Steve Schneps has been named vice president of operations for its Electronics & Integrated Solutions (E&IS) operating group. Schneps previously served as director of operations for several of the unit's major lines of business - Information Warfare, and most recently Electronic Warfare.
The board has appointed Antoine Bouvier, formerly Chief Executive Officer of EADS Astrium Satellites, as Chief Executive Officer of MBDA, replacing Marwan Lahoud, who is expected to move to EADS. Bouvier has been CEO of EADS Astrium Satellites since 2002. Prior to 2002, he was with Eurocopter, ATR and Aerospatiale.
Astronauts Jim Reilly and John (Danny) Olivas were busy attaching cables and unlatching launch restraints on the evening of June 11, after the crews of the International Space Station (ISS) and the space shuttle Atlantis used both spacecraft's robot arms to attach another section of the ISS truss.
NASA managers are likely to recommend a repair in space to the thermal protection blanket that was torn on space shuttle Atlantis during the STS-117 launch June 8. As Atlantis was closing in for a docking June 10 with the International Space Station (ISS) 210 statute miles above the east coast of Australia, engineers in Houston continued to assess imagery of the 4 x 6-inch tear in a thermal blanket on the left Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) Pod.
ARMY AECOM Government Services, Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded a delivery order amount of $47,444,298 as part of a $253,446,296 cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-reimbursable contract for Iraqi army maintenance support services. The work will be performed in Iraq and is expected to be completed by May 31, 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on Feb. 1, 2007. The U.S. Army Sustainment Command, Rock Island, Ill., is the contracting activity (W52P1J-05-D-0004). AIR FORCE
Lockheed Martin filed another protest June 8 in the award of the U.S. Air Force combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter fleet to Boeing, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) acknowledged June 11.
IRAQI AIR: Raytheon has tapped General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to provide an initial lot of five integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) suites for Raytheon's Beechcraft King Air 350ER (Extended Range) aircraft and related ground stations to be supplied to the Iraqi air force under the U.S. Government's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
U.S. Army Col. Charles R. Mehle II has taken over command of Joint Transformation Command - Intelligence (JTC-I). He replaces outgoing commander Navy Capt. Susan M. Chiaravalle.
Col. Kevin McLaughlin has assumed leadership as the first Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office director. McLaughlin will be dual-hatted in his new role as director of the joint ORS Office and as the Space and Missile Systems Center's Space Development and Test Wing commander at Kirtland Air Force Base.
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing a $28 million quick reaction capability contract for delivery of the company's Laser Joint Direct Attack Munition (LJDAM) weapon system. The contract adds 600 laser seekers (400 for the Air Force and 200 for the U.S. Navy) to the services' existing inventory of 500-pound Global Positioning System-guided JDAMs. Initial production deliveries are scheduled to begin early next year and Boeing will have delivered all the systems by June 2009.
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, anticipates that the proposed European missile defense site will be a "contentious issue" when the Senate and House eventually confer on a final fiscal 2008 defense authorization.
The first of four Italian Thales Alenia Space Cosmo SkyMed radar earth observation satellites is performing initial in-orbit checks after launch on a Boeing Delta II 7420-10 June 7. Liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex-2 came at 10:35 p.m. Eastern time at the very end of a 13-minutes launch window. A minor technical glitch delayed the launch a few minutes, but it was cleared and the two-stage rocket performed as planned.
HARSH LIGHT: Last week saw big and small defense contractors alike lambasted and the harsh Washington spotlight may not let up anytime soon. Small business Pinnacle Armor's chief executive was chewed out by the full House Armed Services Committee (HASC) over Army disfavor to its body armor product, while the HASC seapower subcommittee tore into a rule-flanking boat-barrier project allegedly contracted to preferred individuals without producing good results.
EXPLORATION NEEDS: Countries working on a strategy for cooperative space exploration have prepared a list of "challenging technologies" that must be developed by spacefaring nations independently or jointly.
BIGGER DROPS: A 10,000-pound capacity version of the Joint Precision Air Drop System (JPADS) is under development and could see quick fielding following results with a 2,000-pound variant. "There are further plans to deploy more of those (2,000-pound systems) over the next six months, and then rapidly field the 10,000-pound systems as well," says Ed Doucette, director of air delivery and warfighter protection at the U.S. Army's Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center.
FOREIGN IED INTERESTS: Delegations from Israel, Italy and Norway have been touring the U.S. Navy's explosive ordnance disposal technology division in Indian Head, Md., in recent weeks, Navy officials say. A six-member Israel Defense Forces delegation, along with a small component from the U.S. Joint Improvised Explosives Device Defeat Organization, visited June 5. The commander of the Italian Joint Intelligence Center also visited the same day. The Italian army general's tour was part of a larger visit of U.S.
SYNTHETIC ISSUES: By 2016, the U.S. Air Force wants to be buying half of its continental U.S. fuel supply from domestic sources producing a synthetic fuel-blend and using carbon-capture and sequestration technology. That actually could be good news for major U.S. oil companies, as evidenced by Houston-based Shell Oil Products' new $1.1 million order for 315,000 gallons of syn jet fuel. Still, despite promising flight tests starting last fall with a B-52 using Fischer-Tropsch fuel mixed 50-50 with military jet fuel, Capitol Hill is not entirely sold on the idea yet. Why?
APACHE ENGINES: The 18 new AH-64D Apache helicopters ordered by the U.S. Army in April will include upgraded T700 engines. Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) will convert existing GE T700-701 and -701C engines to -701D engines via a kit supplied by General Electric's Lynn, Mass., facility. CCAD expects to complete 540 conversions this year, and each should take between 650 to 750 man-hours. This is part of the Army's announcement in 2004 that it plans to convert its Apache and Black Hawk helicopter fleets to the T700-701D configuration.
UNDERSEA: Lockheed Martin is being awarded a $10.5 million cost plus fixed fee contract for engineering support to the Navy's SQQ-89A(V)15 Undersea Warfare System, DOD announced June 8. Work will be performed in Syracuse, N.Y., and is expected to be completed by September 2008. Naval Sea Systems Command at Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity
PACE OUT: Defense Secretary Roberts Gates says he won't recommend Gen. Peter Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the end of the fiscal year. Congress' displeasure with the war in Iraq was expected to focus Pace's confirmation hearing "on the past rather than the future," Gates said June 8. Instead, he is tapping Adm. Michael Mullen, the chief of naval operations, for the top uniform spot at the Pentagon. Pace, the first Marine Corps general to become joint chiefs chairman, has held the post since the summer of 2005.
DON'T GO: House Science subcommittee chairman Nick Lampson (D-Texas) and David Powner, director of information technology management issues for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, both think it's too early for U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Susan Mashiko to leave her stint as DOD's head of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Powner calls Mashiko's scheduled re-assignment next month "premature," given her success so far in getting the troubled weather satellite effort under control.
Long-awaited decisions about the U.S. Air Force's Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS) are expected some time after the fall, when the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) will deliver an analysis of what mix of space- and ground-based systems will be needed to fulfill the service's evolving space surveillance requirements.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] June 11 - 13 -- Armaments Technology Firepower Symposium and Exhibition, Hilton Parsippany, Parsippany, N.J. For more information call (703) 522-1820, fax: (703) 522-1885 or go to www.ndia.org. June 11 - 14 -- Defense Network Centric Operations 2007, "Improving Information Sharing, Collaboration and Shared Situational Awareness for Mission Success," Hilton Alexandria Mark Center, Alexandria, Va. For more information go to www.dnco2007.com.
