Defense Department Undersecretary Kenneth Krieg said there's a very simple message underlying some of the award fee concerns addressed in the February Defense Acquisition Report to Congress. "Performance matters," said Krieg, undersecretary for acquisition, during a March 14 briefing on the report. The report said the Pentagon will issue a policy memorandum stressing that contracting officers must give contractors incentives to deliver products to meet the requirements on time and within cost.
MARSHALL SUPPORT: Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., will continue to provide systems development and operations support for the Science and Mission Systems Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center for another five years, NASA says. In light of the company's "outstanding performance," the agency decided to exercise a five-year option on the 2002 support contract, bringing its maximum potential value to $568 million.
GROWLER DEVELOPMENT: Initial operational capability for the U.S. Navy's EA-18G Growler wide-spectrum jamming aircraft is scheduled for 2009, but first it will go through an in-process review under the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) on April 30. The Growler reached a major milestone on Jan. 24 with the successful completion of its jammer flight-test, Navy officials declared March 15. "We successfully exercised all available jamming types and all aspects of the system worked as advertised, and we saw no notable issues," says Cmdr. Jaime Engdahl, EA-18G department head.
UNCERTAIN FUTURE: The U.S. Marines want to get the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor transport to Iraq this year, but no one is certain this will happen. "It is my fervent desire to get the V-22 into the fight as soon as we can, and that is probably going to be this year," says the new Marine commandant, Gen. James Conway. "I think it's going to prove itself rapidly. There is going to be a crash. That's what airplanes do over time. We're going to have to accept that when it happens. We'll hear some folks who are not fans of the program rise up."
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. has completed its acquisition of PZL Mielec with the Polish government. The airframe manufacturer, based in Mielec, employs about 1,500 people and was operated by Poland's Industrial Development Agency under the Ministry of Treasury. Sikorsky will use PZL Mielec as a "major step toward establishing the foundation of our European operations," says Jeffrey Pino, president. He says the company will be a "key component" of Sikorsky's long-range global strategy to sell and support its helicopters, particularly the Black Hawk series.
MORE FUNDING: "Each day, the readiness of both our airmen and our equipment is eroding," the U.S. Air Force vice chief of staff tells the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee. Gen. John Corley says increased flying hours are stressing airframes, while general costs also are going up. The cost of aircraft spare parts has increased 6 percent this year, for instance. Meanwhile, each $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil costs the Air Force another $600 million annually, he says - although oil prices are off their highs from last year.
U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter announced late March 15 that he is ready to lift a previously issued stop-work order against Lockheed Martin over one of its Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) if the leading defense contractor agrees to take on more risk associated with its development. "LCS 3 construction may be resumed under revised contract terms that rebalance the risk of cost growth between the government and industry," Winter said in a Defense Department statement.
The new head of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee says she thinks space situational awareness capabilities have not received appropriate consideration and resources in recent years due to an emphasis on rapid deployment of so-called transformational space platforms such as Space Radar and Transformational Satellite Communications.
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CH-46 SHOOTDOWN: Reversing itself, the U.S. Marine Corps says the CH-46 transport helicopter that crashed last month in Iraq was shot down by a missile, possibly with a design sophisticated enough not to trigger the helicopter's defensive flares. "Those initial battlefield reports, once again, were wrong," says the new Marine commandant, Gen. James Conway. At first, analysts thought there was a mechanical failure because there was no obvious deployment of survival equipment. But an insurgent video proved there was a missile strike, Conway says.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program has made strong strides by delivering and flying the first developmental aircraft, a new U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says, but there are still concerns over price and delays. "Cost and schedule goals established in the fiscal year 2004 rebaselined program have not been met," says the GAO report "Joint Strike Fighter, Progress Made and Challenges Remain," released March 15. 'Parts shortages' GAO cited concerns about overall program costs and per aircraft increases.
