CSAR BUZZ: Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley apparently isn't enthusiastic about his service's $15 billion decision to buy a variant of the CH-47 for its future combat search and rescue helicopter. "Buzz ...doesn't want his special operations guys having to fly the Chinook design," says a senior Air Force official, who adds that it's an older-generation aircraft than its CSAR competitors, Lockheed Martin/AgustaWestland's US101 variant and Sikorsky's S-92 derivative.
President Bush's "surge" strategy for Iraq could cost up to $27 billion and entail sending as many as 28,000 additional support personnel to back up the projected 21,500 combat troops in the plan, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates.
JOINT MISSILE: Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and Lockheed Martin have signed a joint marketing agreement for an air-launched version of the Norwegian company's Naval Strike Missile (NSM). Called the Joint Strike Missile (JSM), it will be adapted for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), including for inside the F-35's internal weapons bay. In a statement, Kongsberg said that it will take "three years to reach the technological maturity required for the missile to be an option for deployment on the JSF." Lockheed Martin on Feb.
EADS and Northrop Grumman -- teamed as EuroHawk GmbH -- has won a 430 million euro ($559.9 million) contract from the German Ministry of Defense for development, test and support of an unmanned signals intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. The Euro Hawk is a derivative of the U.S. Air Force's RQ-4 Block 20 Global Hawk UAV. The sigint system would allow the new aircraft to collect and identify electronic signals, such as radar, as well as intercept tactical communications at standoff ranges.
NAVAL SERVICES: BAE Systems Applied Technologies Inc. of Rockville, Md., has been awarded an $18,792,574 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide approximately 298,000 hours of engineering and technical services in support of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's Special Communications Requirements Division's Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) communications-electronics program, including incidental materials. The work will be performed in California, Md. (80 percent), and St. Inigoes, Md.
HELO LOSSES: Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says he is taking a look at recent helicopter losses in Iraq to see if they represent proportional shootdowns for the amount of flying done there or whether there are new tactics and techniques being employed by insurgents. "Clearly, they've been more effective ground fire - or ground fire that has been more effective against our helicopters in the last couple of weeks," he told reporters Feb. 2.
Having been stymied so far in its efforts to equip intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with conventional warheads, the Defense Department is turning to possible commercial alternatives for prompt global strike. Worried about the international reaction, Congress last year denied funding to the Conventional Trident Modification (CTM) program, which would have equipped 24 submarine-based Trident II (D-5) ICBMs with conventional warheads (DAILY, Aug. 6, 2006). CTM would have been capable of striking a target anywhere in the world in less than an hour.
U.S. troops are now finding and defusing nearly half of the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq, and casualties from the devices are holding steady despite a sharp increase in the number being placed, according to the chief scientist for the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO).
The Department of Defense is proceeding with a new joint concept technology demonstration (JCTD) led by the U.S. Air Force and Navy that will allow nodes in an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) network to take over and direct datalink-equipped weapons to their targets. The JCTD just received approval from Congress and will have its first demonstration in two months, according to John Wilcox, JCTD program director at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).
KEI TEST: The U.S. Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program is on schedule to perform a booster test flight in 2008 despite the nearly $50 million cut levied against the program's $405 million fiscal 2007 budget request, prime contractor Northrop Grumman says. KEI is designed to intercept missiles in their boost, ascent or midcourse phase of flight. The program achieved all its key milestones in 2006, Northrop Grumman says, including Stage 1 and 2 static motor firings, fire control system demonstrations and high-speed wind tunnel tests.
Norway has signed the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) production, sustainment and follow-on development memorandum of understanding with the United States for the next phase of the largest-ever U.S. Defense Department program. The signing ceremony took place in Oslo, Norway, on Jan. 31. Norway's contribution in the first phase is $92 million. Italy and Denmark are expected to sign on in February.
