CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has delayed the planned Cape Canaveral launch next week of an advanced geosynchronous orbit Orion eavesdropping spacecraft onboard a Boeing Delta IV Heavy booster. The delay to mid-January comes as the U.S. Air Force is troubleshooting problems with its Northrop/Grumman Defense Support Program (DSP) 23 spacecraft already positioned in a stationary orbit.
The Swiss government is all but ruling out the purchase of used aircraft under its F-5 replacement program. The issue has come up in discussions recently in Switzerland, prompting the military to say it reviewed the option but didn’t consider it a good one. The idea is that used F/A-18C/Ds could be bought to augment the existing fleet.
TOP FIVE: The U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin have received a Top 5 DOD Program Award for their collaborative effort to integrate the Link 16 tactical data link system into the Navy’s new MH-60R and MH-60S multimission helicopters. The award is given annually by DOD in conjunction with the National Defense Industrial Association, and recognizes up to five defense programs that have demonstrated excellence in systems engineering.
Only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international aspects of cybersecurity will succeed in making the United States more secure, according to a Dec. 8 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
TRUCK MODS: The U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) awarded Oshkosh Defense a $250 million contract modification to manufacture and deliver an additional 825 of the next-generation Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTT) as part of the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles (FHTV) contract.
Near-infrared spectroscopy of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a star 63 light years from Earth has found carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, demonstrating a technique that may be used with the James Webb Space Telescope and other large observatories operating at near-IR wavelengths to spot the signatures of life on other extrasolar planets.
The U.S. should not base an intercontinental ballistic missile interceptor system in Eastern Europe until it has been fully tested, a key House Armed Services Committee member said Dec. 9.
SAM SPREAD: U.S. military press releases and news coverage show that since October 2006 at least 121 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) have been recovered in Iraq, along with four additional launchers and various components, according to Matt Schroeder, manager of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). These reports suggest that insurgents still have ready access to surface-to-air missiles, including Man Portable Air Defense Systems, at least some of which are reportedly still operational.
The future Congress and Obama administration should agree to a two-year “strategic pause” in committing money to new and experimental weapons systems – including a manned, long-range bomber – a national security think tank suggested in a new report Dec. 9. The Center for National Policy also suggested rebuilding and increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, building more submarines and increasing the Navy’s fleet to 325 vessels, and rescoping the Air Force with more reliance on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
PROXY FUNDING: Proxy Aviation Systems will use $4.4 million in recently received federal funding for Phase 2 of its cooperative flight demonstrations, slated for the summer and fall of 2009. Phase 1 was contracted by the U.S. Air Force and took place at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., in July 2007. The Germantown, Md., company claims its Universal Distributed Management System software allows one ground station to manage up to 12 unmanned aircraft at the same time.
The U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin last month completed pyroshock testing of the first integrated Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellite, designed to provide missile warning data.
SEED MONEY: The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced the 12 winners of the 2008 Chief of Naval Research (CNR) Challenge last week Each recipient will receive a $100,000 grant for continued research and development of specific technological ideas projected to improve U.S. Navy and Marine Corps capabilities. ONR originally planned to award 10 grants, but based on the high caliber of the submissions, the CNR Challenge review board added two more names to its list, the Navy said.
Software for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s mission system has entered flight-testing on Lockheed Martin’s CATBird avionics test bed, a highly modified Boeing 737-300. The CATBird has begun testing the “flight candidate release” (FCR) software load that will be on the first mission-system test F-35, aircraft BF-4, when it flies in mid-2009. “These are the first flights of the full-up integrated software suite, working with the F-35 cockpit and displays in flight,” says Santi Bulnes, mission-system integrated product team lead.
The U.S. Army is planning to field a variety of unmanned aircraft soon, using about $300 million dedicated last summer to sending more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collectors to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army is expecting to field three new and 12 refurbished MQ-5B Hunter unmanned aerial systems (UAS) with new Greendart signals intelligence collection systems, said Col. Gregory Gonzales, project manager for Army UAS systems. He declined to provide details of the Greendart’s capabilities, citing security concerns.
PRECIOUS CARGO: Lockheed Martin has awarded a $6.26 million contract to BAE Systems to manufacture 26 Increased Crew Protection (ICP) cabs for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) in a deal that also includes 26 cab up-armor appliqué kits. The cabs and appliqué kits are slated to replace unarmored cabs on U.S. Army and Marine HIMARS vehicles, and work is slated to be complete by March 2009.
PARIS – A twin-satellite Ariane 5 mission carrying Eutelsat’s W2M and Hot Bird 9 is poised for a Dec. 20 launch. The liftoff, initially set for Dec. 10, had to be pushed back because of logistics problems related to a strike near Arianespace’s Kourou, French Guiana launch center (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 9). W2M is the first telecom spacecraft to be built under a teaming arrangement between EADS Astrium and Antrix, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Integration of W2M into the Ariane 5 ECA adapter began on Dec. 8.
FIELD NOTES: The first Apache unit deployed with VUIT-2 (Video from Unmanned aircraft systems for Interoperability Teaming - Level II) is providing daily status updates on the demonstration system. As of Dec. 8, 23 of the 24 systems deployed were fully mission capable, according to Lt. Col. Robert Johnston, Apache Program Manager. The only hiccups so far have been from hardware integration issues, for which the Army has asked for funds to retrofit the kits so “they’re easier to maintain and less likely to break,” Johnston said Dec. 9.
NEW DELHI – Dassault Aviation and India’s Tata Technologies have signed an agreement for Tata subsidiary INCAT to provide Dassault with engineering services in support of the Indian Air Force’s Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) program. The MMRCA program has 50 percent offset requirements. Dassault is one of the six bidders for the 126-aircraft program, thought to be valued at more than $10 billion. Flight trials are expected to start in May 2009.
The third time was the charm for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s attempts to deliver an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to North Dakota for border patrol duties. A General Atomics Predator B arrived at Grand Forks Air Force Base Dec. 6 after turbulence the previous day forced the drone to turn back to its base at Sierra Vista, Ariz. (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 8). Another attempt took place Dec. 4. “It had a very, very nice ride with absolutely no problems,” Juan Munoz Torres, a CBP spokesman, told Aerospace DAILY.
NAVIGATION SYSTEMS: The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a $15.5 million delivery order, the fifth under a five-year contract, to provide technical, logistics and material support for navigation systems installed on Navy ships and submarines. Northrop Grumman’s Sperry Marine business unit won the contract to supply material management, configuration management and program management services for the AN/WSN-7 inertial navigation systems, and the AN/BPS-15 and AN/BPS-16 submarine radar systems.