MEADS FUNDS: The Medium Extended-Range Air Defense System was slated to lose about $22 million in annual planned Army cuts, according to top MEADS International executives. They announced March 13 that the Army has committed to restoring the funding and that the program should remain on schedule (DAILY, March 15). MEADS and Raytheon's Patriot missile work share a funding line in the Army budget, which most recently outlined that $87.5 million was to be "realigned" to higher priorities next fiscal year, and then $108.9 million similarly sliced out in FY '09.
PREDATOR SERVICES: Battlespace Flight Services LLC has been awarded a five-year, U.S. Air Force contract worth more than $162 million to perform maintenance services on the MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aircraft System program. Battlespace Flight Services comprises Northern Virginia companies Battlespace Inc., AOC Global Services LLC and Defense Support Services LLC. Battlespace Flight Services said it will perform maintenance services at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., and worldwide deployed sites.
CERTIFICATION: The FAA has awarded Raytheon Co. three more Experimental Airworthiness Certificates for its Cobra Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the company said March 15. Raytheon now has five certified Cobras. The certification authorizes Raytheon to conduct market surveys, crew training and research and development with the aircraft in specified airspace in southeastern Arizona. The Cobras are used for the development, integration and testing of unmanned systems technologies, the company said. The aircraft is 9 feet long and has a 10-foot wingspan.
Believing it can do it faster and for less money, the U.S. Coast Guard is stripping a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman from providing the delayed-but-needed Fast Response Cutter-B (FRC-B). The move is a relatively small punishment in terms of lost business under the Coast Guard's $24 billion, 25-year Deepwater recapitalization program, but a high-profile rebuke to joint venture Integrated Coast Guard System's (ICGS) management of the embattled Deepwater effort (DAILY, Dec. 6, 2006).
Among the actions NASA recommends in its fiscal 2007 operating plan is shutting down the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, where a whole generation of unmanned orbiters, rovers, hoppers and penetrators was under consideration as scouts for a human landing on the moon.
Controllers in the U.K. and India are checking out the Skynet 5A and Insat 4B communications satellites following their March 11 launch on an Ariane 5 ECA vehicle from the European spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana. The launch at 5:03 p.m. Eastern time came after a one-day delay when an anomaly was detected in the water-deluge system used to control pad acoustic levels (DAILY, March 13).
The Pentagon says it will wait for the results of the upcoming SpaceX demonstration scheduled later this month for the company's Falcon 1 rocket before cementing a launch date for the TacSat-1 spacecraft on the vehicle. The Office of Naval Research/Naval Research Laboratory (ONR/NRL) is the spacecraft owner and makes the decisions on launch changes. The U.S. Air Force holds and maintains the contracts, and service officials say they are concerned about launch reliability.
The security ambitions of some members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are not matched by their political will or funding commitments, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander told House lawmakers March 15. While NATO requires that members spend 2 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on their militaries, only six countries out of 26 do so, and "the trends are negative," Gen. Bantz Craddock said.
Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Science and Technology criticized NASA's fiscal 2008 budget request during a hearing on Capitol Hill March 15, saying the White House has consistently failed to request enough money for the agency over the past few years. "I'm afraid that NASA is headed for a train wreck if things don't change," Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said. "There are certain challenges that NASA is facing as a result of the FY '07 Joint Resolution, but the agency's budgetary problems run much deeper."
RANGEFINDERS: Northrop Grumman Corp. has been awarded a $20 million contract to provide the U.S. Army with more than 500 Eyesafe Laser Rangefinders (ELRF) for its M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, the company said March 15. The ELRF allows tank gunners to determine target ranges in all types of battlefield conditions and provides a safe way for U.S. forces to train against each other, the company said.
The House on March 15 overwhelmingly passed an acquisition reform bill that seeks greater competition and safeguards in federal acquisition, especially against perceived problems in the defense realm. The legislation was spurred by Iraq-related awards of major Pentagon programs.
