ARMY Chugach Government Services Inc., Anchorage, Alaska, was awarded on April 11, 2008, a $14,085,673 firm-fixed price contract for construction of the F-22 jet inspection and maintenance facility. The work will be performed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, and is expected to be completed on Sept. 28, 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Web bids were solicited on Nov. 17, 2007, and three bids were received. U.S. Army Engineer District, Alaska, is the contracting activity (W911KB-08-C-0009).
Lockheed Martin is teaming up with Rice University in Houston on a new “center of excellence” that will fund joint research in nanotechnology. Known as the Lockheed Martin Advanced Nanotechnology Center of Excellence at Rice University (LANCER), the center will kick off its initial slate of projects in June of this year. Reviewing proposals
PARIS – The European Space Agency (ESA) has kicked off a new campaign to expand and renew the European Astronaut Corps. At a briefing for the press and prospective candidates April 18, EAC head Michel Tognini said the campaign, to kick off May 19, will seek to add four new astronauts and four backups to the corps, which was created in 1998.
The Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) – which the Defense Department uses as its road map for spending and planning – is not worth the pixels it uses on the computer screen, according to Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee. “That’s a complete waste of time,” Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said in an interview.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) does not know which services or agencies might be interested in the “infinite endurance” capability of its Vulture unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), but believes a UAV able to stay aloft for up to five years is a “compelling concept.” Operational concepts for the solar-powered, stratospheric UAV will be studied under 12-month Phase 1 contracts awarded to three teams led by Aurora Flight Sciences ($6.35 million), Boeing ($3.84 million) and Lockheed Martin ($4.28 million).
NO RESTRAINT: The U.S. Justice Department has racked up seven cases under an ongoing set of investigations into the military vehicle restraints industry. On April, 17, the department said Ransom Soper III, a former employee of Peck & Hale LLC, a Long Island, N.Y., defense contractor, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to rig bids on military contracts for U.S. Navy straps. The straps are tiedown equipment used to secure munitions and other supplies for transportation on ships and airplanes.
DOUR DOLLAR: The Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe’s Council has expressed “growing deep concern” over weakness in the U.S. dollar “threatening thousands” of European industry jobs. “Council members believe that the continuing weakness of the dollar will inevitably lead to a massive relocation of aerospace production capabilities, as well as technology centers to U.S.-dollar-priced locations, where labor costs are approximately 30 to 40 percent lower than in the Euro zone,” said an April 21 statement.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is establishing a Pentagon task force to find new and innovative ways to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) to combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates announced the new team during a speech at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., on April 21. During the speech, Gates said getting the military branches to field more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) quickly to support requirements for U.S. Central Command has been “like pulling teeth.”
MRAP ARMOR: Navistar Defense won a $261 million contract from the U.S. Marine Corps April 17 to upgrade the armor on the MaxxPro variant of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Under the new contract, armor protection on production MaxxPro MRAP vehicles will be increased to that of the MaxxPro Plus protection level. To date, the military has ordered 5,214 MaxxPro MRAP vehicles, according to the company.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been awarded contracts by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to study an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could stay aloft for up to five years. They join Aurora Flight Sciences, which announced on April 14 it had received a contract under Phase 1 of DARPA’s Vulture program (Aerospace DAILY, April 15).
RADAR WARNING: Raytheon continues to gather international customers for its ALR-67(v)3 digital radar warning receiver, which allows user aircraft to detect and identify more sophisticated threats across a wider swath of the electromagnetic spectrum. The most recent contract is a $85.5-million U.S. Navy agreement to upgrade Canada’s CF-18s and Switzerland’s F/A-18s. Other users include Royal Australian Air Force’s F/A-18s.
TOKYO - New data acquired by Japan’s Selene lunar orbiter show a clear difference between gravity-anomaly maps of craters situated on the near and far sides of the moon. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released two gravity anomaly maps of Mare Serenitatis (near side) and the Apollo crater (far side). In contrast to Mare Serenitatis’s even gravity distribution, the Apollo crater has almost a donut-like concentric circle gravity distribution.
SAO PAULO, Brazil - The Brazilian air force has asked Embraer not to take sides in the renewed F-X fighter competition. The service wants to pick the winning aircraft without having to worry about industrial issues. The Brazilian aircraft maker still will play an important role in the project, though. The winning contractor will have to work with Embraer to delivery the chosen aircraft to the Brazilian military, says Embraer CEO Frederico Curado.
The U.S. Army in August will award the first phase of its Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) contract, providing a prominent role in the service’s air and missile defense capability to the winning industry team.
BAMS ANNOUNCEMENT: The U.S. Navy is expected to announce the winner in its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial vehicle competition this week, after delaying the announcement from April 18 to allow final approval of the paperwork at the Pentagon, according to industry sources. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin/General Atomics and Boeing all are vying for the contract to develop and build a long-endurance maritime surveillance aircraft.
DEVELOPING RESEARCH: The Defense Department awarded Northrop Grumman a five-year contract to support research and development for the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, with a contract value potential of $100 million over a 10-year period. The Theoretical Studies and Engineering Services (TSER) contract has an option for five additional years. Aside from R&D, the contract will support hardware manufacturing, design and analysis, field data analysis, program planning, management and reporting, administration, quality assurance and other technical support.
TSAT TARGETED: The U.S. Air Force’s troubled Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program is the Pentagon acquisition chief’s “next target” for implementing acquisition policy reforms. John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters April 18 that he was disappointed that he was unable to better address it so far. TSAT’s newfound attention would come after restructuring the Space-Based Space Surveillance program, Young noted.
PARIS – Working teams entrusted with elaborating on a plan to modernize the French armed forces have come up with an outline for streamlining support services and resolving the thorny question of on-condition maintenance. Government figures show that 60 percent of the defense personnel budget goes for support activities and only 40 percent for operations – the opposite of the situation in other allied nations, notably the U.K. The objective of the reform plan, to be announced on June 19, will be to reverse these percentages.
SECURITY OVERHAUL: The Defense Department and three other executive branch agencies are reviewing the process for granting security clearances to the employees of defense contractors. The offices of Management and Budget, Director of National Intelligence and Personnel Management are working with the Pentagon “to develop a new, more effective and timely personnel security and investigative system,” says Troy Sullivan, DOD’s acting deputy under secretary for counterintelligence and security.
FCS CONCERNS: Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee, thinks the U.S. Army needs to take a step back and do some hard thinking about its mammoth Future Combat Systems (FCS) modernization program, weighing its value against pressing readiness requirements. “With FCS, they’ve thrown themselves on that barbed wire and they’re stuck to it,” he notes. He is skeptical of large DOD modernization efforts, likening them to the blue screen technology used for visual effects in movies.
