NATO countries still have not manned and equipped the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to promised levels, the commander of the force said July 18. U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill said the command is short on "helicopters, maneuver troops, aeromedical evacuation, some medical, and some intelligence apparatus."
Senators from all political angles are pushing efforts to instill new competition, oversight and requirements in federal acquisition, including one proposal for an independent Commission on Wartime Contracting to investigate Iraq and Afghanistan spending.
H-1 RESTRUCTURED: On July 17, Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg approved a restructuring of the U.S. Marine Corps' H-1 helicopter upgrade program that will add a fourth low-rate initial production lot in fiscal 2007 and delay full-rate production until FY '08. Led in industry by Bell Helicopter, the H-1 upgrade program will replace the current fleet of AH-1W and UH-1N helos with 180 AH-1Zs and 100 UH-1Ys.
The EA-18G Growler -- the backbone jet for the U.S. Navy's aviation electronic warfare network for decades to come -- officially passed its Milestone C review and was approved by the Pentagon July 17 for low-rate initial production, sources familiar with the program said. The E/A-18G is the Navy's replacement for the EA-6B Prowler Airborne Electronic Attack aircraft. It essentially combines the general F-18 Hornet airframe with an EW sensor package that's based on -- but also and upgrade of -- the Prowler suite.
Senate work on the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill broke down July 18 after debate over Iraq led to Democratic leaders pulling the legislation from the floor and sending its provisions and amendments into limbo. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the showdown this month, which also ensnared the FY '08 homeland security spending bill, has highlighted "stark differences" between Senate Democrats and Republicans for the public.
The Defense Department is accepting risk in its attempt to maximize production of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle and ship more vehicles into theater as quickly as possible, according to John Young, director of defense research and engineering and head of the MRAP Task Force. "The program is not being handled in a business-as-usual fashion," Young said at the Pentagon July 18. The production acceleration means DOD will be eschewing some documentation and testing requirements for the sake of expediency, he said.
COHERENT AWARD: The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division is awarding small business Coherent a $48.5 million contract for design, manufacture, installation and repair of Navy Special Projects Systems associated with the Electro-Optic and Special Mission Sensors Program. The goal is to focus on the research, development, analysis and prototyping of a family of systems that result in a C4ISR system architecture, the Defense Department said July 16. The contract, which runs through July 2010, was not competitively procured.
Due to a lack of internal controls, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is unable to verify that some of its interagency purchases met needs and complied with regulations, a recent Pentagon Inspector General's (IG) report says.
MARINE MRAPs: Marine Corps Systems Command is awarding Stewart & Stevenson Tactical Vehicle Systems, LP, a division of Armor Holdings, Inc., $518.5 million for the purchase of 1,154 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Category I vehicles, and 16 MRAP Category II vehicles, DOD announced last week. Work will be performed in Sealy, Texas, and should be complete by February 2008.
An ambulating robot being devised by the European Space Agency (ESA) has completed a second set of trials in a neutral buoyancy tank at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany. Intended to assist astronauts in extravehicular activities (EVAs) and eventually to handle some of the more mundane EVA tasks such as work preparation, post-EVA cleanup and inspection, Eurobot consists of a central body with three identical arms, each provided with seven joints, a camera and an end-effector.
LORAN FUTURE: Federal officials next month will host public meetings over the current and proposed Long Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) systems, according to a July 17 notice in the Federal Register. The meetings are slated for Aug. 15, 21 and 23 in Washington, D.C., Juneau, Alaska, and Seattle, Wash., respectively.
Military buyers awarded a sole-source contract for a mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) type vehicle to a company that was having financial problems, a recent IG report says. Acquisition officials awarded the urgent-need contract to Force Protection Inc. (FPI), even though there were questions whether it could do the work, according to the June 27 report, "Procurement Policy for Armored Vehicles."
Lockheed Martin Vice President of Aeronautics Business Development Rob Weiss and his team's presentation on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to India's Ministry of Defense is raising eyebrows. But a senior Indian official dismisses it as a prelude to the forceful promotions that are expected to follow the soon-to-be-released request for proposals for India's 126-aircraft medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) order.
Overshadowed by the Iraq war debate now raging on the Senate floor, the chamber nonetheless is mulling over changes to the U.S. military's C-5 and C-17 strategic airlift fleet as part of its fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill. In particular, senators are targeting defense leaders' assessments and the Pentagon's contentious 2006 Mobility Capabilities Study, which called for a 292-aircraft strategic fleet of 112 Lockheed Martin C-5s and 180 Boeing C-17s.
NASA has awarded Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., a $127.9 million contract to develop the Operational Land Imager (OLI) instrument for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).
U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has awarded EDO Communications & Countermeasures Systems nearly $210 million for 3,000 Vehicle-Mounted Counter-Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device (RCIED) Electronic Warfare (CREW) systems for Iraq and Afghanistan operations. Spiral 2.1 CREW systems are vehicle-mounted electronic jammers designed to prevent RCIEDs from harming ground troops, according to Defense Department announcements. This contract modification responds to a so-called urgent DOD requirement for combat operations, they said.
The Orbital Express mission began its end-of-life maneuver late in the evening of July 16 and both spacecraft should be fully decommissioned by the end of the week, according to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spokeswoman Jan Walker. The decommissioning will take place after one final maneuver in which Boeing's ASTRO will undock and travel much farther away from Ball Aerospace's NextSat than ever before (300 kilometers), then reapproach it to test the acuity of its visual sensors at long ranges (DAILY, July 11).
