Boeing's win of a contract worth as much as $1.125 billion for production of the Ares I upper stage adds an element of uncertainty for the experienced Lockheed Martin work force at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The 84-foot aluminum lithium stages will be built on the same factory floor where the big foam-covered aluminum-lithium external tanks for the space shuttle fleet are manufactured. But the work force in the government-owned plant won't automatically be hired by Boeing once the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
A key element of Lockheed Martin's Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) payload, its carrier vehicle divert and attitude control system built by Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, has been successfully tested at the National Hover Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The Japanese defense ministry has asked for 15.7 billion yen ($137 million) to proceed with its planned stealth fighter demonstrator in the coming fiscal year, which for Japan begins April 1. Proposals to accelerate upgrades for Japan's F-15Js also are taking a concrete form, with the ministry requesting 112.3 billion yen in fiscal 2008. Improved radars are expected. The number of aircraft involved isn't known, but Japanese media say upgrades that had been planned for the coming three years will all be done next fiscal year.
Spirits at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have risen as the Hayabusa asteroid sample return mission team has announced it has managed to resurrect and switch operations to its third ion engine, engine C, which hadn't been used since August 2005. This could greatly increase the chance of the spacecraft completing the world's first asteroid sample return in 2010.
U.S. Army Apache helicopters are experiencing extensive wear due to the accelerated pace of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, so a contract modification of $19.9 million was recently added to Boeing's Apache Reliability and Safety Recapitalization program to expand its support, the company announced.
An Aug. 29 story on the Ares I upper stage contract misidentified the stage that will take the Orion capsule out of Earth orbit. The Earth Departure Stage will carry Orion to lunar orbit when NASA returns astronauts to the moon.
With wheeled tractors, trucks and similar vehicles leading DOD expenses so far in 2007 with $4.6 billion, the best summation of Pentagon contract spending this year can be conveyed in one short acronym - MRAP. The third leading expense - placing just after logistics and support - is the estimated $3.7 billion spent for tracked combat, assault and tactical vehicles, according to an Aerospace Daily analysis of data provided by the National Institute For Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) as of Aug. 17 (see charts p. 6-8).
A new GPS-guided 155mm artillery round has been so successful in its operational debut in Iraq this summer that the U.S. Army is going to ramp up production from 18 per month currently to 150 rounds per month by year's end. Raytheon Missile Systems, the Excalibur prime contractor, expects to reduce the cost of each shell by 40 percent in the future, says David Brockway, the business development director for the program. The Army's long-term requirement is for each Excalibur shell to cost no more than $39,000.
The Senate's top appropriator - and an oratory thorn in the side of President Bush - said Aug. 29 that Congress "must not continue to cede its constitutional authority and simply write blank checks for the misguided policy in Iraq." Responding to a report that Bush will ask for $50 billion more in fiscal 2008 off-budget appropriations for Iraq operations, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) said Bush's priorities were "completely out of step" with the public.
After extensive interviewing of astronauts and their associates going back 20 years, NASA's chief of safety and mission assurance "was unable to verify" accounts of preflight astronaut intoxication or impairment reported by a panel set up to review astronaut health screening. Nor could Bryan O'Connor, himself a former astronaut, find "any case where a manager of a flight surgeon or co-crewmember disregarded their recommendation that a crewmember not fly Shuttle or Soyuz."
LUH APPROVED: EADS North America said Aug. 29 its American Eurocopter unit was granted production authorization for UH-72A and EC145 helicopters, enabling them to be U.S.-made for military and civilian customers. The UH-72A Lakota is the U.S. Army's new Light Utility Helicopter. Production authorization for these helicopters was recently granted by FAA, enabling deliveries of U.S.-made UH-72As to begin for operational Army units. The first such aircraft is Lakota No. 10, which was delivered Aug. 27 from American Eurocopter's Columbus, Miss., facility.
SM-3 AWARD: U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command is awarding Raytheon Missile Systems a $142 million cost-plus-award-fee contract modification for engineering and technical services for the continued missile design and development, fabrication, flight test and support for the Standard Missile-3 for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to be complete by December, according to the Aug. 27 announcement.
IRAQI ARMS: The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will host a hearing Sept. 6 to look into what is reportedly becoming a greater Defense Department effort to investigate U.S. arms transfers in Iraq. By Sept. 4, the panel wants an Army briefing on its efforts to account for arms transferred to Iraqi security forces, as well as information on the leaders of a purported panel of contracting and logistics experts the service is forming.
Honeywell anticipates placing at least four large multifunction liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in the cockpit of NASA's Orion crew exploration vehicle that could look familiar to pilots of business and commercial jets.
Lawmakers returning from their August recess will face a likely critical decision point over the future of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which looks to trade such Cold War attributes as high yield and low weight for features considered more useful now, such as improved handling and reliability.
GUARDIAN MILESTONE: Northrop Grumman's Guardian commercial airliner anti-missile system, which currently is installed on seven commercial wide-body cargo aircraft flying daily, has reached 6,000 operational hours, according to the company. The Homeland Security Department's counter-MANPADS effort also has bankrolled BAE System's similar JetEye technology.
Northrop Grumman is promoting its Fire Scout Vertical Take Off and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV) - an element of the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) as well as the shipboard UAV for the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship - as a tried-and-true system ideally suited to the U.S. Coast Guard's National Security Cutters (NSCs).
Boeing has won the $514.7 million production contract for the upper stage of NASA's Ares I crew launch vehicle, beating a team led by ATK that also included Orion crew exploration vehicle prime Lockheed Martin. Boeing's team includes Hamilton Sundstrand, Moog Inc., Northrop Grumman, Orion Propulsion Inc. and SUMMA Technology Inc.
India on Aug. 28 issued the long-awaited request for proposals (RFP) for its $10.5 billion Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) program, which will provide 126 fighters to the Indian air force. The industry contenders for the program are Russia's MiG-35, the Swedish JAS-39 Gripen, France's Rafale, Lockheed Martin's F-16, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
A research satellite orbited by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in April has collected data on the plume of a rising missile that ultimately may play into boost-phase missile defense sensing and tracking. The Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE) spacecraft collected images of a modified Minuteman II with a target payload launched Aug. 23 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in what MDA described as "the successful execution of an important exercise."
