DALLAS -- More than 3,500 workers at Sikorsky Aircraft Co. went on strike Feb. 20 after overwhelmingly rejecting a new, three-year contract. Local 1150 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents hourly employees at Sikorsky's Stratford, Conn., and West Palm Beach, Fla., facilities, voted on Feb. 19 to reject the proposal chiefly because of increased health insurance costs. It is the first strike at the helicopter manufacturer since 1963.
Deciding that mothballing an aircraft carrier early was better than dipping into the already tenuous U.S. Navy shipbuilding plan, an influential senator has changed sides and is pushing the Navy's proposal to retire the USS John F. Kennedy. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has introduced a bill that would reverse legislation he himself helped become law last year to allow the Navy to drop to fewer than a dozen active flattops.
The Senate has confirmed James Finley to be deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology and Preston Geren to be undersecretary of the Army. Thomas D'Agostino also was confirmed Feb. 17 to be deputy administrator for defense programs at the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Mark Carroll has been named vice president and business manager of U.S. Navy programs for the Ship Systems sector. Chineta K. Davis has been appointed vice president of Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) programs for the company's Electronic Systems sector. Brian J. Morra has been named sector vice president of business development and strategic planning for Electronic Systems. Albert F. Myers, the company's corporate vice president of strategy and technology, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
European Space Agency science program committee members OK'd two new missions following an injection of additional funding at the agency's ministerial summit in December. The BepiColombo Mercury mission and the Gaia planet-finding observatory will go ahead as planned. But to fit them in, the committee delayed the start of the Solar Orbiter from 2013 to 2015.
CLARIFICATION: The White House has requested $1.8 billion for the Defense Department in the latest supplemental spending request for last year's hurricanes, of which $1.05 billion would be used to replace destroyed or damaged equipment for Navy ships and associated work force costs at affected Gulf Coast shipyards (DAILY, Feb. 22). The $1.8 billion also includes $405 million for military construction in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Eying the shift to a stealthier force with a larger number of unmanned aerial vehicles, the U.S. Air Force hopes to retire or divest 1,124 planes across the course of the Future Years Defense Plan. The service wants to retire more than half those aircraft during the next two fiscal years -- FY 2007 and FY 2008 -- and nearly a quarter of the retirements are accounted for by the Lockheed Martin F-16C/D fighter force. Not surprisingly, older Boeing F-15A/B fighters also account for a large share of retirements, as does the KC-135 tanker force.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $144,300,000 cost plus fixed fee contract modification. This undefinitized contract action provides for F-22A Lot 6 Weapon System Support as a Capability Performance-Based Agile Logistics Support (PALS). At this time, $72,005,700 has been obligated. Negotiations were complete in January 2006. The work will be complete by May 2006. The Headquarters Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8611-05-C-2850/P00010).
Gen. Bantz Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, says he sees "great potential" for aerostats, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites to help with the monitoring of illegal traffic to and from Central and South America. Such platforms should be coupled with "software to be able to provide, quick, real-time downlink," Craddock said during a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington Feb. 21. "I think we've got to pursue that."
The Joint Strike Fighter, the Army's Future Combat Systems and the Navy's DD(X) destroyer are "obvious candidates" for defense programs likely to be scaled back by the end of the decade or beyond as Washington deals with a budget crunch, according to two independent analysts at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
RUMSFELD PRIORITY: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Executive Director Andrew Krepinevich said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has shown personal interest in special operations aviation - and maybe more than any other particular new capability discussed in the Quadrennial Defense Review. "That probably insulates from some of the pernicious things that can happen along the line," he told a public audience near Capitol Hill.
Several U.S. Navy ships, 22 helicopters and a Marine Corps expeditionary unit are taking part in relief efforts following a devastating Feb. 17 mudslide in the Philippines, the Defense Department said.
GALILEO DEBRIS: The spent inertial upper stage that first sent NASA's Galileo spacecraft on its way to Jupiter in 1989 re-entered Earth's atmosphere at 3:53 a.m. on Feb. 20 and landed in the ocean off the west coast of South Africa, according to NASA. A significant portion of the 11-foot long cylinder's 1.5 tons was expected to survive re-entry because the stage contained an inner cylinder made of titanium. Galileo was deployed by the space shuttle on STS-34 in October 1989.
ARMY AM General L.L.C., South Bend, Ind., was awarded on Feb. 10, 2006, a $75,731,226 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for production of M1152 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles. The work will be performed in South Bend 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).
