The Senate voted April 26 to move $2 billion from the Bush administration's roughly $68 billion military supplemental request for spending on border security, including $600 million for Coast Guard acquisition and $790 million for recapitalizing the Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine (CBP A&M) division.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command officials expect to choose one winning team by mid-May for a seven-year, $450 million "FastTrack" program to find, engineer and replace increasingly obsolescent parts for aging legacy aircraft across the Defense Department, they told The DAILY. Contract award - which will be to one team led by a U.S. prime contractor - has been held up by a lack of contracting personnel, said Bob Ernst, head of Navair aging aircraft and the chairman of the DOD's Joint Council on Aging Aircraft.
Despite some hope that U.S. Air Force planners would refine their requirements for the new KC-X tanker, a much-anticipated request for information has actually broadened the range of options to include refurbishing old tankers and buying refueling by the hour from commercial vendors.
Some 200 "strategic thinkers" from a dozen nations, as well as from universities and commercial interests big and small, are meeting in Washington this week for a series of skull sessions aimed at developing a "global strategy" for human exploration of the lunar surface. The closed-door workshop hopes to begin identifying what strengths and requirements different nations and groups of nations might bring to exploring Earth's natural satellite, and how different national objectives could be melded into a broader cooperative effort.
Export controls, "Buy America" requirements and soaring health care costs will top the agenda when aerospace industry executives blitz Washington on April 26. About 60 representatives from aerospace companies are expected to head to Capitol Hill for more than two dozen meetings with lawmakers and congressional aides. The meetings, mostly with members of the House, were arranged by the Aerospace Industries Association as part of its annual Supplier Management Council meeting in nearby Arlington, Va.
HOUSE DIVIDED: Conservative House lawmakers and several right-leaning Washington think tank representatives on April 25 slammed the fiscal 2006 supplemental legislation moving through Congress. In particular, members of the House Republican Study Committee and their watchdog allies criticized the Senate, where appropriators already have added more than $14 billion over the House's $92 billion bill.
A U.S.-Canada strategic planning organization recommends that both countries take a continental approach to defense and homeland security, the group's leaders said April 24. The Bi-National Planning Group (BPG) made 62 recommendations overall, including calls for better intelligence and information sharing, as well as joint training and exercises.
The U.S. government plans to launch the standalone replacement satellite for Landsat by 2009 or 2010, while offering incentives to industry that might get the spacecraft up even sooner and reduce the chance of a data gap, according to an official with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). "The [request for proposals] is scheduled to be released in the third quarter of calendar year 2006," said OSTP's Gene Whitney during the Inside Aerospace symposium in Washington April 25. "There are incentives being offered for early launch."
The Air Force's top space procurement officer says that "fairly significant" advances in infrared sensor technology in the past decade justify the Pentagon's decision to initiate a new competition for a space-based early missile warning system.
DOD CPI: Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has committed to implementing continuous process improvement (CPI) across the Defense Department as an enterprise-wide approach. Services will get to keep savings realized.
BARTLETT'S BULLY PULPIT: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), chairman of the House Armed Services projection forces subcommittee, is continuing his effort to push the U.S. Navy toward greater use of nuclear power, as well as reduced ship staffing and even smaller aircraft carriers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's sole Predator B drone crashed early April 25 north of Nogales, Ariz., but the chief of Homeland Security Department's CBP Air and Marine division remains confident in the unmanned aircraft program, he told The DAILY and Aviation Week & Space Technology in an exclusive interview.
JSF ENGINE: The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has awarded United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney Military Engines unit a $120 million contract for low-rate initial Lot 1 procurement of five F-135 engines for the Air Force's Joint Strike Fighter F-35A conventional takeoff and landing variant. The engines will be built in East Hartford, Conn., and the contract should be finished in January 2010, the Defense Department announced April 20.
The U.S. space industry charges too much for the services it provides and must learn to do more with less, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said during a speech in Washington April 25. "We, the country, don't get enough back for what we spend" on space, Griffin told attendees of the Inside Aerospace symposium sponsored by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Space Foundation. "That means we don't get enough product for the amount of people's time invested in these activities. We have too many people doing every job we do."
MIXED RESULTS: Net sales jumped 9 percent and net earnings soared 60 percent for Lockheed Martin in the first quarter of 2006, the company said April 25. Net sales grew to $9.2 billion compared to $8.5 billion for the same period a year ago. Net earnings soared from $369 million to $591 million. Meanwhile, first quarter profits for Northrop Grumman decreased from $409 million in the first quarter of '05 to $358 million. Revenue declined from $7.8 billion to $7.18 billion.
JSF ENGINE: The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has awarded United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney Military Engines unit a $120 million contract for low-rate initial Lot 1 procurement of five F-135 engines for the Air Force's Joint Strike Fighter F-35A conventional takeoff and landing variant. The engines will be built in East Hartford, Conn., and the contract should be finished in January 2010, the Defense Department announced April 20.
AESA RADAR: The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Electronic Sensors and System Section an $8.7 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to develop lightweight, low-power density Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Integrated Sensor Structure program. The radar would be dual UHF and X-Band and bonded to the flexible hull material of an airship, the Defense Department said April 21. The ultimate goal is to find the feasibility of flexible scanned array.
"Reliability challenges" in Lockheed Martin's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) program, which resulted in reduced Lot 5 production, will soon be worked out and production should get "back on track" in Lot 6, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Stephen Davis, JASSM Block 2 Squadron commander. Reliability concerns emerged during tests two years ago, he says, and officials believe that work instructions, such as for improved brazing, were not updated appropriately, Davis said.
A joint top-level U.K.-U.S. study mapping out strategic technologies for defense transformation is calling for more trans-Atlantic collaboration in key areas. The report, entitled "Defense Critical Technologies" is co-authored by the Defense Science Board and the U.K. Defense Scientific Advisory Council. Areas covered in the report are advanced command environments, persistent surveillance, power sources and management for networked sensors, high performance computing, and defense critical electronic components.
