CLIMATE STUDY: Five U.S. companies will assess whether the commercial satellite industry can fulfill some of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) future Earth observation needs through mechanisms such as data buys or sensor hosting, under eight study contracts totaling $200,000 awarded by the agency last week. The companies are Iridium LLC of Bethesda, Md., Space Services Inc. of Houston, Texas, Orbcomm Inc. of Dulles, Va., Microsat Systems Inc. of Littleton, Colo., and Geo Optics of Pasadena, Calif.
MONEY, PLEASE: Interested parties are waiting to see if the usual rhetoric about the need to better spend available defense funding heard at the NATO Defense Minsters meeting in London last week will have any effect on policy. British Defense Minister Des Browne continues to argue that the alliance must try harder to address capability gaps exposed by ongoing operations. “There remains a mismatch between our aspirations and what we actually deliver,” Browne says. “The NATO Response Force is not getting the forces or capabilities that it needs.
PARIS – A decision is imminent in a $2 billion lawsuit filed by ICO Global Communications against Boeing related to the collapse of the satellite telephone bubble in the late 1990s.
The Defense Department is inviting the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) to participate in the Red Flag aerial combat training exercise next year at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) remains concerned that a Defense Department effort to move North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) from Cheyenne Mountain to Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., could hinder U.S. homeland defense. Vulnerabilities
The U.S. government plans to buy up to two commercial-class satellites under a new Broad Area Space-based Imagery Collector (BASIC) program to collect imagery for the Pentagon and intelligence community. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) will develop a draft request for proposals by the end of October. The program will be managed by an NRO-led joint program office, according to an acquisition decision memo signed Sept. 12 by Pentagon acquisition chief John Young.
Aurora Flight Sciences is in competition with Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for work under the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s wide-ranging, $139 million Air Vehicle Integration and Technology Research (AVIATR) program. The companies have been selected to compete for four separate task orders to be awarded by AFRL’s Air Vehicles Directorate under AVIATR. These cover automated aerial refueling, aeroservoelastic design, condition-based maintenance and high-energy lasers.
TECH ED: The U.S. Army is partnering with Project Lead the Way Inc., a nonprofit devoted to developing and promoting engineering curricula in middle and high schools. The partnership will incorporate Army technology, gaming and simulation resources to enhance student interest and achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The platform for the new curriculum is a free online game called America’s Army, which provides civilians with a virtual role in the service.
LITTORAL DELIVERY: The U.S. Navy accepted its first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) from the Lockheed Martin-led industry team in Marinette, Wis., on Sept. 18. “Despite our challenges, the Navy and industry have continued to press on to build and deliver the first ship of a unique class,” said Capt. James Murdoch, LCS program manager. LCS 2 is being built by a General Dynamics-led team in Mobile, Ala., where it is slated to be christened next month. The LCS hull program ground almost to a halt in recent years as costs per ship skyrocketed.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) is set to reopen Sept. 22 after a 10-day shutdown in the wake of Hurricane Ike, with managers predicting there will be no effect on the planned Oct. 10 launch of the next space shuttle mission because of the storm.
U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJCOM) announced Sept. 17 it would recompete its Joint Concept Development and Experimentation Directorate contract, set to expire in summer 2009, opening the door for more companies to compete for smaller pieces of the contract.
BOEING HONORED: NASA has recognized Boeing as the Kennedy Space Center’s 2008 Large Business Contractor of the Year for providing quality service and support on the Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services (CAPPS) program. Boeing is the prime contractor for the CAPPS contract, providing payload processing services for the International Space Station, space shuttle and expendable launch vehicles.
Orbital Sciences Corp. has completed full-scale “pathfinder” ground operations of the Minotaur IV at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., paving the way for the rocket’s first flight carrying a Space Based Space Surveillance satellite in early 2009. The exercise included the assembly of a full-scale Minotaur IV with inert rocket motors to validate interfaces with the booster, ground support equipment and facility structures, according to Orbital. Three Minotaur IV missions are planned from Vandenberg next year.
The Pentagon needs to rethink the way it fights if it wants to successfully battle against major threats in the Americas, a former Marine infantry instructor contends in his new book. Citing the combination of drug smuggling and communist expansion in Latin America as a major threat to the United States, H. John Poole details how ill-equipped the Pentagon and U.S. are for such a showdown with their continuing focus and fascination on technology and weaponry.
Space insurers say that despite a Proton launch failure and several partial in-orbit failures – including the near total loss of Rascom QAF-1 – the outlook for the year remains positive. Clive Smith, executive vice president of ISB, told a Eurconsult gathering in Paris last week that loss claims to date totaled barely $300 million, against premiums of $550 million, and that “pricing pressure remains downwards.” The downward trend has continued pretty much unabated since the middle of the decade.
LIBERTY’S GUARDRAIL: The U.S. Air Force will establish a temporary mission qualification training detachment for the RC-12 Guardrail aircraft at Key Field in Meridian, Miss. The move – called Project Liberty, in cooperation with the Mississippi Air National Guard – is supposed to help provide more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability for Iraq and Afghanistan operations, a perceived sore point with Pentagon leadership earlier this year.
TALK THERAPY: U.S. Air Force Acting Secretary Michael Donley and Gen. Norton Schwartz, chief of staff, will host a so-called Nuclear Summit on Sept. 18 to discuss the embattled service’s perceived problems with its nuclear weapons mission. Discussions will focus on structure, process and cultural issues. Also up for discussion will be the Defense Department’s Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management report, unveiled Sept.
ROLL OUT: The U.S. Navy will roll out the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) mission module on Sept. 19 at Naval Base Point Loma, Calif. The ASW package, a suite of ASW platforms and systems, is the third and final interchangeable suite designed for the LCS. The package comprises vehicles and sensors that conduct multisensor ASW detection, classification, localization, tracking and engagement of submarines in the littorals.
Cobham is preparing to demonstrate what it believes will be the first in-flight docking of two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as it continues development of its autonomous aerial refueling system. Two specially designed UAVs – one a tanker, one a receiver – are being readied for flight-tests in restricted airspace at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., within the next month, Cobham says.
Kaman has begun marketing the Super Seasprite naval helicopters being returned by Australia following termination of the SH-2G(A) program in March. The U.S.-based test aircraft will be displayed at a Black Sea defense trade show in Bucharest, Romania, at the end of September, with Kaman eyeing new Eastern European NATO members as potential customers.
Images from high-resolution military spacecraft, combined with powerful change detection software at ground processing facilities, is enabling the space-based identification and tracking of specific Taliban and al Qaeda individuals in the isolated villages and rugged terrain of Afghanistan. This imagery is being passed to U.S. Army Special Forces and Navy Seal teams looking for individuals, even down to specific bomb-makers hiding out in mud huts in the region.
FAB PROTOTYPE: Boeing announced Sept. 16 it has delivered its next-generation Family of Advanced Beyond line-of-sight Terminals (FAB-T) prototype to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass. Lincoln Laboratory will use the prototype to continue developing the DVB-S2 based waveform for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance readout over Ka-band military satellite communications.
Russia’s Progress M-65/P30 resupply spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Sept. 17, five days later than planned because of Hurricane Ike.
