ARMY General Dynamics, Marion, Ill., was awarded on Sept. 1, 2006, a $13,710,629 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for 20mm PGU-28A/B SAPHEI cartridges. The work will be performed in Marion, Ill., and is expected to be completed by July 31, 2008. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were three bids solicited on April 5, 2005, and three bids were received. The U.S. Army Sustainment Command, Rock Island, Ill., is the contracting activity (W52P1J-05-C-0073). AIR FORCE
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas - Sept. 11, a dark day in U.S. history, took on a brighter significance as assembly resumed on the long-delayed International Space Station and work started on the space shuttle replacement that may someday take humans back to the moon and on to Mars.
The Hubble Space Telescope collected a first-ever image of the icy moon Ariel transiting the surface of Uranus, with the white moon casting its dark shadow on the planet's cloud tops. Because Uranus spins on an axis almost directly in line with its orbital plane, and its moons orbit above the planet's equator, such transits are visible only every 42 years. In 1965, the last time an Ariel transit would have been visible from Earth, there weren't any telescopes with sufficient resolution to image it.
House and Senate funding changes for the EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft will delay its deployment and could cost more money in the long run, according to a letter from U.S. Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.) to the leadership of the House Appropriations Committee. The Growlers are meant to replace the aging EA6B Prowler electronic warfare (EW) fleet. All services have been depending on Prowlers to provide jamming cover for aircraft fleets in combat zones, as well as fly other EW missions.
Australia's Defense Ministry has finalized a contract to purchase the Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) for its future cruise missile requirement. The project is estimated to be worth more than $300 million. Deliveries to the Royal Australian Air Force will begin in 2009 and extend through 2011. JASSM will initially be integrated on the F/A-18 family of aircraft via a software update. The missile may also be integrated on up to 100 Joint Strike Fighters to be bought by Australia.
RIGHT PLAN: In response to a recent Congressional Research Service report questioning the Navy's acquisition strategy for buying its new destroyers and cruisers, the service says it has the right plan for its needs. "We are aware of CRS's review of the Navy's shipbuilding plan," a Navy spokesman said. "The Navy believes the 30-year shipbuilding plan submitted by the secretary of the Navy to Congress is properly funded and executable.
STILL NEEDED: As Iraqi military units take over control of various parts of the country, U.S. and coalition aircraft will still be needed for operations there, the Pentagon acknowledged Sept. 8. The missions that American aircraft are still needed for include close-air support, medevac and helicopter operations, said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Turner II, commander of Multinational Division-North and the 101st Airborne Division.
NEW MIG: Russian combat aircraft manufacturer MiG could have a prototype of a lightweight fifth-generation fighter ready by around 2010, building on classified design work it has been carrying out for several years. The design, sometimes known within the company as the Light Multifunction Frontal Aircraft, is intended to provide a successor aircraft in the class of the MiG-29 Fulcrum.
ATHLETE: A team of 100 NASA scientists and engineers will brave the heat of Arizona's high desert Sept. 12 to test a new rover prototype that could assist future lunar explorers. The team will travel to the Meteor Crater and Cinder Lake area near Flagstaff, which serves as a surrogate lunar surface, to test the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer).
The Defense Department will request $3.5 billion for counter-improvised explosive device (IED) efforts for fiscal 2007, the Pentagon effort's leader said Sept. 7. In a meeting with a specially-selected, limited group of reporters, Montgomery Meigs asserted that the Joint IED Defeat Organization was making progress. "You are not going to solve this overnight," the retired Army general added in a DOD statement released later. The DOD statement said the department is spending almost $3.5 billion this year.
TANKER RFP: Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg says the much-awaited request for proposals for the U.S. Air Force's next-generation tanker competition should be out by year's end. He's not yet reviewed the draft of the Air Force's RFP, but says it is forthcoming. Krieg would not take a position on whether the Defense Department will buy a mixed fleet - dividing the work between Boeing and a Northrop Grumman-EADS North America team. "It depends on how mixed mixed is," he says.
Sept. 12 - 14 -- 11th India International Defense/Civil Equipment & Aerospace Systems Conference & Exhibition, Ashok Hotel & Conference Center, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi. For more information email [email protected]. Sept. 13 - 14 -- 2006 European Air & Port Security Expo, Brussels. For more information call +44 (208) 842-9175 or go to www.aps-expo.com.
ASKING A LOT: The centerpiece of U.S. efforts to fashion a better maritime security posture - the "National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness" completed in October of 2005 - asks the nearly impossible, says a recent issue brief by the Lexington Institute. That picture includes a "near-real time, dynamically tailorable, network-centric virtual information grid shared by all U.S.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT: The July launch failure of India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is likely to set back development of the heavier-lift Mk. 3 version, since engineers from the future effort have been pulled off those activities to help fix the near-term issue. First launch of the Mk. 3 was nominally expected in 2008 or 2009, but at least a six-month delay can now be expected, according to an Indian official. The Indian Space Research Organization hopes to have GSLV back in operation in six to 10 months.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Congress is inching closer to establishing a Web site for public scrutiny of how most federal dollars are spent, including grants, contracts, subgrants, subcontracts, loans, awards and other financial assistance above $25,000. Classified national security spending, of course, would be exempt. The Senate late Sept. 7 unanimously passed the so-called Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. The House already approved similar legislation, the Federal Spending and Assistance bill.
Opposition by NASA Flight Crew Operations, representing the Astronaut Office, to the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis with a failed hydrogen fuel level sensor was a key factor Sept. 8 in swaying opinion in the Kennedy Space Center Launch Control Center (LCC) to scrub the launch over recommendations by other managers who wanted to proceed. NASA Mission Management Team lead LeRoy Cain, the Kennedy launch integration manager who was also the Johnson Space Center re-entry flight director during the Columbia accident, also opposed the launch.
Weapon systems that would essentially intercept rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) before they hit Future Combat Systems vehicles -- or even existing ground vehicles -- are not yet deployable, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said Sept. 8 at a Pentagon briefing. The Army and a Raytheon-led contractor team are developing a hit-avoidance anti-RPG system that is scheduled for design and other reviews in November, Army officials said. But no such anti-RPG system has yet passed muster enough for U.S. Army standards, Sorenson said.
LAUNCH DELAYED: SES Global says the launch of AMC-14 will be delayed until early 2008 as engineers study a possible payload reconfiguration that would allow the satellite to serve a new Ku-band slot at 77 degrees west longitude owned by a Mexican joint venture, QuetzSat, set up by SES's Americom unit and Grupo Medcom last year. If agreed to by EchoStar, which owns the satellite, the plan would allow AM-14 to occupy that slot until a dedicated satellite, Quetzsat-1, is ready. Quetzat-1 was to be ordered toward year's end, but the purchase could be delayed.
More unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- or what the U.S. Army calls unmanned aerial systems (UASs) -- has meant more accidents for the service, Army officials say. "The inclusion of UAS accident data into aviation accident statistics has increased our Class B and Class C rates," an Army statement said. "This is exacerbated by the increase in the size of the Army's UAS fleet and its increased operational tempo during the war on terror."
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has opted to end the X-50A Dragonfly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program, which was attempting to pioneer a new type of helicopter capable of stopping its rotor in flight and cruising as a fixed-wing jet until it lost both of its flight prototypes in crashes.
