China has joined other members of a United Nations technical subcommittee in approving draft guidelines for mitigating manmade space debris, after receiving "considerable criticism" for adding to the space-debris problem with its Jan. 11 anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test. The Feb. 21 vote came as experts tracked a new debris cloud following the apparent rupture of a Russian rocket fuel tank on Feb. 19.
GLOBEMASTER SUSTAINMENT: McDonnell Douglas Corp. has been awarded a $10 million modification to the C-17 Globemaster III Sustainment Partnership contract to perform material improvement projects for the Air Force, the Defense Department said Feb. 21. The work will be finished by September 2011. The contract was awarded by Headquarters Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Sea Launch is hoping to conduct two more launches before the end of 2007, according to President Robert Peckham, following the Jan. 30 failure that destroyed the SES New Skies NSS-8 communications satellite and its Zenit-3SL booster. Prior to the failure, the company had six launches on its manifest for 2007, which is the maximum the equatorial Odyssey launch platform can manage in a year due to processing times. The company conducted five flights in 2006.
Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan (N.D.) and John Kerry (Mass.) are pushing new legislation they say is aimed at preventing contracting waste, fraud and abuse by Pentagon contractors in foreign operations.
ARMY Hellfire Systems L.L.C., Orlando, Fla., was awarded on Feb. 7, 2007, a $196,710,306 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for various Hellfire Missiles in containers. The work will be performed in Orlando, Fla., and is expected to be completed by Feb. 28, 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 1, 2005. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W31P4Q-05-C-0221).
SONAR SYSTEMS: Raytheon Co. said Feb. 19 that it has received a $50.8 million U.S. Navy contract for 19 Airborne Low Frequency Sonar systems, also known as the AN/AQS-22. The system is the primary undersea warfare sensor for the Navy's MH-60R multimission helicopter. The contract extends the program's full-rate production that has been accelerated since the initial fielding of the MH-60R into the fleet last year. The company also received a subsequent $5.6 million contract for sustainment of the Navy's existing inventory.
PROGRAM DELAYS FALL: French armaments agency DGA says average program delays dropped to 2.9 months last year from 3.1 months a year earlier. Associated penalties decreased, too. However, delays are still higher than the figure two years ago (2.5 months) and well above the objective of 1.5 months. DGA chief Francois Lureau says he hopes to reach this target in 2007.
KNOW MORE: Mark Schaeffer, director of systems and software engineering in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Office of Acquisition and Technology, says it is imperative from a systems-engineering stance to fully understand pre-Milestone A investments in new programs and projects. Working with the National Academy of Sciences, the Defense Department is looking at cost overruns and how to revise the planning and estimating process to reduce cost overrun potential.
LIFE EXTENSION: Romanian radars are to receive a 15- to 20-year life extension through a contract with Lockheed Martin. The FPS-117 three-dimension, L-band, long-range radars were delivered in 1998-99 and are used for air traffic control and strategic air surveillance. Britain and Germany have contracted for similar upgrades.
Boeing envisions a mix of two medium Earth orbit (MEO) and two geostationary (GEO) spacecraft for the U.S. Air Force's Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS), which the service is developing to keep watch over events in orbit. Boeing and Ball Aerospace are leading the team developing the SBSS Block 10 satellite, which will be a GEO spacecraft. The follow-on Block 20 system originally was envisioned as four LEO satellites that would be developed and procured separately.
Alion Science and Technology said Feb. 20 that it was awarded a $1.7 million Phase 1 award to develop a prototype demonstrator for the U.S. Navy's proposed Seabase Connector Transformable-Craft (T-Craft), which would transport wheeled and tracked vehicles through the surf zone and onto a beach under the service's seabasing concept of operations.
FREER HAND: The management of Hong Kong satellite operator AsiaSat would have a freer hand in coping with excess Asian transponder capacity if the company's majority owners, General Electric Capital and Chinese state investor Citic, buy out public shareholders. The takeover offer follows persistent oversupply of transponder capacity and the slow introduction of new applications in the Asia-Pacific region, the companies say. As a result, the satellite market in the region remains very competitive, and AsiaSat's share price has not performed satisfactorily.
Investigators probing the Jan. 30 explosion of a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL booster are focusing on a possible malfunction in the engine's liquid oxygen (LOX) system. The vehicle's LOX/kerosene RD-170 engine, built by Russia's Energomash, burns oxygen rich, and the blockage of an oxygen line or pressurization failure in the oxygen system is being evaluated as a potential cause of the accident. Also being studied is the timing of the malfunction in relation to the capabilities of the Zenit's fault protection software.
ARMY AAI Corp., Hunt Valley, Md., was awarded on Feb. 9, 2007, a $61,262,609 modification to a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for Performance Based Logistics for the SHADOW Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System. The work will be performed in Hunt Valley, Md., and is expected to be completed by Oct. 31, 2007. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on Sept. 26, 2006. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W31P4Q-06-C-0256). NAVY
BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION: Thomas Modly, deputy undersecretary of defense for financial management, stresses that a primary challenge for the defense acquisition community is cutting development cycle time - pointing to Iraqi insurgents' capability to adapt to new improvised explosive device defenses in less than two weeks; defenses that took 12 months to develop and roll out across U.S. forces. "Dealing with change is 'the' work," he told an AVIATION WEEK conference event Feb. 13.
The five NASA/University of California Themis auroral research spacecraft are being maneuvered into alignment within orbits extending 1,250-117,000 miles following launch from Cape Canaveral Feb. 17 onboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II booster. The $180 million mission is an international project conducted with Germany, France, Austria and Canada. It is also NASA's first five-satellite mission and the first to investigate how Earth's auroras are triggered by the storage and release of energy in Earth's magnetosphere.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - As the U.S. military's requirement for a new fleet of mine-resistant vehicles skyrockets, officials involved in the fast-tracked purchase are considering plans for a formal acquisition program, a senior Army official said here at the IDEX 2007 defense exhibition.
SIKORSKY CENTER: Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. and Gulf Helicopters of Doha, Qatar, are looking into establishing an "Aviation Center of Excellence" in the Middle East. The proposed center would provide maintenance support, spares, training and design and development services to Sikorsky, Gulf and other commercial and governmental aircraft owners and operators in the tumultuous region. In addition, the center would perform various levels of depot level maintenance on rotary and fixed wing aircraft.
BEARING ARMS: The Arms Control Association advocacy group is urging Russian and U.S. leaders to stick with a 1987 nuclear arms and missile accord, which they credit with easing Cold War tensions and slowing the superpower arms race last century. Russian Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of general staff, hinted recently that Russia could withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibits U.S. and Russian possession of nuclear and conventional ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Russian officials have criticized U.S.
