EARNINGS: General Dynamics’ net income was up 42 percent in the fourth quarter and 12 percent for the full year. The company’s revenue increases also were in the double digits: 15 percent for the quarter, 13 percent for the full year. Northrop Grumman’s profits were flat in the fourth quarter amid a 10 percent sales gain. But the company had a good full year: net income was up 16 percent amid a 6 percent sales increase. Due to report next week are Boeing, Alliant Techsystems, L-3 Communications and Raytheon.
Continuing problems with its Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) will delay launch of the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) from 2009 until mid-2010, but NASA hopes to use the delay to restore the Cloud and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument to the mission, top NASA officials said Jan. 24.
Richard Branson and Burt Rutan have unveiled the design of The Spacecraft Company’s space launch system: the WhiteKnightTwo mothership and SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial passenger suborbital vehicle, designed to carry six space tourists and two pilots.
Lockheed Martin leaders told Wall Street analysts Jan. 24 that they expect additional orders for F-22 Raptors to become more institutionalized within the Pentagon’s budget requests as aging-fleet issues appear to be only increasing in the U.S. Air Force. Bob Stevens, Lockheed chairman, president and CEO, pointed to recent groundings of Boeing F-15 aircraft and noted that the pace of foreign counterinsurgency and other military operations looks to remain high – thus speeding up wear and tear on decades-old fighters.
While the Pentagon continues to develop more interoperable network-centric systems linking the different branches, the services still get their wires crossed, officers from the U.S. Marine Corps and Army said Jan. 24. While the Marines and Army use essentially the same hardware, the officers said, the way they use and connect them is different enough to keep the services from operating effectively in key tactical areas. More problems
PARIS – French armaments agency DGA has awarded Eurocopter a 220 million euro ($330 million) contract to upgrade 27 Cougar helicopters in a move that should help fill a looming rotorcraft capability gap. The retrofit, which involves installing new avionics, self-protection suites and data links, is intended to keep the Cougar fleet operational until France’s fleet of NH90 transports is at full strength towards the end of the next decade.
DECISION UPGRADE: Under a $49.2 million contract, Ball Aerospace and Technologies will find and integrate science and technology that offers commanders and other Air Force personnel revolutionary ways to make better decisions through advanced interfaces with the service’s systems. Five research areas will be battlespace acoustics, battlespace vision, cognitive systems, collaborative technologies and system controls.
NASA's astronauts will publish their new code of conduct soon, but an anonymous survey of most of them and the flight surgeons who oversee their health suggests they don't believe preflight drinking is a problem. Following up the work of an outside panel of flight surgeons who reported hearing accounts of "heavy use of alcohol in the immediate preflight period, which has led to safety concerns," the anonymous survey of active U.S. astronauts and civil service and contract flight surgeons working at Johnson Space Center drew a blank.
A panel of top Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) officials pleaded with the Washington-area defense technology industry Jan. 22 to adopt network-centric and network-operational models for their national security goods and services, and warned them that contracting oversight and expectations are rising.
Raytheon will provide the U.S. Navy with its APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar (AESA) to retrofit 135 F/A-18 Super Hornets and eventually to equip production aircraft as they come off the line. An initial contract worth nearly $55 million authorizes Raytheon to supply 19 AESA systems, spares and maintenance. The APG-79 program is moving toward full-rate production in anticipation of delivering 415 systems plus spares to the Navy in the coming years.
Touting the need for change, military jointness and decentralization, two-time former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld covered familiar ground Jan. 23 during a network centric warfare conference. "The leading edge of transformation can be a very turbulent spot," Rumsfeld said at the conference, sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA).
A decision by France to earmark nine helicopters and a logistics unit for a U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping mission to Chad and the Central African Republic appears to have been motivated by an agreement to expand the amount of hardware that can be funded jointly for the European Union (EU) mission.
SENSOR CENTER: BAE Systems opened a new 33,000-square-foot electro-optics/infrared (EO/IR) sensor technology design center on Jan. 23 in Lexington, Mass. Among the products that will be designed and tested at the new facility will be BAE's new Enhanced Night Vision Digital Goggle for the U.S. Army, a helmet-mounted goggle that converts infrared energy to video images.
IRAQI HUMAN RESOURCES: Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions said Jan. 22 it is completing the largest-ever Oracle-based Human Resources and Payroll Management System. The system, under a contract with the Multi National Security Transition Command - Iraq, will go to paying and overseeing Iraqi security forces, which have suffered from "rampant" corruption and payroll-related challenges, such as a Saddam Hussein-era tradition of soldiers and police ferrying money from their bases to families, MNSTC-I officials acknowledged on Capitol Hill last week.
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) was the only defense or other U.S. agency to respond to an Air Force desire to move missions to Cannon Air Force Base, N.M. - thus keeping the base open despite independent recommendations in 2005 to otherwise close it, according to a congressional auditors' report.
AUSSIES IN: The Australian Department of Defence has joined the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC), becoming a national member of the group's advisory council and technical teams. "The mantra of NCOIC is to drive the implementation of open standards that underpin the connections between organizations while allowing competition in the development of applications needed to process information," Australian Defence Force commander Jeremy Pickel said in a statement.
As the U.S. Air Force reviews the bids for the $15 billion replacement fleet for its combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) aircraft, the service is also taking another look at the operational performance of the competitors. That means Boeing's HH-47, Lockheed Martin's US101 and Sikorsky's S-92 will have another stab at convincing the service they are the right helicopters for the mission. Boeing won the first go-around, but lost ground when the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) twice upheld protests by the losing bidders.
President Bush's new directives ordering improved U.S. export control licensing meet almost all of industry's desires - although the changes will call upon a "self-financing" scheme rather than a devoted funding boost via appropriations, State Department officials told reporters Jan. 23. John Rood, U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control and international security, and Frank Ruggiero, deputy assistant secretary for defense trade and regional security, declined to say that federal officials have decided to go with a user-fee model.
MISSILE DEFENSE: The U.S. is moving "ever closer" to an agreement with the Czech Republic over the placement of an early-warning missile defense radar in that country, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell said Jan. 22. Talks are also continuing with the Polish government over placing ballistic missile interceptors in Poland. "Hopefully we'll come to an agreement," Morrell said. The Russians should not view the system as a threat, he added.
