KEI CUTS: Contractors working on the Missile Defense Agency's Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program are lobbying Capitol Hill to stave off proposed cuts to its $406 million fiscal 2007 budget request. KEI has taken hits from authorizers in both chambers of Congress, with the House Armed Services Committee cutting $100 million and the Senate Armed Services Committee removing $200 million. "We're obviously working with the Hill right now to try to explain ... what they get for that investment," says Michael Booen, vice president of advanced missile defense for Raytheon.
NASA R&D: As NASA and the White House work to develop the aeronautics research and development policy that Congress has ordered, they should be careful to ensure the ultimate R&D program matches the needs of its potential users in industry, an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences recommends. The panel, set up at the request of NASA's aeronautics mission directorate, calls for "close relationships with external customers and users, engaging them very early" in planning.
The Coast Guard's next Deepwater recapitalization program contract will run 43 months, not the full 60 months like the current award, reflecting a "good" performance review of the Lockheed Martin Corp./Northrop Grumman Corp. joint venture leading the massive rebuilding effort.
FREMM FRIGATES: European armaments agency Occar has issued a contract to a Franco-Italian team led by Armaris and Orizzonte for the development and production of the first two Fremm frigates intended for Italy. The contract for the first eight French vessels was let in November 2005. Italy is to receive 10 of the multimission frigates and France will get 17.
CINCINNATI - Retrofit of General Electric T700-type engines powering U.S. Army/Boeing AH-64 Apache and Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters into a new 701D configuration is swinging into high gear at the Corpus Christi Army Depot.
Lockheed Martin Corp. is hoping to conduct a test of a proposed defense system against cruise and ballistic missile attacks on the United States, but the window of opportunity is closing as the Missile Defense Agency has yet to obligate $8 million for the effort, according to the company's vice president and managing director of missile defense.
NASA opted for the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68 engine to power its next-generation moon rocket in part because the factory that built the Saturn V can still handle the 33-foot diameter tankage that went into it.
NEXT IN LINE: Wes Bush continues his rapid rise through the corporate ranks at Northrop Grumman. Last week's promotion of the 45-year-old chief financial officer to president of the company positions him as the heir apparent to chairman/CEO Ron Sugar, observers on Wall Street say. Sugar came to Northrop Grumman in 2002 when it acquired TRW, where he was running U.K-based TRW Aeronautical Systems. He became president of Northrop Grumman's space business before being promoted to CFO last year.
SATELLITE SHIPS: The United Nations' International Maritime Organization says its Maritime Safety Committee is discussing the proposed adoption of new regulations on satellite-based long-range identification and tracking (LRIT) of ships under the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has awarded Raytheon $6.7 million to spend 12 months working on the Network Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCADE), a new concept for an air-launched short-range missile interceptor based on the Advanced Medium-Range Air to Air Missile (AMRAAM).
May 23 - 24 -- Spectrum Management for Defense, "Maximizing and Protecting Technology's Greatest Natural Resource," Hilton Arlington, Arlington, Va. For more information go to www.india.org. June 1 -- Bank of America's Aerospace and Defense Supplier Conference, supported by McAleese & Associates, P.C., Four Seasons Hotel, Boston, Mass. For more information or live webcast information call Katie Weisgerber at (646) 366-4800.
A new report from the National Academy of Sciences warns that NASA's plan to refocus most of its aeronautics program on fundamental research, while reasonable given budgetary realities, risks losing the support of crucial industry stakeholders. Without industry support, NASA aeronautics "cannot compete effectively for resources in a constrained budget environment," says the report from the National Academies' National Research Council.
The U.S. Air Force provided details this week on the quarter-scale Hybrid Launch Vehicle (HLV) demonstrator that the service hopes to develop as a follow-on to ongoing HLV trade studies. The suborbital demonstrator, tentatively scheduled to fly in fiscal 2012, will allow the service to "learn a lot about how to integrate the constituent technologies and a lot about the potential cost of a real system," according to Col. James Painter, director of strategic and developmental planning at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center.
NASA formally approved its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to proceed into the next phase at the program's mission confirmation review May 17, the agency announced. The next major milestone is its critical design review later this year. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in October 2008 to map the moon's surface in unprecedented detail and scout for resources that could be used by future astronauts. Its mission will include sending two impactors down into a lunar crater to test the theory that ancient water ice lies buried there (DAILY, April 11).
Sens. John Warner (R-Va.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) have granted their blessing on the Air Force's conversion of the C-130J multiyear award toward a regular contract bearing traditional Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) oversight.
NATO EXERCISE: The NATO Response Force plans to conduct a small exercise in June in Cape Verde to continue proving its readiness, Lt. General Horst Martin, deputy commander of Allied Air Component Command Ramstein, NATO, said May 18. Martin was attending Aviation Week's MRO Military Europe Conference in Berlin. Cape Verde is a group of island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa. The NATO Response Force, created in 1999, is comprised of land, air and sea components and is designed to deploy quickly anywhere in the world.
BERLIN - The U.K.'s Hercules Integrated Operations Support program for 50 C-130Ks and C-130Js "has removed the inertia from the system and saved money," Group Capt. Mark Hobbs, Hercules IPT leader for the Defense Logistics Organization, said May 17. He said this is because "there is no need to have everyone pulling in different directions - it's a fully integrated system." Hobbs was attending Aviation Week's MRO Military Europe Conference.
ROCKETDYNE: NASA has picked the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68 engine to power its planned heavy-lift Cargo Launch Vehicle (CaLV) on future missions to the moon and beyond, rejecting a "production" version of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). NASA says it picked an upgraded version of the engine, already used on Boeing's Delta IV, because at $20 million a copy it represents "a dramatic cost savings" over the SSME, which is also manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.
The British Defense Ministry has used the ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle for a series of naval warfare trials as part of its Joint UAV Experimentation Program (JUEP). Trial Vigilant Viper was conducted off the west coast of Scotland, with the ScanEagle launched and recovered by the British navy's HMS Sutherland, a Type 23 frigate. Imagery from the UAV was monitored in real time by a Sea King Mk7 helicopter.
The White House on May 18 formally asked Congress for $1.948 billion for boosted border security, a move that could derail additional funds from the Coast Guard's recapitalization effort while triggering delays to future military acquisition and research and development.
Researchers will analyze isotopes of oxygen and other elements found in the tiny fragments of the comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust mission to determine which originated in the solar system and which formed around other stars. Preliminary data presented at a three-day workshop near San Francisco this month suggest the samples returned Jan. 15 contain grains of refractory materials formed at high temperatures near both the sun and other stars.
Johnson Space Center engineers are beginning to use a rudimentary Crew Exploration Vehicle simulator for rapid prototyping of CEV cockpit displays and window configurations.
