The U.S. Coast Guard's 12th and final HH-65 helicopter re-engined through the embattled Deepwater program at American Eurocopter in Columbus, Miss., has been delivered as expected to the U.S. Coast Guard Aircraft Repair and Supply Center in Elizabeth City, N.C., Deepwater prime contractor Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS) announced May 31.
CHINA LAUNCHES: A Chinese Long March 2B launched the Yaogan 2 reconnaissance/remote sensing spacecraft into a polar sun-synchronous orbit May 25 from the Jiuquan launch site in the Gobi desert. The flight also carried a small micro-electronics research satellite.
After a near-death experience last December when it lost two of its reaction control wheels, the Goddard Space Flight Center/Johns Hopkins University's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite has come back to life. In April its five-year mission was extended and it recently returned spectacular images from the Large Magellanic Cloud, including one of what astronomers call an "O" star -- the hottest, most luminous and massive of normal stars.
China is making military advances on technological and geographical fronts and is working towards the ability to mount an "information blockade," the recent annual Pentagon report on the Asian powerhouse says. "China is pursuing this ability by improving information and operational security, developing electronic warfare and information warfare capabilities, and denial and deception," according to the Pentagon.
DIRCM SEA KNIGHT: U.S. Naval Air Systems Command is awarding Northrop Grumman $10.8 million to engineer Directed Infrared Countermeasures Systems (DIRCM) onto CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters. The work will be performed in Rolling Meadows, Ill., and is expected to be completed in August 2008, the Defense Department said May 30. The contract was not competitively procured. Employed during the Vietnam War, Boeing's Sea Knight is the oldest-type helicopter currently flying in front-line U.S. military service, Boeing says.
As expected, the amended U.S. Air Force request for proposals (RFP) for its combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter released May 29 was narrow in scope, focusing only on certain lifecycle costs issues identified by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) when it sustained the protests of losing bidders Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky against Boeing's win.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Air Force will greatly step up combat air patrols around Kennedy Space Center in the days leading up to the countdown and planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-117 mission June 8. A mix of F-15s and F-16s from several Air National Guard units assigned to the First Air Force are to be on patrol early next week to thwart any airborne terrorist attack against the shuttle.
The rapid deployment of Solipsys' NORAD Contingency Suite (NCS) air defense command and control (C2) system following the 9/11 attacks created a rift between the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command (ACC) and Electronic Systems Command (ECS) that persists to this day, sources tell the DAILY. The hijacked civilian airliners of 9/11 took advantage of a vulnerability - the inability to integrate NORAD and FAA radars to track aircraft across national airspace - that the Air Force needed to address immediately.
MISSILES IN MAINE: U.S. President Bush and Russian President Putin will discuss Iran, civil nuclear cooperation and missile defense, among other topics, when Putin visits the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, in early July, according to White House representatives. "Cooperation between the United States and Russia is important in solving regional conflicts, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and combating terrorism and extremism," they stressed May 30. Russia continues to vociferously oppose a U.S.
The U.S. Coast Guard expects a refund of significantly less than the $100 million it spent toward eight failed 123-foot patrol boats provided through the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman running the Deepwater program, according to the service's commandant.
Following the House this month, the Senate in June likely will pass legislation that pushes the U.S. Navy toward dual production of Virginia-class submarines starting in fiscal 2010, two years ahead of current controversial plans for long-term shipbuilding. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved its fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill May 25, adding $470 million above the Bush administration's request for advance procurement funding for Virginias.
CHINA INVESTMENT: China's new government-owned foreign exchange investment corporation, currently being formed, plans to invest $3 billion in the Blackstone Group, a New York-based private equity firm increasingly active in the communications satellite sector. Blackstone formerly owned New Skies Satellites, now part of SES, and is now reportedly seeking to buy Intelsat from its private equity owners. It also has performed transactions with General Electric and Northrop Grumman.
IRANIAN GOTCHA: U.S. reconnaissance spacecraft have spotted a training center in Iran that duplicates the layout of the governor's compound in Karbala, Iraq, that was attacked in January by a special unit that killed American and Iraqi solders. The U.S. believes the discovery indicates that Iran was heavily involved in the strike, which used a fake motorcade to gain entrance to the compound. The duplicate layout in Iran allowed the attackers to practice the exact procedures they would use at the real compound, the Defense Department believes.
The Pentagon's planned Africa Command faces "myriad challenges" ranging from where to locate its headquarters to how governments in Africa and elsewhere will react to a new American presence on the continent, a congressional study says.
After watching the lopsided success of U.S. forces in the early operations of recent conflicts, China has started to modernize its own military in a like manner, according to the recent annual Pentagon report on the country's military. What China wants to do, according to the report, is develop the kind of network-linked and information-driven - or "informatized" - forces that are now the hallmark of the United States and its allies.
The U.S. Navy said last week that it will field the first Shipboard Protection System (SPS) aboard a naval surface combatant this month, spearheading a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ship-defense response to the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000. SPS Block 1 will be installed on an unidentified Navy ship in the last three months of 2007. Installation on three other vessels is planned for next year.
HAMPTON, VA. - The X-51A scramjet engine demonstrator has passed critical design review (CDR) and the program has begun procuring flight hardware for a series of Mach 6-7 flight-tests to begin in the summer of 2009. Following a successful series of wind-tunnel tests of a full-scale scramjet here at NASA's Langley Research Center, program officials expect to have a second scramjet, designated the "flight clearance engine," completed by September.
NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) is concentrating some of its technology development funding on near-term items needed to enable the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle's 5-meter diameter ablative heat shield to withstand re-entry at lunar-return velocities. Boeing is developing a heat shield for the Orion crew capsule made of Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) material manufactured by Fiber Materials Inc. of Biddeford, Maine. Engineers at Ames Research Center are testing its performance in high-temperature arc jets.
COMBAT LEASES: The Defense Department is proposing to amend the defense acquisition regulations to address leasing of combat vehicles, ships or aircraft. The proposed rule permits the lease only if the contract will be long-term or will provide for a "substantial" termination liability, according to a May 22 notice in the Federal Register. Public comments are due by July 23.
A U.S. Army general has chided military leaders to make training against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) more of a priority in pre-deployment training, according to a Pentagon publication. "IEDs are the number one killer on the battlefield," said Brig. Gen. Robert Cone, director of the Army's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) center at Fort Irwin, Calif.
