Fallout from Lockheed Martin's loss of a second Littoral Combat Ship comes after the company was spotlighted for problems with the VH-71 presidential replacement helicopter fleet and has raised some analysts' attention over the U.S. Navy's recent disfavor for lead systems integrators. But the potential for fixed-price (FP) development contracts has Wall Street even more on edge.
As the U.S. Marine Corps gets ready to deploy the MV-22 Osprey into combat - the aircraft is slated for duty in Iraq starting in September, the service announced April 13 - Congress still has some concerns, according to a March Congressional Research Service Report. The report acknowledges the Osprey has a great deal of support within the Defense Department as an advanced replacement for aging helicopter fleets that provides greater capability than the older aircraft.
NASA's Constellation program will pay Orbital Sciences Corp. between $35 million and $57 million for as many as four test boosters based on Air Force Peacekeeper ICBM solid-rocket motors for tests of the Orion crew exploration vehicle launch abort system. The competed award came through the Air Force's Sounding Rockets Program. The Space Development and Test Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., will conduct the launch abort tests at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
Russian controllers have tentatively decided to delay by one day the planned April 20 landing of the Soyuz capsule carrying two members of Expedition 14 to the International Space Station and space tourist Charles Simonyi because of wet ground conditions at the landing site.
URBAN TRAINING: Allied Container Systems Inc. has been awarded a $461.6 million contract to produce, test, install and deliver the Combined Arms Military Operations in Urban Terrain training system at the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif. The work will be done in Twentynine Palms and Pleasant Hill, Calif., and is expected to be finished in April 2010.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon should rethink the ability of the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) to bypass normal procedures through "limited acquisition authority" (LAA) to buy certain warfighting equipment more quickly.
April 16 - 19 -- Science & Engineering Technology Conference, DOD/Tech Exposition, Charleston, S.C. For more information go to www.ndia.org. April 17 - 18 -- AVIATIONWEEK MRO Military 2007 Conference & Exhibition, Cobb Galleria, Atlanta, Ga. For more information call Lydia Janow at (212) 904-3225, fax: (212) 904-3334, email: [email protected], http://www.aviationweek.com/conferences.
PUSHBACK: The U.S. Army is pushing back hard on a Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruling that it erred in awarding a $4.65 billion linguist services contract to DynCorp last December. The loss of the contract to provide translators to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan stunned incumbent L-3 Communications and teammate Northrop Grumman, and forced L-3 to lower its earnings guidance for 2007.
NPOESS: U.S. Air Force and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials say progress is being made with two troublesome sensors that have contributed to cost and schedule problems for the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). The Raytheon-made Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) only has one remaining issue - "optical crosstalk," or stray light tainting the sensor's readings, according to Mary Kicza, NOAA's director of satellite and information services.
Wall Street analysts say the U.S. Navy's cancellation of Lockheed Martin's second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the third of the class now shared with General Dynamics, will not significantly impact the massive defense contractor's bottom-line, but they see the unusual Navy move as a telltale sign of a tightening fiscal environment. "We are not changing our financial forecast as the cancellation should have no short-term financial impact for the company," Merrill Lynch analysts told clients April 13.
SATELLITE PIRACY: Embarrassed Intelsat officials are assuring Sri Lanka's ambassador to the U.S., Bernard Goonetilleke, that they will stop "pirate" direct-to-home TV transmissions by the Tamil Tigers going over Intelsat spacecraft. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka-based group listed by the U.S. State Dept. as a terrorist organization, somehow gained access to an unused transponder on Intelsat 12 and used it beam messages into Sri Lankan homes.
WGS FOR SALE: International cooperation at the level seen on aircraft programs has so far eluded the military space realm. But that may be changing. Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, U.S. Air Force program executive officer for space, says the Boeing Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) - formerly the Wideband Gapfiller Satellite - is a candidate for foreign military sales. Allies including Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia already have cooperated in U.S.-led satellite communications payload developments and use.
A federal information technology (IT) forecasting firm is predicting that contractors will start seeing the bottom-line effects of increased oversight on government purchasing as soon as fiscal 2008, adding to their profit pressures as a growing number of companies chase a limited pool of wartime funding.
COMMON SPACE: U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, U.S. Strategic Command chief, says he's committed to developing a common operating picture for space products that can be shared by U.S. allies. "It is going to have to be done this year or someone is going to have to shoot me," he says. A hindrance to that goal is the multi-level security for allies and a lack of integration between disparate systems that collect data. Cartwright also wants to devise a system with commercial providers of space products that resembles U.S.
RIDE SHARING: NASA is in preliminary talks with potential commercial and military users of the Ares launch vehicles the agency is developing under its Constellation program. The human-rated Ares I and heavy-lift Ares V are designed to get humans back to the moon and beyond. But Administrator Michael Griffin says the more users that can be found for them, the better. Aside from he benefits of larger production runs and more flight experience that would come from a bigger Ares user base, turning the taxpayer-funded launch vehicles over to other U.S.
JSF FUTURE: If Lockheed Martin keeps the price down for its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) it will rule the market around the globe, Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia says in his recent briefing on the aircraft (see p. 5). After F-22, F/A-18E/F, Rafale, "Gripen, Eurofighter, Su-35, and F-2 production has ended, most countries will have only one option: F-35," he says. "Their national aerospace companies might get to license-build them, and the planes will have a high local content. But they'll be designed in, and supported by, Ft. Worth.
SMALL SATS: Israel Aerospace Industries and Canada-based small satellite company Caneus NPS Inc. will collaborate on a constellation of small satellites for space-based Earth observation under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) recently signed by the two organizations. The agreement also will enable both companies to jointly pursue new and emerging applications for the satellites, Caneus says. Arie Halsband, general manager of IAI's MBT Space Division, and Caneus Chairman Milind Pimprikar signed the MOU.
MGS REPORT: According to a preliminary report, a computer error made months earlier started the series of events that doomed NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), which orbited the red planet for a decade before failing last November (DAILY, Nov. 10). After receiving routine commands to warm up its camera and move its solar arrays, MGS re-oriented itself at an angle that exposed one of its two batteries to direct sunlight, which eventually caused both batteries to fail.
The U.S. Marine Corps announced April 13 that the first MV-22 Osprey deployment would be to Iraq for seven months starting September, where the aircraft's main role will be carrying troops into combat. The first operational squadron for the Bell-Boeing tiltrotor will be the Marine Medium Tiltrotor 263 of Marine Aircraft Group 26. Although the Ospreys mainly will carry troops, according to Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, deputy commandant for aviation, the aircraft also can be used to carry other cargo such as injured personnel.
An April 13 DAILY story on the Boeing tanker proposal submission misprinted the fuel savings estimate found by an independent analysis commissioned by Boeing for the KC-767 over a 25-year period as compared to the KC-30. The correct figure is $10 billion. Aerospace Daily regrets the error.
