outreach Conference in Huntington Beach, Calif., in early May. The conference — restricted to those with secret-level clearances — comes as JIEDDO has been working on improving its reputation with Capitol Hill and industry after years of enigmatic relations with both, as well as reconsideration of the group’s role and mission.
Taking Pentagon and industry concerns into consideration, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) passed a revised defense acquisition reform bill April 2 that drops an absolute ban on separate entities of the same contractor both advising the Defense Department on weapons systems and providing those systems.
PARIS — Europe is moving to streamline defense acquisition management, with negotiations soon to begin between the European Defense Agency (EDA) and the European defense procurement organization Occar on how to cooperate.
The majority of the Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have asked President Barack Obama to authorize military commanders to employ the U.S. missile defense system if they perceive the United States or its allies are put at risk by an expected North Korean rocket launch. The April 1 letter comes after weekend comments by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that indicated the United States at least would not seek a military solution to stop the launch, expected April 4-8.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo — The U.S. Air Force is expecting to finally launch its first Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF satellite in November, according to Craig Cooning, vice president of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. The program has experienced problems in the past. Most recently, the first GPS IIF satellite was found to have a problem with a piece of onboard equipment designed to integrate four signals. Cooning says a repair is in the works.
PERSISTENT EYE: The U.S. Army recently conducted a continuous, 30-hour demonstration of persistent surveillance of a point target using AeroVironment’s (AV) RQ-11B Raven small unmanned aerial system (UAS). The demonstration at Camp Roberts, Calif., followed an inquiry from Pentagon officials regarding the potential for AV’s Raven to perform low-cost, tactically relevant, persistent surveillance. The test used one standard production Raven baseline system, which consists of three aircraft and two ground control stations.
Reports that the Pentagon may be considering drastic cutbacks to elements of the Army’s $160 billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) program are alarming some key members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) says he wants to hear “what the arguments are [for cutting back] before I reach any conclusion.”
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CARTER CONFIRMATION: A key Senate panel issued a favorable report April 1 on Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama’s choice to be the Pentagon’s next acquisition chief. Carter’s nomination now goes to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote by the entire body. If approved, Carter, a Harvard professor of international relations and former Clinton administration official, will succeed John Young, the current under secretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Critics, including Sen.
MAKING WAVES: ITT Corp. announced April 1 the qualification and release of the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) 1.0C waveform. According to the company, this is the first qualified waveform to reach Software Communications Architecture 2.2.2 compliance. Throughout 2009, ITT will perform numerous integration and test activities to finalize the porting of the waveform onto other JTRS radio platforms. A study to cooperatively define future SRW enhancements with all stakeholders has also begun.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) expects to issue a request for information (RFI) “any day now” to industry for a wide array of structures, systems and control technology that could be used as the basis for a hypersonic, responsive space launch demonstrator. The RFI is for the follow-on phase to the Future responsive Access to Space Technologies (FAST) program, which focused on several ground experiments aimed at developing baseline technology for the future demonstrator.
The Iraqi Air Force has a three-phase, 11-year improvement plan, including plans to buy T-6 trainers and eventually a few dozen multirole Lockheed Martin F-16s by the middle of next decade, while the navy there is looking for offshore patrol boats, military officials near Washington said April 1. But the war-torn Middle East country is increasingly facing a budget squeeze of its own, they also said.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies will provide the instrument unit assembly (IUA) for the Ares I shuttle-replacement launcher under a $50 million, four-year contract from Boeing.
Pentagon acquisition chief John Young, whose replacement is going through the Senate confirmation process, is disputing the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s latest assessment of cost growth in DOD’s acquisition portfolio. GAO released its Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs report earlier this week (Aerospace DAILY, March 31). On March 31, Young fired off a memo accusing GAO of sensationalizing cost growth, which GAO auditors tallied at $296 billion on 96 programs.
A team consisting of Atlas V rocket prime United Launch Alliance, ILC Dover of Delaware and NASA has completed preliminary design of an inflatable sun shield for the Atlas intended to prevent supercooled fuel in the rocket’s upper stage from boiling off.
NASA is seeking information from potential industry partners interested in building a follow-on to the agency’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). Targeted for launch in 2014, ICESat-2 would continue the measurements taken by ICESat, which was orbited in 2003 to measure the Earth’s polar ice mass. Ball Aerospace built the original spacecraft.
Direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television broadcast service paced growth last year in the international space marketplace, which grew by $6 billion in revenues for a 2.5 percent overall increase over 2007, according to a report released this week at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Just before recently proposed legislation on acquisition reform is to be debated on Capitol Hill, the Acquisition Reform Working Group (ARWG) is questioning the methods by which that reform will be achieved. The ARWG, an umbrella organization of trade groups including the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), expressed its “concerns with respect to the broader impact of the changes” enumerated in “The Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009” (S. 454).
MINORITY REPORT: The Defense Department awarded 37 grants totaling $17.4 million to students studying scientific disciplines critical to national security and the DOD. The grants are part of the fiscal 2008 Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Institutions (HBCU/MI) program and will enhance education programs and research capabilities at 30 recipient institutions. A merit funding competition for HBCU/MI funding was conducted for the DOD Research Engineering directorate, the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
