CONCERNED: Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the House Armed Services Committee chairman until January, says he's concerned about Democrats' longstanding skepticism of the ground-based mid-course missile defense program. "I would hope that they would look at the North Korean launches a few months ago and understand that we live in an age of missiles, and missile defense is now an imperative for the U.S.," Hunter tells the Daily. He also hopes Rep.
Lockheed Martin delivered the 100th Aegis Weapon System Nov. 27 to the U.S. Navy during a ceremony in which Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen announced that the destroyer receiving the system will be named Wayne E. Meyer, after the retired rear admiral who is widely regarded as the "Father of Aegis."
ENGINEERING SUPPORT: The U.S. Navy's Strategic Systems Program has awarded the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Mass., a potentially $201.89 million contract to provide tactical engineering support for the United States and United Kingdom Mk 6 guidance system. The award, which was not competitively procured, runs through September 2007, according to a Nov.22 announcement by the Defense Department.
ARMY, NAVY CONTRACTS: BAE Systems said Nov. 27 that it has received two contracts from the U.S. Navy totaling more than $25 million for missile launching canisters, as well as a $27.3 million contract modification from the U.S. Army for systems technical support and logistics services for Bradley Combat Systems. The first Navy contract, for $16.3 million, includes manufacturing 155 new Mk 13 canisters - the first purchase of new Mk 13 canisters in seven years - and refurbishing 75 legacy canisters.
INTERCOMMUNICATION SYSTEM: The U.S. Coast Guard has awarded Griffon Corp.'s Telephonics Corp. a potentially five-year, $6 million contract for the TruLink Wireless Intercommunication System. The Coast Guard plans to install a Wireless Crew Communication System (W-CCS) on its fleet of 47-foot Motor Life Boats. Current noise conditions onboard the boats prevents normal conversational voice - crewmembers must alter normal routine, move close to each other and shout or yell in each other's ears to communicate.
Marine Corps aircraft have been flying more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions to support ground forces in Iraq, Marine Col. Robert Walsh, deputy assistant commandant for aviation, said in a Pentagon Channel interview last week. While such transformation is important, the Marine commandant has given clear guidance that the entire force stay versed in conventional capabilities, Walsh stressed.
COMMANDANT CONCERNS: Individual Marines are stressed by ongoing operations, and institutionally the Marine Corps is beginning to show signs of strain, the new Marine Corps commandant said Nov. 22. At a roundtable discussion with the Pentagon press corps, Gen. James Conway said that if current operations tempo continues with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Corps may need to grow. The Marine Corps currently has 180,000 troops. Conway would not say how much the service would or should expand.
The Air Force apparently has rushed its Battle Control System-Fixed (BCS-F) - the national airspace security system meant to prevent aviation terrorism - by bypassing usual Pentagon acquisition deadlines and deploying the network before it was ready. The DAILY also has learned that while the initial contract was worth $30 million, the full cost of the network could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The new information comes after The DAILY reported last month that the BCS-F was over cost and behind its original schedule (DAILY, Oct. 25).
Lockheed Martin has lost its bid to be reinstated to the competition to provide the U.S. Army and Air Force with a Joint Cargo Aircraft. The program could involve up to 100 cargo aircraft worth $5 billion. Lockheed Martin pitched the only four-engine design - a version of its standard body C-130J. The other competitors offered twin-engine aircraft - the C-295 from Raytheon/EADS and the C-27J from L-3 Communications/Alenia North America/Boeing.
The Defense Department's latest calculation on major defense acquisition program cost, schedule and performance has risen more than $4.8 billion, mostly due to accounting changes, to more than $1.6 trillion total, according to DOD data provided to Congress.
NODE REPLACEMENT: NASA will replace one of the SGI Altix 3700 nodes on the Columbia supercomputer at the Ames Research Center with a Dual Core SGI Altix 4700 system, a move that provides the same computing power while using less space and power. The Altix 3700 is powered by a 512 single-core Intel Itanium 2 processor, while the 4700 uses a 256 dual-core Itanium 2 processor with 1 terabite of system memory.
RAPTOR AWARD: The U.S. Air Force has issued Lockheed Martin Corp. a firm-fixed-price contract modification for more than $1 billion for 23 F-22 aircraft and one replacement test aircraft under the company's Lot 6 full-production contract. At this time, almost $1.5 billion has been obligated, according to a Nov. 21 contract announcement by the Defense Department. The work is to be completed by Feb. 2010.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Cray Inc. and IBM to proceed to the next phase of the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program, which is aimed at accelerating the state of the art in supercomputing. Between now and the end of Phase III in 2010, Cray will receive $250 million total and IBM $244 million. The initial award value was $25 million for Cray and $12.2 million for IBM. Sun Microsystems also proposed for Phase III but was not selected.
EGYPTIAN BOATS: Almost a year after awarding VT Halter Marine Inc. a functional design award, the Naval Sea Systems Command is issuing the company a $165.5 million contract modification for long lead time materials for detail design and construction of three Egyptian Fast Missile Crafts. The efforts required include all hardware, software, licensing, design engineering, production engineering, manufacturing, test engineering, technical documentation, and program management through factory acceptance testing and shipyard delivery, according to a Nov.
NASA plans to use the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover (MER) to listen for any signals from the silent Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) satellite, but hopes are dimming for regaining contact with the decade-old orbiter. "We believe that the prospect of recovery of MGS is not looking very good at all," said Fuk Li, Mars program manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "But ... MGS has been a good friend. The data it's collected has taught us a lot about Mars."
NATO member countries are likely to agree to common funding of more and more aspects of alliance operations in the future, according to Daniel Freed, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. The push toward common funding has been led primarily by Poland and Spain, Freed said during a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington Nov. 21.
