China’s January 2007 anti-satellite weapon test is being used as a recruiting message by the U.S. Air Force to lure space-savvy young people to join up. The recruiting campaign, airing on major U.S. television networks, shows a satellite orbiting northward along what looks like the east coast of China. “What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS and even your bank transactions could be taken out with a single missile,” the announcer says, just as a rocket fired from the ground ascends rapidly and blows up the satellite.
COLLISION COURSE: Both the House and Senate defied a Bush administration veto threat May 15, setting up a battle over the supplemental war funding legislation. The House rejected one of three amendments that would have approved $163 billion to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the summer of 2009. Most Republicans voted “present,” to show their opposition without voting on record against a war funding bill. That left war funding up to the Senate, where a $169 billion supplemental war spending bill was being marked up by the Appropriations Committee.
Federal prosecutors are saying the damage done to two Boeing Chinook helicopters appears to be “deliberate” and U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan has launched a criminal investigation into what exactly happened at the company assembly plant in Ridley Township, Pa., just outside Philadelphia. Flanked by Kenneth Maupin, the lead investigative agent for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service of the Department of Defense, Meehan announced the criminal probe at a press conference in front of the plant May 15.
The Constellation Program can stay on schedule even if its spending is held to fiscal 2006 levels for another six months, according to the NASA manager in charge of the program. Jeff Hanley told reporters May 15 that his accountants have evaluated the program’s ability to handle a six-month continuing resolution into fiscal 2009 that would keep NASA spending at fiscal 2008 levels. In effect that would mean spending at fiscal 2006 levels, since the agency has been under a continuing resolution for two fiscal years.
Careful analysis of surface imagery collected at Jupiter’s moon Europa by the Voyager, Galileo and New Horizons probes suggest that its rotational axis has wandered by as much as 80 degrees, offering researchers new evidence that a liquid-water ocean lies beneath the frozen surface.
A broad study of more than 29,000 data series from about 80 long-term climate change studies has found direct links between a wide range of changes in Earth’s natural environment and rising temperatures caused by human activity. Led by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science, the study linked human-caused warming to changes in glaciers, permafrost, vegetation cycles and wildlife migration patterns.
JOINT STARS: The U.S. Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. two undefinitized contracts, worth $300 million collectively, to complete nonrecurring engineering and flight-test/certification and begin production of new engines for the service’s E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) fleet. Work will begin immediately with the test bed aircraft, based in Melbourne, Fla., the first E-8 to convert to the Pratt & Whitney JT8D engine.
NO FRANCOPHILES: Two British conservative members of the European Parliament on May 13 railed against alleged French motivations in offering to rejoin NATO’s integrated military command. In a Heritage Foundation panel in Washington, the members also criticized expected French efforts later this year to underpin the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in the European Union.
If NASA decides by this summer to proceed with the development of crew transfer capability under the agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, SpaceX founder Elon Musk says his company could be ready to conduct crew flights to the space station by early 2011.
FLORIDA OPS: Boeing on May 14 named Kevin Hoshstrasser site director for the company’s Florida operations at Kennedy Space Center. Hoshstrasser will manage the site, which comprises the Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services and Space Shuttle Operations programs, supported by about 953 Boeing personnel. He also will continue his role as site director of Florida Space Shuttle Operations.
Democrats controlling the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) rebuffed Republican efforts May 14 to restore major cuts to the fiscal 2009 White House budget requests for European-based missile defense, the Multiple Kill Vehicle and a study for the controversial Space-based Testbed. Voting broke down largely by political party affiliation, but the three Republican amendment proposals to the committee’s fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill each fell about 10 votes short of opponents, led by strategic forces subcommittee Chair Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.).
PROFITABLE PROTESTING: Protesting their way onto large multi-award contracts seems to be working for federal information technology businesses, consultancy Input says. In early May, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced that it had made 14 awards for their ENCORE II Information Technology Solutions deal for large businesses. “Four of the awardees were companies that protested the original awards back in 2007, continuing the trend we have observed lately of companies that protest subsequently receiving awards on those contracts,” says Input’s John Slye.
