After an initial firm fixed-price contract in April 2003 of about $22 million, the U.S. Air Force has added about four dozen contract modifications to the Battle Control System-Fixed (BCS-F) air defense program through 2006, nearly tripling the price tag, according to an Aerospace Daily computer analysis of defense contract data provided by the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting.
HYPERSONIC RADOME: The U.S. Navy's Air Warfare Center Weapons Division in China Lake, Calif., is awarding Raytheon Co. an $11.1 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for research and development for high-temperature development, material test and evaluation, radome conceptual design, and manufacturing and test planning of wideband radome technology for next-generation hypersonic vehicles. The contract was competitively procured via a Broad Agency Announcement, with five offers received, and it follows a similar $10.6 million award to ATK COI Ceramics Inc.
Political and diplomatic fallout continues from China's Jan. 11 anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons test, with top U.S. defense officials speaking out on the subject in Washington and Beijing. "Platforms costing billions of dollars to replace and the lives of astronauts from many nations are now at risk from debris left by China's recent ill-advised anti-satellite test," U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, head of U.S. Strategic Command, told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee in mid March. Intent unclear
U.S. Air Force officials say the extra cost being incurred by the country's new national air defense shield will be worth it because of its inherently greater assurance, reliability and computer processing speed. The Battle Control System-Fixed (BCS-F) air defense shield is meant to prevent terrorists from using hijacked commercial airliners as weapons. In developing BCS-F, the service chose to take a more revolutionary acquisition path rather than slowly building incremental capability based on existing deployed systems.
SENATE SUPPLEMENTAL: The Senate on March 26 began consideration of its version of the contentious fiscal 2007 supplemental spending bill, with senators alternatively supporting and condemning Democratic-written provisions that look to force a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. The $122 billion bill could tie up the chamber for much of this week, at least, before Congress recesses for an Easter break. The House already passed its version, a $124 billion measure with even stricter withdrawal provisions.
Bell Helicopter's difficulties in producing the armed reconnaissance helicopter (ARH) are manufacturing process-related rather than technical, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, service aviation director. "Technically, it can be done," Mundt said March 23 at a Pentagon roundtable briefing. The issue is one of process - how Bell does its job on the manufacturing floor, Mundt said. The initial work was to cost about $3.6 billion for 368 aircraft, Mundt said. That ballooned to about $4.7 billion for 512 aircraft.
NAVY Rolls Royce Naval Marine Inc., 110 Norfolk Street, Walpole, Mass., is being awarded a $76,640,200 firm fixed price contract for DDG-1000 main turbine generator sets. Work will be performed in Walpole, Mass., and is expected to be completed by September 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The contract was competitively procured and advertised on the Internet, with two offers received. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington Navy Yard, D.C., is the contracting activity. (N00024-07-C-4014). ARMY
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio - Sensorcraft technology and capabilities are nearer at hand than some think, says Donald Paul, chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Air Vehicles Directorate here. Described as a flying radar antenna, the aircraft would try to integrate the sensing systems currently incorporated in several wide-body aircraft into an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of 30 hours of endurance and operating out to a range of 2,000 nautical miles.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the U.S. Navy would need to spend an average of $20.6 billion annually (in 2008 dollars) on new-ship construction over the next 30 years to implement its recently tweaked shipbuilding plan. With refuelings of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines included, the Navy would need to spend an average of $21.7 billion annually through 2037, CBO told leaders of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) in a March 23 report.
MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY Engineering Management Concepts of Camarillo, Calif., is being awarded a $16,183,445 cost-plus-award-fee contract modification to continue operation of the Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Financial Integration and Analysis Center. Work will be performed at MDA's facilities in Arlington, Va., and is expected to be complete by December 2009. The contract funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The MDA, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (HQ0006-C-0037). AIR FORCE
CHANGES: New Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell has announced organizational changes that include promoting acquisition to a deputy DNI position "to increase technological agility and better posture the intelligence community to achieve acquisition excellence, streamline acquisition policies and processes and enhance the professionalism of the acquisition work force." The goal is to shorten development timelines and produce more reliable systems, the DNI office said March 23.
The week after U.S. Army Aviation Director Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt dismissed Air Force efforts to take over greater control of the use of military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Air Force leaders said the increased coordination of those operations is needed. "Some are flying the UAVs when we're flying fixed-wing aircraft," said Gen. Ronald Keys, commander of Air Combat Command. It's more than operational deconfliction that's needed, Keys said at a March 23 press conference with Air Force commanding generals.
The U.S. Army is short an aviation brigade's worth of aircraft due mostly to wartime losses and industry's inability to crank up enough production, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt, service aviation director. The Army has lost 130 aircraft since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mundt said. About one-third of those losses have come in direct contact with the enemy, Mundt said March 23 at a Pentagon roundtable briefing.
SpaceX executives say they are still upbeat about the commercially funded Falcon launcher program, despite the failure of the second demonstration flight on March 20. Speaking at a space insurance forum in Milan, Italy, organized by Pagnanelli Risk Solutions, Chief Counsel Tim Hughes said SpaceX is not writing off the launch as a complete failure, despite comments by Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall that "a mission where the launch vehicle ends up at the bottom of the ocean cannot be called a success."
Sea Launch has confirmed that its heavy-lift booster will return to flight before the end of the year, along with the introduction of its two stage Land Launch derivative. Sea Launch reported "limited damage" to the Odyssey floating launch platform after a Jan. 30 explosion at liftoff of a Zenit-3SL rocket carrying the SES New Skies NSS-8 communications satellite. The blast at the company's Pacific Ocean launch site resulted in an estimated $300 million loss, including the booster and payload (DAILY, Feb. 2).
Raytheon has completed the sale of its general aviation unit to a pair of private equity investors. The company announced March 26 that it has closed on the $3.3 billion sale of Raytheon Aircraft to Hawker Beechcraft Inc., a new company formed by Canadian buyout firm Onex Corp. and Goldman Sachs affiliate GS Capital Partners.
NAVY Raytheon Co., Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $53,495,405 modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-04-C-0569) for the fiscal year 2007 procurement of 111 Tomahawk composite capsule launching system (CCLS) capsules and 220 SSGN/SSN CCLS retrofit kits. Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to be completed in April 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md. is the contracting activity.
HOTBIRD SCARE: Eutelsat officials say their Hot Bird 2 satellite, which was forced to transfer all traffic to Hot Bird 8 on March 14 when it was hit by a solar flare, has suffered no apparent damage. Despite an anomaly observed in the satellite's power subsystem, the spacecraft appears to be in a healthy configuration, officials said. But as a precaution, traffic will probably not be transferred back to Hot Bird 2 until the next equinox.
A March 19 story on the U.S. Air Force's tanker replacement program incorrectly listed EADS as a partner in the VXX presidential helicopter replacement. That effort is led by Lockheed Martin and AgustaWestland. Aerospace Daily regrets the error.
Flooding from torrential rains last summer damaged a "significant portion" of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system capability, a private sector watchdog group claimed March 26. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said it has learned from "insiders" that ground-based interceptor silos were flooded by as much as 63 feet of water during a three-week period in late June and early July 2006 when Fort Greely, Alaska received several inches of rain.
The former head of the British army, Gen. Mike Jackson, is suggesting it may soon be time for the U.K. to hold a full-blown defense review. "People shouldn't be frightened of a defense review...The Strategic Defense Review (SDR), and the new chapter, were good works, but it's now a decade on. Force structures are predicated on the SDR, and we ought to test that proposition."