PHOENIX OVERRUN: The budget overrun on NASA's Phoenix lander (DAILY, Jan. 10) is coming in at $31 million, according to program officials. Part of NASA's Mars Scout program, Phoenix ran over as a result of problems with the radar altimeter that the spacecraft will use when it lands on the red planet in May 2008. The overrun will have to be compensated for by cuts to other Mars exploration efforts. The Phoenix spacecraft and lander are built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver.
MERLIN DEBUTS: An Italian Navy EH-101 Merlin made its debut on the South Lawn of the White House last month. The aircraft, leased brand new from the Italians by the U.S. Navy, is called test vehicle 1 (TV-1) and is being used as a surrogate for preparatory work to the first VH-71 presidential helicopter deliveries, beginning in September, from a Lockheed Martin/AgustaWestland team. The aircraft, which is a similar configuration to the VH-71, conducted what Navy officials say are "successful" downwash tests at the White House.
Having recently submitted revised proposals for the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA), program competitors Team JCA and the C-27J Team both say the Army and Air Force will likely find new missions for the aircraft, leading to a larger fleet size. The current plan calls for 75 aircraft for the Air Force and another 70 for the Army. But officials for both companies say the services don't yet realize the utility of the aircraft and are likely to discover more areas where it can be deployed.
GCCS-M REWORKED: Northrop Grumman Defense Mission Systems should receive up to $34 million to get Global Command and Control System-Maritime (GCCS-M) Increment 4.1 to Milestone C and to obtain full-rate production, as well as reworking the current version of the government's off-the-shelf GCCS-M 4.1 software, according to a Jan. 31 announcement from the Defense Department.
As the Air Force hunts for more missions for the F-22 Raptor, it may be pushing the aircraft into roles meant for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says. "It appears that by making the F-22A more of a multirole combat aircraft, the Air Force is blurring the distinction between the Raptor and the Joint Strike Fighter," said Christopher Bolkcom, CRS Specialist in National Defense Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division in his Jan. 24 report, "F-22A Raptor."
COSTLY CAPABILITIES: Some fear that adding new capabilities at this relatively late stage in the F-22A program could increase costs by complicating the program and stretching out its development, the Congressional Research Service recently reported. Resolving instability problems with the F-22A's advanced avionics has been one of the biggest cost drivers in the development program, the report said. Adding a new feature such as an air-to-ground radar, some argue, could jeopardize the progress that has been made in the avionics software, CRS said.
C-5AS RETIRING: The Air Force has plans to retire C-5A model aircraft instead of re-engining and modernizing them later in the decade. That would enable the service to possibly buy more C-17s, said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. But Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said the funding saved from not doing the C-5 work could come too late to get the C-17s before that production line is halted.
The C-17 Globemaster III Sustainment Partnership program between Boeing and the Defense Department reached a fleet-wide mission capable rate of 85.4 percent in 2006. This covered 150 aircraft at the beginning of 2006 and grew to include 165 C-17s by the end of the year. The 2006 rate is a 2.2 percent increase over the 83.2 percent mission capable rate in FY 2005. The C-17 program's goal for 2007 is 87.5 percent.
HELO DEAL: Industry sources say EADS is attempting to convince France and Saudi Arabia to fold a range of pending helicopter buys into a single framework deal so that economies of scale could permit Saudi industry to have a major role in assembly, parts production and product support and allow EADS' Eurocopter affiliate to acquire a local industrial beachhead. The purchases are thought to total 150 units, including 10 NH90 frigate helicopters and 35 EC130s for training applications, expected to be concluded this year.
HOT TOPIC: Investigators working for NASA's inspector general have confiscated computers and interviewed political appointees in the agency's public affairs shop as a congressionally requested probe into political spinning of government-funded climate-change research results comes to a head. Among those who have had to turn over their laptops to the IG's gumshoes is Dean Acosta, Administrator Michael Griffin's former press secretary, who has since left the agency.
U.S. Army Gen. George Casey said Feb. 1 that if confirmed to be the next Army chief of staff (CSA), his top priority will be equipping and training soldiers for combat, followed by resetting the embattled force and then trying to underpin future investments such as Future Combat Systems.
