Lee Cooper has been appointed vice president of business development for Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC. Doug Greenlaw has been named director of Raytheon Virtual Technology Corp. Kristin Hilf has been appointed vice president of community relations.
Mike Cave has been appointed vice president of business strategy and marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Nicole Piasecki has been named president of Boeing Japan. Lianne Stein has been appointed vice president of Boeing International and president of Boeing Germany.
The Defense Department has made progress in transforming its business operations, but continues to lack a comprehensive, enterprise-wide approach to its overall business transformation effort, the U.S. comptroller general told senators Nov. 16.
Two of the three crewmen on the International Space Station are scheduled to venture outside on Nov. 22 for a little golf. Shortly after emerging for a six-hour spacewalk at about 5 p.m. Central time, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin plans to hook his feet into an extravehicular activity (EVA) ladder on the Russian-side Pirs docking compartment and take a one-handed swing to send up to three golf balls hurtling away over the aft end of the Zvezda service module.
NASA this week completed the system requirements review (SRR) for the overall Constellation Program, which includes the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares I and V rockets, marking the first SRR the agency has performed on a new human-carrying spacecraft since a comparable review for the space shuttle in October 1972.
The U.S. Air Force continues to resist a proposed unified medical command for the armed services, the Air Force surgeon general reiterated Nov. 15. Lt. Gen. James Roudebush, M.D., asserted during a Capitol Hill breakfast gathering that maintaining three service commands, including the Army and Navy, could provide advantages against so-called asymmetric threats that predominate Pentagon thinking nowadays.
James Halsell, a former NASA astronaut and space shuttle program launch integration manager, has been named vice president and program manager of the ARES I upper stage team.
General Dynamics Electric Boat has been awarded a $15.6 million U.S. Navy contract to develop advanced submarine technologies for current and future undersea platforms, according to the Pentagon and the company. Electric Boat will perform Concept Formulation (CONFORM) studies over manufacturability, maintainability, survivability, hydrodynamics, acoustics and materials, as well as research and development in manning, hull integrity, performance, ship control, logistics, weapons handling and safety.
CHAIRMAN MURTHA: Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), the ranking Democratic defense appropriator, will become chairman of that subcommittee when Democrats take over the 110th Congress. Murtha lost an internal race Nov. 16 for House majority leader to current Democratic whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) by a vote of 149-86 of 110th House Democrats. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), already the House Democratic leader, was unanimously elected by the Democratic caucus to become the first woman as House speaker.
IRANIAN THREAT: R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence who advocates for nonviolent regime change in Iran, said Nov. 15 that he thought the window of opportunity for nonmilitary options against potential Iranian nuclear weapons was closing. Woolsey said at an American Foreign Policy Council briefing on Capitol Hill that the only thing worse than a military strike on Iran over its nuclear development would be for Iran to possess nuclear weaponry.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Despite their victory on Election Day, Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services believes that a Democratic-controlled Congress - and the departure of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary - is unlikely to impact the health of the aerospace and defense industry because of a number of longer-term issues it is facing, analysts said Nov. 15.
The incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee wants to maintain jurisdiction over the Coast Guard's non-Homeland Security operations. Rep. James Oberstar, (D-Minn.), just elected to a 17th term, is currently the senior Democrat on the Transportation panel and expected to become committee chairman when his party officially takes control of Congress in January.
Astronomers want to use the same sort of cueing techniques that allow them to pinpoint gamma ray bursts to monitor the moon's surface for ongoing geological activity. Although the moon has long been thought to be essentially dead geologically for more than 3 billion years, the authors of a paper in the journal Nature suggest that a heel-shaped surface feature may have been produced as recently as 1 million years ago.
The U.S. Air Force and Boeing are poised to launch the third of a new series of Lockheed Martin Global Positioning System spacecraft on Nov. 16, or Nov. 17 if necessary if poor weather develops at Cape Canaveral as expected. Liftoff Nov. 16 of the $75 million mission is set for 2:17 p.m. Eastern time onboard a Boeing Delta II fired off Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 17A. A Nov. 17 launch would be at about the same time. The flight will be the second GPS processed and launched by the 45th Space Wing in the last two months.
Prime contractor Lockheed Martin and other program officials for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) have proved that they cut down on schedule and technical risk to develop the U.S. Marine Corps' version of the aircraft, and the service now wants to ensure that the jet is developed as planned, according to Marine aviation officers.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has shifted $126.2 million in internal funding to help pay for a program restructuring and additional testing for the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) Block 6 test satellite program. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for STSS, a planned constellation of satellites for tracking missiles and re-entry vehicles through the boost, midcourse and terminal phases of flight. STSS previously was known as the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Low, an Air Force-led program that was shelved in the late 1990s.
The Defense Department and the military branches focus too much on awarding contracts for services, up 72 percent in a decade, and rarely know whether contractor performance meets expectations or even if users' needs are truly translated into the requirements underpinning contracts, according to the Government Accountability Office. "As a result, DOD is not in a position to determine whether investments in services are achieving their desired outcomes," the GAO said.