Improper obligations of funds shortchanged Navy maintenance and repair needs, a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report has found. “The Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and South Central Regional Maintenance Centers inappropriately obligated funds for contingent liabilities on ship maintenance and repair contracts. As a result of the inappropriate obligations, at least $103 million of U.S. Fleet Forces Command Operation and Maintenance funds were not available for other ships,” said the IG report, released late last month.
The Philippines will renew its force of Alenia Aermacchi SF-260 armed trainers with 18 new-build SF-260F/PAF aircraft worth $13.8 million. Aerotech Industries Philippines will assemble the 194-kilowatt (260 horsepower) piston-engine aircraft and deliver the first of them 12 months after contract signature. All 18 aircraft are to be delivered within 18 months from the first aircraft handover. Airstrikes
Boeing plans to cautiously restart the CH-47 Chinook helicopter production line May 15, after shutting it down May 13 following the discovery of what the company is calling irregularities in two aircraft.
BETTER BUSINESS: Business-process IT blueprints within the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army departments have yet to exceed their initial stages, let alone advance to a level that can be considered fully mature, congressional auditors say. As a whole, it means the Defense Department “is not as well positioned as it should be to realize the significant benefits that a well-managed federation of architectures can afford its business systems modernization efforts,” according to a May 12 report by the Government Accountability Office.
WIRELESS SHIPS: Mikros Systems and subcontractor Intelli-Check – Mobilisa will work to design a wireless shipboard network that avoids interfering with critical radar and communications systems for U.S. Navy and Marine Corps combat ships. Under two Navy contracts, the companies will pursue pilot programs involving their AIRchitect-EMC design for LHD amphibious ships and Ford-class aircraft carriers. The product was developed for the Navy under a Small Business Innovative Research Phase II development contract to study radar wireless spectral efficiency.
In a move to better integrate computer networks to enhance national security, DOD chief information officers and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are creating strategic guidelines for information sharing.
International Launch Services (ILS) says an independent review of the cause of a Proton failure in early April concurs with the findings of a report issued by the Russian State Commission earlier this month. The State Commission blamed the mishap on a ruptured exhaust gas duct that caused the breeze M upper stage engine turbopump to shut down prematurely, leaving its payload stranded in useless orbit (Aerospace Daily, April 23). The Failure Review Oversight Board (FROB) said May 14 that it agreed.
An embattled effort to overhaul the U.S. nuclear weaponry complex will take years and the “concerted” attention of several consecutive directors of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), according to its current chief. And that assumes a skeptical Congress and the public sustain the necessary funding.
SASSA STIRRING: The U.S. Air Force’s Self-Awareness Space Situational Awareness (SASSA) program is expected to make its award late this year, according to one major bidder for the $30 million technology demonstration effort. Lockheed Martin said May 13 that it submitted its bid at the start of the month to the Space Superiority Systems Wing of the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.
ROXEL REINFORCED: Bayern-Chemie has completed the spinoff of Protac, an affiliate specialized in complex metal structures, thermal insulation, laser welding and civil pyrotechnics, to Roxel, a rocket motor and solid propellant venture owned by MBDA and SNPE. The sale will permit Bayern-Chemie, acquired by MBDA last year, to focus on its core rocket motor business, and reinforce Roxel’s product range. Protac employs 90 people at a plant in La Ferte Saint-Aubin, France, 100 miles south of Paris, and generates annual sales of 28 million euros ($45 million).
As it opens negotiations with machinists on a three-year contract, Boeing is proposing that those at its Wichita Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) unit in Kansas be paid on a different scale than the airplane workers in Portland, Ore., and Washington’s Puget Sound area surrounding Seattle, where wages are said to be about 30 percent higher. ‘Divide and conquer’
General Dynamics C4 Systems will produce engineering design models of the so-called Advanced Cryptographic Module (ACM) for the U.S. Army’s Programmable Objective Encryption Technologies (POET) program following a recent successful critical design review. Contract option
Although commercial aviation contracts represent 51 percent of Vought Aircraft Industries’ revenues, it relied on military contracts to overcome first quarter revenue shortfalls from the 787 program. High delivery rates for the U.S. Army’s H-60 Black Hawk helicopter program and a boost in the manufacture of wings for the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk are the big factors in Vought’s military growth during the quarter. C-17
