FT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Lockheed Martin announced Feb. 28 the completion of three successful tests of the Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR) semi-active laser guidance kit for 2.75-inch rockets. Two guided flight-tests were conducted at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Jan. 23 and 24, and a multipurpose sled test was run in December 2007. According to Lockheed officials, the tests demonstrated the system’s precision-strike accuracy, off-axis capability and delayed fuzing mode.
In a preview of the events to immediately follow the KC-X tanker selection, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley says that his first question to the winning contractor will be, “When can I get my hands on the first airplane?” This is because the service plans to begin integrating it “nearly immediately,” he said. The first aircraft will immediately be sent to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., for checkout, Moseley said during a breakfast with reporters in Washington Feb. 28.
Controllers fear the Ulysses solar probe will soon reach the end of its useful service life, more than 17 years after its launch on the space shuttle Discovery in October 1990. Designed to give scientists their first good look at the sun’s poles, Ulysses is succumbing to the cold of its 6.2-year heliocentric orbit inclined 80 degrees from the ecliptic plane.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told Senate lawmakers Feb. 27 that he will “personally” spend time taking another look at the possibility of remanifesting the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment on a future space shuttle flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
RAPTOR RATIONALE: Criticism of the F-22’s applicability to the war against terrorism was batted aside by U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley. “We’ve got the F-22 in the AEF [Air Expeditionary Force] rotation,” he says. “We’ve flown the airplane against Russian bomber pentrations. We deployed it in Alaska and Japan. And we have scheduled, again, deployments in the Middle East and the Gulf Air Warfare Center [at Al-Dhafra, UAE]. So the notion that the F-22 is not participating overall is just not right.
BOMBER PREVIEW: The technologies already exist for the new bomber the U.S. Air Force has planned as the B-2 follow-on, the service’s chief says. “We’re integrating existing systems, not inventing new technologies,” says Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley. “We’ve told industry to use existing engines, sensors, offensive and defensive systems, weapons and weapons bays and then integrate them into something that gives us [greater] range, payload and persistence.
Damage to some ducting in the Stennis Space Center’s A1 test stand will delay the first full-duration hot-fire test of the powerpack for NASA’s new J-2X rocket engine until at least March 9 while repairs are completed.
Sea Launch confirms that it will inaugurate its new Land Launch derivative this spring, giving it an entrée in the fast-growing small geostationary telecom satellite market. Speaking Feb. 26 at the Satellite 2008 conference in Washington, Sea Launch President/General Manager Rob Peckham said he is “99.99 percent sure” that the Land Launch version will lift off from its Baikonur, Kazakhstan, launch pad this spring – probably in early April. He acknowledged that the Amos 3 payload had not yet arrived at Baikonur, but is expected shortly.
The U.S. Navy’s “deficit” in its P-3 maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft community has risen to a “significant” level after at least 39 P-3s, roughly a fourth of the service’s family, have been grounded, according to Navy officials.
Lockheed Martin workers at eight facilities in the U.S. will vote March 2 on a new contract that was tentatively agreed to Feb. 28 by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). The contract is scheduled to expire March 2. The new three-year agreement offers the best pay package in the history of negotiations with the company for the IAM, improves their pension benefits, and includes a $2,000 signing bonus, the union said.
The chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the U.S. Marine Corps says he’s concerned that the Bush administration isn’t spending enough on the Marines’ research and development (R&D) projects. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), chairman of the seapower and expeditionary forces subcommittee, noted in his opening remarks at a Feb. 27 hearing on the Marines’ fiscal 2009 budget request that the service is seeking only $2.6 billion in procurement and R&D.
COTS SLIP: NASA says that SpaceX is projecting a slip of six to nine months in the first flight of its Falcon 9 rocket under the agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The mission, to demonstrate cargo transfer to the space station, is now planned for March 2010. The delay is due to technical issues with the new Merlin 1C engine that were “recently resolved,” as well as launch site preparations at Cape Canaveral, where the mission was shifted from its original site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
DWELL TIME: Top U.S. Army officials say that if the number of Army brigades deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan were cut to 15, the service could trim soldiers’ tours by three months to one year to boost their time at home. But they acknowledge that if that target is not achieved – which could happen if two more Army brigades were to step in for Marine Corps units possibly transferred to Afghanistan – then they do not know when the Army could return to its desired dwell time.
PARIS – Europe is mulling greater use of commercially provided logistics support for European Union crisis management operations, in large part to ease a chronic capacity shortage that members suffer.
A team of defense officials looking into how the U.S. armed services will better coordinate theater-level operational command and control of unmanned aircraft is expected to issue a report within a month, according to the Army’s chief of staff.
CROSSROADS: The U.S. nuclear weapons complex is at a “crossroads,” Defense and Energy department officials told the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Feb. 27. Officials said they are shifting their emphasis toward nuclear counterterrorism and nonproliferation efforts, especially securing and boosting the reliability of the U.S. stockpile, as the country continues to respond to post-9/11 concerns. The leaders of U.S.
U.S. Army and Marine Corps officials have made it clear in statements and budget requests that buying the right equipment to transport troops safely in combat zones remains a major priority, and the commitment is being borne out by the Pentagon’s growing investment in ground vehicles.
ARMY BUDGET: A U.S. Army representative told Aerospace DAILY Feb. 27 that the service’s officially requested amount for fiscal 2009 remains $140.7 billion – the White House-approved regular-budget request, which does not include warfighting-supplemental requests. According to Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Army officials have told his committee and its staff that they need $260 billion-$270 billion per year to meet all of the Army’s assessed needs (DAILY, Feb. 27). Levin announced as much in a public hearing Feb.
NEW DEHLI –The planned April launch of India’s lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-I has been shifted to June-July, to allow more time for subsystem testing. The 525-kilogram (1,160-pound) lunar orbiter will carry 11 instruments, including two from the U.S. and one each from Britain, Sweden, Germany and Bulgaria. The mission is aimed at understanding the chemistry and mineralogy of the lunar surface.
The Coast Guard is “too small,” the agency’s chief of staff says, but no study has been done to determine how much it needs to grow to perform all the security tasks added to its mission since the 9/11 terror attacks. “I think we all believe we are not big enough,” Vice Adm. Robert Papp told the House Transportation Committee Feb. 26. But he conceded Coast Guard headquarters has concentrated its planning resources on each fiscal year’s budget request rather than determining the optimum size of the agency.
NEW DELHI – India has extended the technical and commercial bid deadline for the Multirole Medium Range Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) from March 3 by two months. As a result, bidders will get more time to prepare their offset proposals, which were to have been submitted in June. While the decision to extend the bid was announced to coincide with the visit of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to India, a military source told Aerospace DAILY the extension request came from the Russians (MiG-35) and French (Eurofighter Typhoon).
