BRIGHT PROSPECTS: U.S. aerospace and defense companies had a fairly strong earnings season, according to Credit Suisse analysts. Defense firms with Army exposure tend to be top picks looking ahead, they said.
AIR FORCE LAIRCM: Northrop Grumman Corp. has received a $49.5 million contract for delivery of large aircraft infrared countermeasure (LAIRCM) system hardware, support equipment and services for C-17 and C-130 aircraft. The deal includes possible foreign military sales and for other government agencies, as well as installation support for other platforms. The Air Force, according to a May 11 Defense Department announcement, already has obligated $36.7 million.
NGMTI PROJECTS: The Next Generation Manufacturing Technology Initiative, a Pentagon-sponsored public-private partnership focused on breakthrough manufacturing technologies, has identified 17 strategic investment plans. These projects involve more than 100 organizations, with a budget of $430 million over the next decade with industry funding 35 percent, on average. Examples include defense fuel cells manufacturing, digital direct manufacturing and carbon nanotube manufacturing.
WITHHOLDING: Government contractors could see 3 percent of their payments withheld under a provision in the congressional agreement over the tax reconciliation measure that was ratified by the House and Senate last week. Governments, local to federal, would deduct and withhold 3 percent from payments starting in 2011, according to the congressional conference agreement. The Congressional Budget Office said the provision would raise $7 billion from 2011 to 2015. Industry and government lobbyists are expected to try to undo the provision before it takes effect.
The U.S. Navy, and the nation as a whole, suffer "poor capability" to detect, identify, track and understand small ships in global littoral waters, including off the coasts of the United States, and there are "no clear material or nonmaterial solutions from Navy's perspective to address this capability gap," according to a draft Navy policy on maritime domain awareness (MDA).
C&SPACE, a South Korean company, claims it has built and ground tested a 20,000-pound, force-thrust, methane-fueled rocket engine, leapfrogging U.S. efforts to do the same. Company officials said the regeneratively cooled, liquid oxygen/methane power plant is ready for production, and units can be delivered nine months after receipt of an order.
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has ordered $36.9 million worth of Raytheon Co.'s ALR-67(V)3 radar warning receiver systems for its F/A-18E/F aircraft, the company said May 15. The award calls for 30 systems plus spares. Two annual follow-on options call for 54 additional systems and are valued at $72.9 million. Deliveries under the Lot 8 contract will begin in October 2007 and should be done by September 2008. Low-rate initial production began in June 1998, followed by full-rate production in August 1999.
House Science Committee Ranking Member Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) and David Wu (D-Ore.) sent a letter to the White House May 12 urging President Bush to replace the management of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) due to its mishandling of the over budget National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).
ARMY AM General L.L.C., South Bend, Ind., was awarded on May 5, 2006, a $20,704,606 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for the M1151P1 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle. Work will be performed in South Bend, Ind., and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2007. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on July 17, 2000. The Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (DAAE07-01-C-S001). AIR FORCE
REINCARNATION: When the Army and the Navy both backed out of the Aerial Common Sensor intelligence gathering aircraft program, it was a big blow to the signals and communications intercept community. However, there seems to be no end of ways to reconstitute the program. A scheme currently making the rounds in the Pentagon is to divide the mission between manned and unmanned systems. The Air Force would control manned aircraft, supplemented by the high-flying Global Hawk UAV.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is suggesting NATO take over the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, which the U.S. Navy and the Bush administration want to retire early for budget reasons. The move would keep the flattop active to some degree while providing an incentive for NATO allies to further fund and develop their own defense capabilities, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) told Capitol Hill reporters May 11.
DATA SHARING: The U.S. and Australia are set later this month to renew a data-sharing agreement for work on over-the-horizon radar. The agreement coincides with renewed emphasis in the Pentagon on the technology, which can be used to help detect threats from the air and sea, as well as ballistic missiles. Australia has long been a leader in over-the-horizon radar, but the U.S. is now also looking to ramp up work in this area. U.S.
May 17 -- Homeland Defense Journal Training Conference (R) Maritime Security: A Look Ahead, NRECA Hq Building, Executive Conference Center, Arlington, Va. 22203. For more information call (201) 592-6477 or [email protected]. May 17 - 18 -- MRO Military Europe, Berlin. "Held in Conjunction with the Berlin Airshow," For information call Lydia Janow at 212-904-3225 or 1-800-240-7645 ext. 5 or go to http://www.aviationnow.com/conferences.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) is brushing off a White House veto threat over Buy American provisions in the recently passed fiscal 2007 House defense authorization bill. A jovial Hunter, briefing Capitol Hill reporters late May 11 moments after the House overwhelmingly passed the committee's $513 billion policy bill with relatively few amendments, expressed no concern over the Office of Management and Budget's statement of administration policy (DAILY, May 12). 'Not a rubber stamp'
STILL GOING: NASA has decided to continue funding the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and the Mars Exploration Rovers, all of which are well past their originally planned duration and have been funded with periodic mission extensions. Continued operations are expected to cost $47 million in fiscal 2007. The MER rovers, which landed on Mars in early 2004, have lasted nearly 10 times their original 90-day design life.
MACHINE TO MACHINE: The biannual Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., focused on networking and rapid targeting for manned aircraft, but saw only limited participation by unmanned systems. But in the 2008 edition, look for those machine-to-machine networks to start controlling dozens of swarming real and virtual unmanned aerial vehicles cooperating in networks that can find and destroy targets in under two minutes. "We certainly will submit UAV solutions," says George Muellner, Boeing's president of Advanced Systems.
The shuttle orbiter Discovery is being mated to its external tank and solid rocket boosters in the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle assembly building following its move May 12 from Orbiter Processing Facility Bay 3. The rollover had been planned for May 11, but the need to replace a bolt in the harness used to lift Discovery in the VAB forced a one-day delay.
The Defense and State departments should conduct an assessment of U.S. foreign aid to Egypt to determine the impact it is having on equipment modernization and interoperability - among other things - the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a May 12 report.
CONSERVATIVE CHOICE: Boeing turns to a high-profile federal judge, J. Michael Luttig, to replace its general counsel, 57-year-old Douglas Bain, who will retire July 1. (DAILY, May 11). Luttig, 51, brings a considerable political pedigree to the world's largest aerospace company - service in the Reagan White House, a counselor's post at the Justice Department, before appointment as a federal appeals court judge by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Democratic leaders of the House Science Committee are urging the chairman and ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA to increase the agency's fiscal 2007 funding to the level recommended in the NASA authorization act of 2005.
FERRY BOATS: The U.S. Navy in August plans to release procurement information and an initial request for quotations to General Services Administration vendors for replacement ferry boats for the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The new boats will be made of fiberglass and have a maximum length of 78 feet. They will accommodate up to 149 passengers and three crew members, including people with disabilities. The boats will comply with federal accessibility standards and the Coast Guard's safety requirements.
