The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) apparently is having difficulties using performance-based contracting (PBC), ensuring competition and transparency in its overall contracting, and handling the agency’s pending Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) move from Northern Virginia to Ft. Meade, Md., in 2010.
Russia has claimed humanitarian motives in its use of the International Space Station (ISS) to collect overhead imagery of South Ossetia shortly after it invaded the breakaway Georgian province. On Aug. 9 Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko used a digital camera equipped with an 800mm telephoto lens and a video camera to photograph “after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus,” according to the ISS status report for that day published by NASA on its website.
Combat that’s been talked about for the last century – unmanned systems destroying other unmanned systems – is now a reality following the destruction by an MQ-9 Reaper of a vehicle carrying a remotely controlled explosive device in southeast Iraq. A week ago, the Reaper – the larger, higher-flying, faster and better-armed version of the MQ-1 Predator – dropped a 500-pound laser-guided GBU-12 on the vehicle.
QUICK, SLOW: Second guessing continues as to just when the U.K. Defense Ministry will complete what it originally billed as a quick review of its procurement commitments prior to launching into Planning Round 09. The output is now anticipated in the “autumn.” The Labour Government’s continuing poor performance in the polls – it lags far behind the Conservative opposition – also is calling into question the long-term validity of the review effort.
The competitors for the U.S. Air Force’s $15 billion combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter replacement program can get even higher marks for their proposals if they give the service more than what it’s asking for – but they do so at their own risk.
INTELSAT ORDER: Intelsat has picked Orbital Sciences Corp. to build the Intelsat-18 (IS-18) communications satellite. To be based on Orbital’s STAR-2 platform, IS-18 will carry 24 C-band transponders to cover the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and 12 Ku-band transponders to provide services to the United States, French Polynesia, Australia, New Caledonia and other Pacific Islands. IS-18 will replace Intelsat’s IS-701 spacecraft.
The past is the future for Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., where remotely piloted aircraft operations began in 1947, and which is now on the cusp of becoming home for the next Unmanned Aircraft System Formal Training Unit (FTU).
The Forward-Based X-Band Radar-Transportable (FBX-T) radar, which Washington is proposing to position inside the Middle Eastern ally, will be operated entirely by U.S. military personnel to be stationed in a segregated location, according to sources in Israel. The U.S. personnel’s location would be off-limits to Israeli access, similar to proposed radar and missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and other U.S. military bases worldwide. The radar station will be established in a remote area in the southern Negev desert.
CRYPTO KEEPER: General Dynamics will design, develop and test a new combat key generator for the U.S. Air Force Cryptologic Systems Group (CPSG). The advanced information assurance (IA) technologies will enable the next-generation Combat Key Generator (CKG) for tactical U.S. military radio users who manage and control the exchange of classified keying information. The CKG will be interoperable with existing and next-generation IA products and equipment used in military vehicles, aircraft, ships and fixed-site applications.
A significant plans-and-funding mismatch between the base defense budget and the current defense plan will force the U.S. Defense Department to make some hard choices, a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) suggests.
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) remained closed for a second day Thursday morning as Tropical Storm Fay dumped as much as 30 inches of rain on the area. The U.S. space agency reported no early reports of injuries to personnel or damage to flight hardware at the Florida launch facility. The center will re-open no earlier than 8 a.m. EDT Friday, NASA said. Mission-essential personnel who had been instructed to report for duty at 10 a.m. Thursday were advised instead to check on the center’s status by telephone or emergency-operations website after noon.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has formally dismissed a protest brought by Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover over NASA’s selection of an Oceaneering International team to build the next U.S. spacesuit, following NASA’s termination of the contract growing out of the procurement.
Lockheed Martin says the first flight for its Flexible Target Family (FTF), a set of at least eight new targets designed for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), is on track for 2009, having slipped from its original goal of this fall. Lockheed Martin confirmed the slip with Aerospace DAILY but directed all further questions to MDA.
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ROMANIAN RADAR: The site acceptance for the third of five Romanian Air Force AN/FPS-117 long-range surveillance radars is planned for late August. Lockheed Martin announced Aug. 21 it completed upgrading the signal and data processing capability on the first two of the L-band surveillance radars. The work included upgraded platform electronics cabinets, new displays and remote maintenance centers. Formal site acceptance tests, including flight tests, were conducted on June 26 and July 23 in Romania.
Tactical dominance may no longer be relevant as automated systems and weapons threaten U.S. training superiority, according to Barry Watts, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
The U.S. Army is considering accelerating the production decision for its Sky Warrior system, noting that experience flying variants of the Predator-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) abroad should provide the Pentagon’s test and acquisition community enough information to proceed with buying it early, according to program officials.
LONDON – Britain will receive the first of three life-extended C-130K Hercules transport aircraft in the third quarter of 2009, with the aircraft to enter service at the beginning of 2010. The U.K. Defense Ministry has selected L-3 Communications subsidiary Spar for its Hercules outer-wing replacement project. The original intent had been to decide on a supplier in the third quarter of 2007, following the invitation to tender issued in May 2007.
International Launch Services is preparing to launch Canada’s NIMIQ 4 commercial communications satellite, now that it has returned to flight with the Aug. 19 liftoff of Inmarsat-4 F3. The NIMIQ 4 spacecraft, built for Telesat by EADS Astrium, is set for launch in September, marking the Canadian firm’s fifth use of the Proton vehicle. The Breeze M upper stage that will be used in that launch reached the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Aug. 17, and the Khrunichev team that will mate the stage with its Proton M booster is scheduled to begin work “soon,” ILS said.
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STOP AND STARE: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded AeroVironment (AV) $4.6 million to fund the development of a small Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) with the ability to “hover/perch and stare.” The Stealthy Persistent, Perch and Stare (SP2S) UAS is based on AV’s Wasp UAS, a one-pound, 29-inch wingspan, battery-powered air vehicle being procured and deployed by both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marine Corps.
BRITE STAR: Northrop Grumman has completed the first test flight of its MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV) equipped with the BRITE Star II electro-optical/infrared payload using a Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL). The flight took place Aug. 9 at Webster Field, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. For shipboard use, the airborne TCDL will communicate with the ship’s TCDL terminal. A Fire Scout payload interface unit allows the TCDL and payload interface to remain independent of flight-critical functions.
The Pentagon is considering extending the turnaround time for proposals from the teams vying for $35 billion in aerial refueling tanker work to 60 days, according to program sources. The Defense Dept. also is conducting its third round of meetings with teams led by Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS North America on the KC-135 replacement program today at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Ohio, the site of the Air Force’s KC-X program office.
