NEW BLOOD: House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) has announced numerous changes to the committee's staff, including new Chief Counsel Sara Gray. Gray, most recently an attorney for Stoel Rivers LLP in Portland, Ore., joined in July. Meanwhile, Tind Shepper Ryen has joined the professional staff of the space and aeronautics subcommittee, replacing Chris Shank, who left to become a special assistant to NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.
A United Kingdom defense ministry official has visited the site of a GBP 400 million (USD $709 million) overhaul of a British naval attack submarine, the defense ministry said. Paul Drayson, the minister for defense procurement, observed the rehab work on the submarine HMS Triumph at HM Naval Base Devonport in Plymouth on Oct. 21.
The Government Accountability Office's opinion of the Air Force's Transformational Satellite program has improved since its last assessment of TSAT earlier this year, although GAO remains concerned about possible integration challenges. "No fundamental discoveries or breakthroughs" are required for TSAT, GAO said in briefing materials obtained by The DAILY, "but the level of difficulty in integrating these technologies is an unknown."
SPACE ICAO?: The first Conference of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety is scheduled for this week in Nice, France. Sponsored by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the conference will draw space agency and industry specialists from all the spacefaring nations, including China, to discuss safety in space.
The market for unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance systems is expected to be worth $13.6 billion through 2014, Forecast International said in a study released Oct. 21, and the United States' overwhelming share of it is expected to grow. That includes air vehicles, ground control equipment and payloads, Forecast said.
LUH BIDS: Industry sources say the U.S. Army's Light Utility Helicopter program, which had an Oct. 20 deadline for contractor proposals, has drawn at least four bids: the AugustaWestland North America/L-3 Communications US139, the Bell 412EP, the EADS North America/Sikorsky UH145 and MD Helicopters' MD Explorer. The Army is expected to award a contract in late April.
HUMAN LESS: Defense officials in several different programs and agencies are saying they want to boost automation in their systems. The goal is to remove humans from the simpler, automatic tasks that information technology can do - such as deciding whether a blob on a computer screen is a human or something else - so operators can focus instead on higher-order decisions, such as whether to pull the trigger on a weapon. They also said it would help lead to reduced and realigned manpower. One person expressing such an interest is Navy Capt.
CSAR-X SHRINKAGE: And then there were three. The V-22 tiltrotor aircraft is out of the running for the U.S. Air Force's Combat Search and Rescue-X (CSAR-X) program, leaving the Boeing HH-47 helicopter, the Lockheed Martin-AgustaWestland-Bell Helicopter Textron US101 helicopter and Sikorsky's HH-92 helicopter still in the running.
PLANNING MONEY: General Dynamics Electric Boat will conduct an additional year of submarine reactor-plant planning yard services under a $13 million U.S. Navy contract modification, the General Dynamics subsidiary said Oct. 21.
GIVING THANKS: The long-awaited first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket is expected to take place from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands around Thanksgiving of this year, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk says. The rocket will carry FalconSat-2, part of the Air Force Academy's satellite program that will measure space plasma phenomena.
FAA last week began full operational use of a new oceanic air traffic control system at its Oakland center, an important step in reducing separation and modernizing the way traffic is controlled on transpacific routes.
The Defense Department has delivered a classified report to Congress on the threat to the U.S. posed by an electromagnetic pulse, more than a year after members of a civil commission on EMP concluded that such an event could do trillions of dollars of damage to the country's critical infrastructure.
THAAD MISSILE: The first flight-test missile for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system has been shipped from its Lockheed Martin assembly plant in Troy, Ala., to the test site at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The test is slated to occur around Thanksgiving. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is developing THAAD mainly to intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles as they transition from the midcourse phase of flight to the terminal phase.
Carl O'Berry, the former executive chairman of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, said he is pleased with the progress the group has made in its first year of operations. Formally stood up in September of 2004, the NCOIC began as a group of 28 companies dedicated to creating industry standards and practices that will make their products interoperable and enable network-centric operations.
PAVEWAY: Raytheon Missile Systems has been awarded an $18.5 million contract modification for 140 production lot 2 Guided Bomb Unit-28C/B guidance control units and tail kits. The systems give the Air Force an improved aerial delivery capability for the 5,000-pound class BLU-122 warhead, the Defense Department said Oct. 19.
Australia's army, navy and air force are taking part in the country's largest annual national counterterrorism exercise, the defense ministry said Oct. 19. Naval vessels, air force aircraft, and army units, including special forces and reservists, are participating in this week's Exercise Mercury 05.
Raytheon's Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) completed a successful system function review late last month, marking its readiness to enter the system development and demonstration phase, the company said Oct. 20. The U.S. Department of Defense approved JLENS to begin the SDD phase in August (DAILY, Aug. 11). The system is intended to provide over-the-horizon detection and tracking of cruise missiles.
"Solid performance" by Textron's Bell, Cessna and Textron Financial units helped offset problems elsewhere in the company and resulted in a 12.3 percent gain in revenues for the third quarter of 2005. Revenues were $2.86 billion for the quarter, Textron reported Oct. 20. Earnings were $1 a share, up from the company's guidance of 85 to 95 cents. Hurricane Katrina shut down the company's Louisiana facilities, slightly reducing earnings, Textron said.
Establishing safety and the perception of safety among members of the public will be crucial to the growth and success of the space tourism industry, according to a panel of former astronauts and space entrepreneurs. Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist, said that in his experience roughly half the people in a given room say they are willing to take a suborbital space flight for $50,000 or less.
Czech Republic-owned aircraft producer Aero Vodochody said it was awarded a contract this week to perform overhauls of Algerian L-39 military jet trainers. Financial terms were not disclosed. Aero will do the work in cooperation with longtime partner Pamco International of Prague. The companies will perform an audit of Algeria's repair center before furnishing technical assistance for the overhauls. Repairs of selected parts and assemblies also will be done.
