DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Caltex Alkhalij, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is being awarded a maximum $17,946,754 firm fixed price contract for facilities and services to receive, store, protect, and ship F76 and JP5. The other location of performance is Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. Using services are Army, Navy, and Air Force. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The performance completion date is Oct. 31, 2010. The contracting activity is the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa. (SP0600-06-C-5602).
The Acquisition Advisory Panel is in the home stretch of finalizing its report to Congress and wants to hear from contractors on commercial best practices, performance-based contracting and interagency contract vehicles. "The report will be a vehicle for significant positive changes in the acquisition process," says the Contract Services Association of America.
The Air Force has not delayed the latest round of launch awards in its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle in response to ongoing antitrust deliberations on the United Launch Alliance venture or a pending lawsuit seeking to stop the merger, according to the Space and Missile Systems Center. The so-called "Buy 3" EELV awards are expected to divide 23 launches through the end of the decade evenly between Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V rockets.
Nov. 7 - 10 -- Fatigue Concepts' Short Course, "Fatigue, Fracture Mechanics and Damage Tolerance," San Diego Seapoint Hotel. Call 1-916-933-5000 or go to www.fatcon.com/hsv. Nov. 8 - 10 - Aerospace Testing Expo 2005 North America, Long Beach Convention Center, Calif. Call +44-130-674-5744 or go to www.aerospacetesting.com. Nov. 8 - 10 -- Aviation Week's MRO Asia Conference & Exhibition, Suntec Convention Center, Singapore. For more information go to http://www.aviationnow.com/conferences.
Boeing will provide 50 Harpoon All-Up-Round (AUR) Missiles to Pakistan under a $62.5 million Naval Air Systems Command contract announced late Nov. 3. The missiles include 40 Tactical Block II Airlaunch AUR missiles and 10 Tactical Block II Grade B AUR missiles. The contract also calls for containers for Pakistan, Australia and Japan. The company is expected to finish the contract in June 2006.
Aviation Technology Group said Nov. 3 that it has lined up several suppliers for its Javelin executive jet, which is also expected to be developed into a military trainer in conjunction with Israel Aircraft Industries.
ACQUISITION POLICY: The Acquisition Advisory Panel is in the home stretch of finalizing its report to Congress and wants to hear from contractors on commercial best practices, performance-based contracting and interagency contract vehicles. "The report will be a vehicle for significant positive changes in the acquisition process," says the Contract Services Association of America.
Northrop Grumman's board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of 26 cents per share on common stock, the company said Nov. 2. The dividend is payable Dec. 10 to shareholders of record as of the close of business Nov. 28. The board also declared a dividend of $1.75 per share on the company's Series B convertible preferred stock. That is payable Jan. 17 to shareholders as of the close of business Jan. 3.
A leading trade association advocate for U.S. naval shipbuilding is confident that Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the new chief of naval operations, is trying to shield current shipbuilding programs even as the DD(X) destroyer and the CVN-21 aircraft carrier remain under fire as defense officials and lawmakers mull budget cuts. "Everybody is worried, and everybody should be worried," American Shipbuilding Association President Cynthia Brown told The DAILY.
The Senate briefly resumed debate Nov. 4 on its fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill, but left more work for this week when the chamber could finally pass the measure. No votes were taken in the more than three hours that the Senate deliberated over more amendment proposals to the bill, which has run a start-and-stop legislative path since it was passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee in mid-May (DAILY, Oct. 7). The Senate is scheduled to start voting on further amendments at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 7.
CONFIRMED: The Senate confirmed Shana Dale as deputy administrator of NASA on Nov. 4. Dale most recently served as deputy director for homeland and national security at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She succeeds former shuttle astronaut Frederick Gregory.
NASA BUDGET: House and Senate conferees agreed Nov. 4 to provide NASA with $16.5 billion for fiscal 2006, $260.3 million above the FY '05 level and $1 million above the Bush administration's request. Details of the NASA part of the $51.8 billion FY '06 Science, State, Justice and Commerce appropriations agreement were not immediately available.
U.S. defense officials and industry executives involved in the Future Combat Systems last week hosted a quarterly meeting on the program, which is "on track," an Army official told members of Congress. Claude Bolton Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, told the House Armed Services Committee Nov. 2 that the group hashes out hard questions, such as "what can we do that's timely, what can we do that's affordable, and that's off the table now?"
On Nov. 7, Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev will perform a five-and-a-half hour spacewalk to install a camera on the port side of the International Space Station's horizontal truss and remove a broken experiment from the solar array truss, according to NASA.
PROMETHEUS DEFERRED: NASA's Prometheus space nuclear power and propulsion program is being deferred and the $76 million budgeted for the effort in fiscal 2006 is being diverted to speed development of the Crew Exploration and Crew Launch Vehicle. Before the NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture Study, the agency had planned to restructure Prometheus to focus on surface power for a lunar outpost, following the cancellation of the costly Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter nuclear-enabled mission.
FOREIGN SATELLITES: James Lewis, senior fellow and director of technology and public policy programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the United States should consider contracting out more of its national security satellite needs to international providers. While that entails obvious data assurance issues, it also would expand the number of satellites that could be tapped for such services and provides another barrier to adversaries considering combating U.S. satellite capabilities. "Attacking U.S.
SEE THROUGH WALLS: With an eye toward urban operations in Iraq, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is embarking on a new program to develop technology for sensing people and objects inside buildings. The VisiBuilding program will place special emphasis on "how to make the technology operationally useful" at all stages of a mission, DARPA says, from planning to live scans of buildings during raids to post-raid sweeps to find hidden people and objects. DARPA released a broad agency announcement on Oct.
SEPARATE CYBER: Researchers are recommending that Bush administration officials and lawmakers consider a unique, new cyber-architecture for U.S. national security that would be separate from the commercial world. Ed Taylor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies say cyber attacks, such as attacks on computer networks, are prolific and can be effective. Moreover, the United States has far less of a lead in the online domain than it does in other defense capabilities, such as stealth.
IED EFFORTS: The U.S. Defense Department is considering putting a higher-level officer in charge of developing equipment to defeat improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Under the proposal, a three-star general would replace the current one-star overseer, providing "additional organizational emphasis," a DOD spokesman says. Despite sizable spending on the IED problem, including almost $1.5 billion this year alone, the devices remain a major killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.
WEBB UNDERBID: After commissioning two independent cost assessments of the troubled James Webb Space Telescope Program, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is convinced the program "was not overrun, it was underbid." The two reviews agreed the program has performed well, but had been underfunded by roughly $1.5 billion. To address the shortfall, NASA has chosen to slip the launch of the observatory from 2011 to 2013 rather than scale back its capabilities. The program also was delayed as it awaited final approval to launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket (DAILY, Sept. 26).
USAF SECRETARY: The U.S. Air Force officially has a new leader. Former acting Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Wynne was sworn in Nov. 3 as Air Force secretary during a ceremony at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Wynne, who was confirmed by the Senate Oct. 28 (DAILY, Oct. 31), replaces Pete Geren, who served as acting Air Force secretary since July 29.
NASA's aeronautics program is being refocused on "core competencies" as the agency crafts a new strategic vision for aeronautics in partnership with FAA and the Defense Department, according to Administrator Michael Griffin. "We, NASA, do not see ourselves being the only stakeholders in aeronautics in this country and seek very definitely to find a partnership of people who can help us say what is it that needs to be done and what is no longer required," Griffin told lawmakers during a hearing in Washington Nov. 3.
