The proverbial wagons are circling tighter and the trenches are getting deeper as supporters of opposing aerial refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force hone their arguments and start to unleash their post-award efforts. More is at stake than just one of the Pentagon’s biggest and most important contracts. What Congress, the Air Force, the Pentagon and defense companies do from this point on could set precedent on how the Defense Department or even other government agencies bid and award contracts later.
April 15-17, 2008 Broward County Convention Center Fort Lauderdale, FL Military and industry leaders assemble in a unique Working Group Seminar designed to develop a realistic plan of action to improve readiness, availability, cost, and cycle time for U.S. fighters, airlift/tanker, rotor wing and complex electronic aircraft.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned March 10 that the U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is facing serious shortfalls and raised questions about the program’s future viability.
Boeing is protesting the U.S. Air Force’s selection of a Northrop Grumman/EADS North America design for its $35 billion program to build new refueling tankers. Boeing’s team found “serious flaws” in the selection process, says Boeing President Jim McNerney. The protest automatically triggers a stop-work order, halting any further flow of money from the Air Force to Northrop Grumman for the tanker work. Starting earlier on March 10, Boeing began to publicly lay out its protest points.
The U.S. Navy’s embattled 313-ship, multidecade shipbuilding plan and force structure – criticized by many inside Washington from the beginning as unrealistic and not going far enough – is openly being declared insufficient by key House members just two years after its birth. “The current shipbuilding plan does not even get us there,” says Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). “I am very concerned with the shipbuilding program,” echoes HASC Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.).
TRAINER FORECAST: Consultancy Forecast International projects that manufacturers of military fixed-wing trainers will deliver 1,550 new aircraft from 2008 to 2017, reaching around $17.1 billion total. More than half (784) of these new trainers will be turboprop powered, with jet trainers accounting for nearly all of the rest (748). The market for piston-powered military trainers is “dying out” and will account for only 18 aircraft during the same period, FI says.
Europe will use an influx of funding from the European Commission (EC) to buy a new family of space-based sensors for integrated Earth observation. A 625 million euro ($960 million) EC funding package for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) system will permit the construction and launch of three Sentinel spacecraft and deployment of the related ground segment.
INTEL PHONE: The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has certified a General Dynamics C4 Systems wireless smartphone for voice communications classified up to top secret, as well as access to e-mail and Web sites classified up to the secret level, the company says. A company executive says it is the first time that authorized military and government personnel can wirelessly access both classified and unclassified voice and data communications on the same device.
Only weeks after a Feb. 14 Alternatives Analysis revealed the U.S. Coast Guard is facing significant infrastructure funding and scheduling shortfalls, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented its own findings on Deepwater program management and found the service wanting.
Boeing, in partnership with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), has successfully completed biological warfare detection system testing onboard a modified ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
A March 7 story on the U.S. Air Force’s KC-135 maintenance award to Boeing should have identified Alabama Aircraft Industries Inc. (AAII) as the recipient of the March 7 Air Force debriefing rather than Pemco.
APACHE SUPPORT: Saudi Arabian military and civil maintenance company Alsalam wants to become a regional support center for the Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Discussions are ongoing with Boeing, a main shareholder in Alsalam, and with several Apache operators according to company CEO Mohammed Fallatah. He would like to see Alsalam become a “center of excellence” for the Apache. Along with supporting Saudi Arabia’s own Apache fleet, he suggests Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are also candidates to take part.
UCAS SQUADRON: The U.S. Navy is calling for competitive prototyping in preparation for fielding its first squadron of Unmanned Combat Air Systems (UCAS) by 2025. NUCAS is expected to replace the Navy’s F/A-18s on aircraft carrier decks, and the system will provide greater range and time on station than the manned fleet. The Navy is conducting an analysis of alternatives to narrow down its choices for the F/A-18 replacement, dubbed the F/A-XX program.
Rockwell Collins’ acquisition of tiny Athena Technologies Inc. may turn out to be one of the most important ones in the company’s history if its vision of the future of air navigation turns out to be right. Athena, which employs just 70 people, makes navigation and control systems for unmanned air vehicles and its equipment is gaining a lot of combat experience on platforms such as Luna in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Rockwell Collins, of course, is one of the biggest suppliers of navigation and control equipment for both civil and military aircraft.
SOCOM UAVs: U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) wants more unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capability, especially Predator UAV orbits over Iraq, but appears to be clashing with competing priorities under the Air Force’s budget. Navy Adm. Eric Olson, SOCOM commander, tells Senate lawmakers that the roughly dozen SOCOM orbits flown over Iraq are not enough, although he is not sure throwing more money into Predators is the answer since there are “bottlenecks” in training, operations, hangar support and related communications bandwidth.
HAYABUSA SURVIVES: Japan’s crippled Hayabusa space probe has survived its third aphelion, the point in its orbit furthest from the sun, on its way to a scheduled return to Earth orbit in June 2010. Launched in May 2003, the sample return mission visited the asteroid Itokawa and began its return trip last April. It still needs to complete one more trip around the sun. If it has a sample on board—which isn’t certain, because the collection procedure didn’t go as planned—it will come down through the Earth’s atmosphere in a capsule.
PROTESTING LOUDLY: Boeing executives will give “serious consideration to filing a protest” over the U.S. Air Force’s recent choice of a Northrop Grumman/EADS aerial refueling tanker after the company was debriefed on its competition loss March 7. “While we are grateful for the timely debriefing, we left the room with significant concerns about the process in several areas, including program requirements related to capabilities, cost and risk, evaluation of the bids, and the ultimate decision,” says Mark McGraw, Boeing vice president and KC-767 program manager.
DISJOINTED UAVs: The Pentagon and Congress have to make “hard strategic and budgetary choices now” to optimize unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the future, a congressional report on military roles and missions says. The report, by a panel selected from the House Armed Services Committee, recommends more joint operations and procurement as a way to make DOD more efficient in the future.
