Aug. 20 - 23 -- The Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States 35th General Conference & Exhibition, Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information go to www.ngaus.org. Aug. 21 - 25 -- 39th Annual Rotary Wing Technology, "A Comprehensive Short Course in Rotary Wing Technology," Penn State University Park, University Park, Penn. For more information go to www.outreach.psu.edu/C&I/RotaryWing/.
NEW OSPREYS: The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command awarded the Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office in Amarillo, Texas, a $200.1 million undefinitized contract action to begin fabrication and delivery of three MV-22 tiltrotor production aircraft. The new work should be finished by December 2009, the Pentagon announced late Aug. 3. Meanwhile, six Block B aircraft have been delivered to date, with two more due before the end of the month, a Navair representative said recently (DAILY, Aug. 4).
MORE C-17S: Britain and the United States have agreed to a deal in which the Royal Air Force will acquire a fifth Boeing C-17 in 2008 and also purchase four of the aircraft that it now leases. British Defense Undersecretary Tom Watson announced the agreement with Boeing on Aug. 4. At the same time, he confirmed that the four aircraft the U.K. air force now operates will be purchased outright when the present lease arrangement expires in '08. The RAF has long harbored ambitions to add to its four-strong fleet, and had hoped to eventually field eight of the aircraft.
Michael Bertin has been named vice president and director of compliance and contracts. Ed Clements has been appointed director of R & D engineering. Steve Leonard has been appointed vice president and director of operations.
TANKS RESET: General Dynamics Land Systems said Aug. 2 that it has been awarded a $46 million contract to provide parts for the reset of 72 U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks. Working with the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, the company will modify, repair and service the vehicles to their pre-combat condition. The work is set to begin next year and will be done in Anniston; Tallahassee, Fla.; Sterling Heights, Mich.; and Eynon, Pa. Final assembly will take place at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center, Lima, Ohio.
The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command has ordered 72 IAC 1209 Modern Signal Processing Unit (MSPU) Health & Usage Management Systems (HUMS) for the AH-64 Apache helicopter, manufacturer Intelligent Automation Corp. has announced. During recent independent testing, the system demonstrated an increase in operational readiness and availability while decreasing maintenance costs and aircraft downtime, according to the company.
International Space Station Expedition 13 crewman Army Col. Jeff Williams and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany completed about a 6-hour extravehicular activity (EVA) Aug. 3 for various ISS installation and maintenance tasks.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), a defense appropriator and an advocate for the Northrop Grumman-EADS team vying to build new Air Force refueling tankers, dropped an amendment effort Aug. 3 to restore a part of the Bush administration's budget request for the program.
SUPPORT SERVICES: The U.S. National Guard Bureau said Aug. 3 that it has awarded General Dynamics Information Technology a blanket purchase agreement worth up to $20 million to provide professional support services to all National Guard divisions. The support includes civilian and military personnel operations, force modernization and planning, safety advisory, and logistics management.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin predicts that the U.S. may be able to mount a manned mission to Mars by the late 2020s, following its scheduled return to the moon around 2018. "We will then be in possession of a heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is of course the key element for any approach to going to Mars," Griffin told attendees at the Mars Society's annual convention in Washington Aug. 3. The total mass-to-orbit required for a Mars mission is roughly comparable to the mass of the International Space Station, Griffin said.
The U.S. Marine Corps is considering upgrading the ice protection system for the Block A MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor in the wake of the July 10 incident in which ice in an engine prompted an Osprey to perform a precautionary landing while traveling over the Atlantic to participate in the Farnborough Air Show.
The U.S. military is going to need more spacecraft or unmanned aircraft - and a quick, accurate network to tie them with today's weapons systems - to provide the kind of timely intelligence required for those weapons, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says. The problem, though, is that the developmental programs for satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have run beyond deadline and over budget, causing greater congressional scrutiny.
President Bush is asking Congress to drop a mandate to notify six congressional committees before any transfer of defense articles or services, other than intelligence services, to another nation or an international organization for international peacekeeping, peace enforcement or humanitarian-assistance operations.
A Defense Department funds reprogramming worth $6.7 billion essentially agreed to by the Senate could fully fund the Army's $17 billion readiness needs as outlined recently by the service's chief, according to Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). The reset requirements, resulting from continuing combat operations, include repair, depot and procurement activities. They are expected as the military services face growing reset and recapitalization bills already. Dodd sponsored the move Aug. 2 with five other Democratic senators.
The Justice Department will not seek criminal prosecution of Boeing Co. for its hiring of a retired Air Force general-level officer under the $615 million so-called global settlement, officials and executives have clarified. "The agreement between Boeing and the DOJ specifies that the government will not in the future seek criminal charges against Boeing related to the corporation's 'retention of a retired USAF general officer and his activities while retained by Boeing relating to the Tanker program or otherwise,'" Boeing said.
European scientists are applying data-coordination lessons learned during the Huygens probe's descent onto Titan to future planetary exploration missions, including the Rosetta mission to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Although a command error deprived Huygens mission scientists of the highly stable radio signal they had counted on for tracking wind profiles in the moon's cloudy atmosphere, an experimental array of 18 radio telescopes on Earth was able to fill in by following the descent module's carrier wave.
The Pentagon supports a funding allowance or funding bridge proposed by Congress to take care of some mounting war costs, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Aug. 2. Congress is talking about setting aside about $13 billion for extra military needs, especially for equipment replacement and repairs or resets, Rumsfeld said (See related story). "That should help with the reset cost." The two biggest reset requests come from the Army and U.S. Marine Corps. The Army requirement for reset in fiscal year 2007 is $17.1 billion.
NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter will return to the north pole of Titan for additional radar surveys, but program scientists are convinced the spacecraft's cloud-penetrating sensor found lakes of liquid methane there during a July 22 flyby. Radar returns from the area show several well-defined dark patches - indicative of an extremely smooth surface - with features that appear to be channels carved by liquids flowing into them.
Aware that communications systems could be heavily damaged or destroyed during a natural disaster, Coast Guard officials had long-standing plans ahead of Hurricane Katrina that did not rely on communications systems and allowed personnel to act independently or with limited guidance from commanding officers, according to congressional investigators.
The Senate has agreed to prohibit award fees to defense contractors for performance that does not meet contract requirements, as well as add $13.1 billion to the off-budget "bridge fund" for early fiscal 2007 supplemental funding for military operations worldwide for Army and Marine Corps readiness.
Neither the House nor the Senate passed or even debated resolutions of disapproval by the deadline last week to block the Bush administration's proposed $5 billion sale of F-16 fighters and weapons to Pakistan, although Democrats offered plenty of criticism over arms sales to the region and the administration's handling of the deal.
The chief of the U.S. National Guard Bureau, Army Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, said Aug. 1 that he is pushing to transition the Guard's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) training flights into operational flights for border security along the Mexican border. "Instead of just flying them around, let's use some of the training for some operational good," he told Aviation Week. "I would like to move as fast as we can in that."
