SETTING PRIORITIES: To prevent a delay in the VH-71 presidential helicopter program, House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee leaders say the White House leaned on them. Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, the subcommittee's senior Democrat, says the panel, in marking up its part of the fiscal 2007 Defense authorization bill, recommended trimming $39 million from the program out of concern it is being "pushed too fast" and taking test and development risks that "could be outright dangerous.
Spending on space exploration may bring some short-term economic benefits, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says, but the U.S. and other nations should also consider "our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren" in deciding space investment.
The House, at least, is likely to appropriate for 20 more C-17s despite the Pentagon's request to shut down the production line, according to Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a leading defense appropriator. While Defense Department officials keep telling lawmakers they have to choose between additional C-17s and new aerial refueling tankers, Dicks indicated that legislators seem willing to call it a bluff. "Another 20 is probably where we're headed," Dicks told reporters at a press conference organized by King Publishing and BAE Systems.
STAR MAPPING: A contract for the Gaia global star-mapping mission is expected to be signed off on by the European Space Agency on May 11. In February, EADS Astrium was picked for the award, expected to be worth about 300 million euros ($360 million). Work has already begun on the 557 million euro mission, which is to be launched in 2011. Agency officials say they will also begin studying offers for another new mission, BepiColombo, on May 17.
A-10 UPGRADES: The U.S. Air Force's A-10 remains the service's only fighter-attack aircraft operating out of Afghanistan, defense officials say in congressional testimony. Six Air National Guard squadrons account for 38 percent of the combat-ready A-10s. They are already being upgraded with a new cockpit, data link, targeting pod integration and Joint Direct Attack Munitions capability. Future additions include satellite communications radio and updated Lightweight Airborne Recovery System for combat search and rescue missions.
NEW SAT: One of the first of a new series of Chinese Earth remote sensing spacecraft is undergoing checkout following launch April 26 on a Long March 4B fired from the Taiyuan test center south of Beijing. The 6,000-pound Remote Sensing Satellite-1 (RSS-1) was placed into a 375-mile near polar orbit. The spacecraft was integrated by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology and will be used for land and agricultural surveys. Its launcher was also developed in Shanghai.
MARINE AIR: U.S. Marine Corps aviation is poised to undergo "significant" change over the next decade, defense officials tell lawmakers. The initial step will be in fiscal 2007 when one reserve F/A-18A squadron deactivates. Another was deactivated in FY '05 under integration with the Navy's tactical aircraft fleet. Just two F/A-18A squadrons will remain after next fiscal year.
Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have given the go-ahead to a multinational consortium to prepare for the next step in the development of the alliance's slow-moving effort to field an airborne ground-target-tracking system.
$20M INDECISION: Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says Capitol Hill's inaction in retiring the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier early, as the Navy wants, costs $20 million every month. Warner, who switched sides and backed the Navy in February, is pushing a legislative change to undo a requirement for 12 flattops that he helped enact last year (DAILY, Feb. 23).
PARIS - The NASA-led A-Train constellation, intended to provide the first tri-dimensional view of the atmosphere, will soon begin receiving complementary data on aerosols and cloud particles following the launch of two new satellites after a series of long delays.
NASA exploration managers hope to develop the first draft of a "living" international strategy for exploring the surface of the moon before the end of the year and present it at an exploration conference in December.
A new National Academies report recommends that NASA develop a long-term work force strategy to ensure it can attract and retain the people it needs to implement the agency's space exploration vision over the next 15 years. "The agency's priority to date has been to focus on short-term issues such as addressing the problem of uncovered capacity (i.e., workers for whom the agency has no current work)," says a new interim report from the National Academies' National Research Council (NRC).
VIEW OF SATURN: A view of the ringed planet Saturn, its horizon and the moons Janus and Dione were captured March 10 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. A narrow-angle camera and infrared filter were used from a distance of 1.8 million miles. Dione, the larger of the two moons visible, and Janus stalk the edge-on rings with the planet's horizon beyond. Dione measures 700 miles across, while tiny Janus - blurred by its motion during the imaging - is only 113 miles in diameter. Resolution in the image is 11 miles per pixel.
The House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee voted April 26 to trim recommended spending for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) by $183.5 million, including cuts in the Kinetic Energy Interceptor and Multiple Kill Vehicle programs.
LCS IN SAN DIEGO: The U.S. Navy formally announced April 27 that the first four Littoral Combat Ships, equally built by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics teams, will be homeported at Naval Station San Diego. The decision represents the Navy's push into the Pacific over the coming decades (DAILY, Feb. 6). Navy officials had mentioned the probable homeporting before as they look at staffing the two different LCS hull types, which will not allow for crew swapping between designs (DAILY, Jan. 17).
Saying they were "pushing the envelope," members of the House Armed Services projection forces subcommittee on April 27 added $1.3 billion to the Bush administration's $30.7 billion request for fiscal 2007, and further outlined several unrequested - and likely undesired - requirements for the Defense Department's cargo aircraft fleet and naval force structure.
Steve Perkins has been appointed vice president, Washington operations, in the Information Technology sector. Kent Schneider has been appointed vice president, business development, in the IT sector. David Zolet has been appointed sector vice president and president, defense group, in the IT sector.
Chuck Enoch has been named vice president of space systems for the Intelligence and Information Systems unit in Aurora, Colo. Raymond Kolibaba is being replaced by Enoch. Kolibaba retired.
IRANIAN SURVEILLANCE: Iranian nuclear facilities will come under closer Israeli scrutiny now that Israel's new EROS B1 spacecraft has been launched. The satellite was fired into orbit April 25 onboard a Russian Start-1 booster from the Svobodny test center in the Amur region of Siberia. The launcher is a modified version of the Russian Topol ballistic missile. The spacecraft, with an Elbit/ElOp high-resolution imaging system, was developed by the Israel Aircraft Industries/MBT Space Division. It will be operated by Israel's ImageSat Corp.
AIR FRAME WORK: Northrop Grumman's chairman, CEO and president, Ronald D. Sugar, says his company is still a first-tier airframer, with programs such as the Global Hawk unmanned air vehicle, E-2C Hawkeye and FireScout UAV under way. However, airframe work, which constituted about 80 percent of the company's business 10-15 years ago, now accounts for only 12-15 percent. Northrop Grumman "has a very significant set of information and electronic [systems]" efforts today, making it more of a systems integrator than airframer.
