NEW BUS: France's space agency CNES will develop the 6-8 metric ton AlphaBus very large satellite platform, providing 12-18 kilowatts of power, for the European Space Agency under a new agreement. CNES will manage overall development of the new bus, which will be built by EADS Astrium and Alcatel Alenia Space. The two manufacturers plan to market the spacecraft bus jointly beginning in 2007. ESA and CNES will share financing of the first flight model, ordered last year for delivery around 2009.
REFURBISHMENT: DRS Technologies Inc. will refurbish M1000 Heavy Equipment Transport (HET) Army trailers returning from Iraqi under a $9 million order, the company said March 23. The order is part of a previously awarded contract to refurbish more than 1,000 of the trailers over a five-year period ending in 2008. The work will be done by the DRS Systems & Electronics unit in West Plains, Mo.
NASA has released a request for information (RFI) asking industry for help in defining the agency's acquisition strategy for the J-2X engine that will propel the upper stage of the Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV).
WASHINGTON - The "parting of the ways" between the U.S. Air Force and Navy over the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program, as the shift is described by Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, has triggered a surge in new competition and plans for large, long-endurance aircraft.
Rocketplane Limited Inc. is completing assembly of its XP vehicle's first delta wing, a static test article that will be shipped in May to Wichita, Kan., for structural testing at the National Institute for Aviation Research. The fighter-size, reusable Rocketplane XP is to be a suborbital spaceplane tailored for commercial space tourism and microgravity experiments. Powered by two jet engines and a rocket, the horizontal takeoff and landing XP would fly to about 330,000 feet with as many as four people on board.
NASA is conducting tests to make sure that handrails on the exterior of the U.S. portion of the International Space Station (ISS) are strong enough to support astronaut safety tethers and various payloads that may be attached to them during station assembly. Until the issue is resolved, ISS astronauts are forbidden from conducting spacewalks from the U.S. segment of the station, according to ISS Deputy Program Manager Kirk Shireman.
UUV LAUNCHED: BAE Systems said March 21 that it launched its new autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), the Talisman. Backed by an unidentified amount of BAE Systems' private venture funds, the program was started in late 2004. The vehicle is based on a carbon fiber composite hull, with internal carbon fiber composite pressure vessels containing the electronics systems and payload. The hull is fitted with commercial-off-the-shelf vector thruster pods.
BOEING CO., Chicago Shephard W. Hill has been named senior vice president for business development and strategy. Christopher Raymond has been appointed vice president for Boeing IDS business development. EADS NORTH AMERICA DEFENSE, Arlington, Va. David R. Oliver, Jr. has been named executive vice president and chief operating officer and will continue serving on the board of directors. John H. Young, Jr. has been named chief executive officer. INTELSAT LTD., Pembroke, Bermuda
Ahead of this week's first-of-its-kind, high-level Pentagon policy review of the Air Force's proposed combat search and rescue (CSAR-X) aircraft competition, Lockheed Martin Corp. is disputing that its US101 helicopter derivative is developmental. "There's probably nothing further from the truth," Dan Spoor, Lockheed Martin's vice president for CSAR-X, told The DAILY.
An air-launched Pegasus winged rocket spun three small NASA testbed satellites out like Frisbees over the Pacific yesterday in a picture-perfect launch of the ST5 mission. Adding icing to the cake, the McMurdo Ground Station in Antarctica picked up the satellites as they passed overhead on their first orbit. McMurdo used an untried X-band uplink and downlink capability that was installed to provide for extended operations of the ST5 constellation after its three-month nominal mission using NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).
AEGIS UPGRADE: The U.S. Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $20.8 million contract to deliver the first Aegis Combat System upgrade ship-set for a cruiser modernization program, the company announced March 22. The work will be done on up to 22 existing Aegis-equipped cruisers. The first naval surface defense system upgrade will be installed aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CG 52). Aegis is deployed on 77 ships around the globe, with more than 25 additional ships planned.
Snow Aviation International is conducting preliminary flight-tests of a C-130E equipped with eight-blade Hamilton Sundstrand propellers in place of the transport's original 54H60 units. The tests are being conducted at the company's home base, Rickenbacker International Airport, Columbus, Ohio. The propellers, designated NP2000, were installed under an agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The final downselect for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Organic Air Vehicle II (OAV II) program is expected in early April, according to a spokesman for Aurora Flight Sciences. Aurora is competing in OAV II with a team led by Honeywell, which was the prime contractor on DARPA's OAV I program. OAV II is intended to mature the technology of ducted-fan unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and prepare it to serve as the Class II UAV in the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.
A new analysis is putting some numbers behind the widely-held view that aerospace and defense companies are the driving force behind robust mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the government information technology (IT) sector. Two thirds of 118 M&A transactions in government IT and defense in 2005 were focused on security and defense, with an emphasis on military communications, sensors and signal processing technologies, according to the analysis released earlier this month by Input, an IT market research firm in Reston, Va.
CEC: The U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command has tacked on another $11 million to Raytheon Systems' contract for the Navy's new sensor netting system to boost naval anti-air capability. The company will provide more Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) design agent support, according to a March 16 announcement from the Pentagon. CEC collects and distributes sensor-derived information to all participating CEC units. Last December, Navsea contracted with Raytheon's Network Centric Systems for $7.2 million for fiscal 2006 item requirements for the program (DAILY, Dec.
The Bush administration's recent update to the National Security Strategy downplays the harm the administration's policies have done to the aerospace and defense industrial base, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. "The president fails to discuss the threats to U.S. security from the erosion of the domestic manufacturing base, our increasing reliance on foreign production to meet U.S. military needs, and our need to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign governments to prop up our current trade and economic policies," he said.
