The chair and ranking Democrat of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on March 1 added their voices to an increasing chorus of lawmakers who think the Homeland Security Department's $42.7 billion fiscal 2007 budget request - and in particular for the Coast Guard - is too low and wrongly prioritized.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee, is pushing the Bush administration to further boost its move into unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and especially for border security now that UAVs have been used to watch the Iraq-Syrian border. "I still don't think we're giving enough priority to UAVs," McCain told top Air Force leaders who testified before the full Armed Services panel March 2.
A panel of leading scientists decried NASA's fiscal 2007 budget request for science during a hearing on Capitol Hill March 2, warning that it will dissuade young talent from pursuing science careers. The most serious impact of the FY '07 budget proposal is that it threatens to "significantly decrease" the output of the research community by cutting the research and analysis grant lines by 15 percent, said Joseph Taylor, Jr., a Nobel Laureate and distinguished professor of physics at Princeton University.
ANNUAL ELECTIONS: Boeing Co. said March 2 that it has changed its bylaws to elect its board of directors annually. All current members will be up for election May 1 in Chicago at the company's annual shareholders' meeting. All remaining supermajority voting provisions in the company's charter documents and bylaws were also eliminated.
The Department of Defense needs a new comprehensive strategy for missile acquisition, according to Lt. Gen. Jerry Sinn, military deputy for budget to the assistant secretary of the Army for financial management. Army missile procurement budgets have been following a steady downward trend for the past several years, Sinn said at the Association of the U.S. Army's 197th Meeting of the Institute of Land Warfare Forum Breakfast in Arlington, Va., March 2.
SUB SERVICES: The U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command gave Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Newport News ship unit a $59.3 million contract to support current and to be decommissioned SSN 688, Seawolf, Virginia, SSBN and SSGN-class submarines. Services comprise planning yard, design, configuration management and logistics support for new construction, operational, conversion and decommissioning submarines, as well as modernization support for operational and decommissioning submarines.
The Defense Department decision to kill the Joint Strike Fighter's alternative engine was made for largely economic reasons, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said March 1. The Pentagon's fiscal 2007 budget request scrapped the alternative engine program for the JSF F-35, dropping an engine to be produced by General Electric and Rolls-Royce, leaving Pratt & Whitney's F135 as the sole engine.
ScanEagle, a long-endurance unmanned aircraft developed by the Boeing Co. and the Insitu Group, will be deployed on a "number of other" U.S. Navy ships after a trial run in the Persian Gulf last fall, the companies said Feb. 28. The companies first received a contract from the U.S. Marine Corps in July 2004 to provide two ScanEagle "mobile deployment units." It was renewed in July 2005.
DHS S&T: President Bush intends to designate Jeffrey William Runge to be acting undersecretary for science and technology at the Homeland Security Department, the White House announced Feb. 27.
Greg Bradford has been named senior vice president for strategy and communications. Stefanie Starkey has been appointed director of legislative and government affairs.
A Russian Proton rocket failed to burn its upper stage engine for as long as planned during a launch from Kazakhstan Feb. 28, leaving the Arabsat 4A satellite stranded in a low orbit, International Launch Services (ILS) announced. The Proton lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:10 p.m. Eastern time. Preliminary flight information indicates that the Breeze M upper stage shut down early. Arabsat 4A separated from the rocket as a contingency.
Top U.S. Air Force planners are divided over the best type of aircraft to replace the department's fleet of aging KC-135 tankers. Asked at a Feb. 28 congressional hearing what was the best type for the job, Lt. Gen. Christopher Kelly, vice commander of the Air Mobility Command, said he favored a mix of large and medium-sized aircraft "from an operational perspective."
Dr. Nance K. Dicciani, president and chief executive officer of Honeywell Specialty Materials, has been appointed by President Bush to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The British government rapidly needs to flesh out plans for defense research and technology investment, senior industry executives say. Industrialists appearing before the House of Commons Defense Committee on Feb. 28 told members of parliament that the Defense Ministry must detail its intent regarding research and technology investment.
The U.S. Coast Guard last year lost the equivalent of four ship years worth of operational capability, the latest sign that the service's aging legacy ships and aircraft remain its biggest problem, the service's master chief petty officer told lawmakers March 1. "Our fleet is old," Master Chief Franklin Welch told the House Transportation's Coast Guard subcommittee in its initial authorization hearings over the fiscal 2007 budget request. He reiterated for lawmakers an oft-used statistic that the Coast Guard has one of the oldest fleets worldwide.
