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.
China already has developed and deployed state-of-the-art air and sea forces that could give U.S. counterparts quite a battle, the Pentagon's recent annual report on the country's military says, and could deploy an aircraft carrier in the next decade or shortly thereafter. China is sinking big money into its military. "The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimates China's total military-related spending for 2007 could be as much as $85 billion to $125 billion," according to the report (See charts p. 6-7).
Despite the U.S. Air Force's current preoccupation with developing a fixed airspace defense command and control (C2) system to defend North America, the real emerging world market is in mobile systems, service and industry sources say. At the same time, the Air Force's plan to evolve its troubled Battle Control System Fixed (BCS-F) program into a mobile system will give BCS-F prime Thales Raytheon Systems (TRS) a leg up in the mobile market as well.
Virtually unanimous approval of 2006 audit results by Safran shareholders, combined with strong backing from Supervisory Board President Francis Mer, have buoyed the position of Safran Chairman Jean-Paul Bechat, perhaps signaling he may stay on beyond his planned September retirement date. The shareholders okayed the findings of independent auditors who concluded in April that problems at Safran's Sagem Defense & Security division were imputable to management snafus by Sagem officials who have since been dismissed, and not to Bechat.
Congressional auditors have released a damning report concerning the U.S. Navy and Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) abbreviated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) program, telling lawmakers that the Navy failed to effectively contract for and oversee the program and did not hold prime contractor Northrop Grumman accountable.
ARMY Fabritech Inc., East Alton, Ill., was awarded on May 18, 2007, an $11,370,375 firm-fixed-price contract for spare parts for the CH-47 helicopter. The work will be performed in East Alton and is expected to be completed by May 3, 2010. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were two bids solicited on March 9, 2007, and one bid was received. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-07-C-0141).
AIRBORNE TORPEDO: Lockheed Martin announced May 29 that it successfully demonstrated its High-Altitude Anti-Submarine Warfare Weapons Concept (HAAWC), which would deliver an Mk-54 lightweight torpedo from a P-3 aircraft from as high as 20,000 feet altitude. The fully functional MK-54 torpedo, with testing weight replacing the warhead, was recently launched from the P-3's internal weapons bay flying above 8,000 feet, the company said.
SECOND LOOKS: As NASA wraps up six months of system requirements reviews for its next human spacecraft, the Orion/Ares I combination, agency managers are starting to ponder how the vehicles could be used for science missions that wouldn't necessarily go to the moon, or even be manned. Science chief Alan Stern says his office is considering a workshop or other mechanism to get the word out to scientists on the capabilities of the new space "infrastructure" to visit asteroids or other near-Earth objects, and to find out what scientists really want to do.
EADS Astrium says testing for the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), intended to resupply the International Space Station, will be completed in time to ensure an end-of-year launch.
North Korea fired ground-to-ship Silkworm missiles into the sea May 25, possibly trying to get international attention but earning no more than a shrug from Japan. South Korea thinks it was an annual exercise and Japanese Prime Minister Abe says the incident is "not a serious issue for Japan's security." A U.S. satellite detected the launches of the Chinese-built missiles, which are derivatives of the Soviet P-15 Termit (SS-N-2 Styx) developed in the 1950s.
MAKING IT WORK: U.S. space scientists will set their own priorities for future space- and Earth-science missions, including "trip wires" for killing missions that run over budget. Alan Stern, NASA's new associate administrator for science, says the agency will rely on the decadal survey process run by the National Academies to plan its future program, but with much more emphasis on accurate cost estimates at the start and the trip-wire approach to cost control once mission development is underway.
RSRM TEST: Engineers from Alliant Techsystems and NASA are evaluating the results of a two-minute ground test of a four-segment Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM), both to validate its continuing performance on the space shuttle and evaluate it for its role on the planned Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle. The two-minute test generated average thrust of 2.6 million pounds and was considered a success.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] June 4 - 6 -- AVIATION WEEK's Defense Suppliers Forum, "Mitigating Supply Chain Risk Through Improved Compliance and Contracting Programs," Washington Marriott, Washington, D.C. For more information call Rachelle Young at (212) 904-2779, email: rachelle_ [email protected] or go to http://www.aviationweek.com/forums.
NO TEST: A long-delayed Missile Defense Agency (MDA) ground-based interceptor test failed to take place May 25 when the target missile launched from Kodiak, Alaska didn't reach its proper altitude. A few minutes after launch an anomaly between the first and second stages caused the target to fall over 600 miles short of the intercept zone. The interceptor missile was not launched because the target didn't reach a high enough altitude for the system to classify it as a ballistic missile threat, according to MDA. The test will be rescheduled for summer.
SOLAR STORMS: Future astronauts visiting the moon and Mars should have as much as an hour of advance notice when dangerous solar storms are approaching thanks to measurements from NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) combined with a new solar weather prediction technique, the agency says. Such warning will give astronauts time to seek shelter and ground controllers time to safeguard satellites. Solar radiation storms are swarms of energetic particles accelerated to high speed by explosions on the sun.
The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) last week started a showdown with House counterparts by not just authorizing full funding for the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), but adding $115 million on top of it -- a far cry from the House's roughly 25 percent cut from FCS for fiscal 2008.
The U.S. Defense Department has commissioned a study examining export control regulations and their effect on U.S. efforts to work with friendly governments while maintaining control over sensitive technology. A Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has been selected to conduct the study, which is expected to last about eight months. The study will review the relationships among globalization, technology innovation, defense relationships, export controls and national security.
REPURPOSED: Expect decisions by the end of September on proposals to reuse the "mother ships" from NASA's Deep Impact and Stardust missions to visit secondary targets. Both are still functioning, and there are proposals to use the Deep Impact spacecraft to visit another comet, and to send the Stardust comet-sample-return mother ship to Comet Tempel 1 to take another look into the 70-foot deep crater blasted in it with a copper projectile from Deep Impact (DAILY, July 6, 2005).
