In its fiscal 2006 appropriations legislation, Congress is ordering NASA to submit two reports early next year on the future of unmanned aerial vehicles. The first request appears to confirm NASA's rumored plans to withdraw from the Access Five UAV airspace initiative in FY '07 (DAILY, Sept. 29).
The U.S. Navy Air Systems Command is seeking industry reaction to its revised plan for acquiring a sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missile target that includes a supersonic "sprint vehicle," mimicking the Russian system known as Threat D.
The final 2005 Base Closure and Realignment recommendations for reshaping the Defense Department's infrastructure and force structure officially took effect Nov. 9 after Congress allowed them to pass into law at the mandated Nov. 8 deadline, the Pentagon said. The DOD now has until Sept. 15, 2007 - two years from the date President Bush sent Congress the BRAC commission's final report - to begin closing and realigning facilities as decided by the independent BRAC Commission.
Michael B. Baughn has been appointed president and chief operating officer, effective Dec. 31. Robert J. Khoury is retiring as president and CEO at the end of the year.
Major programs at the U.S. Missile Defense Agency appear to have largely dodged a bullet in the latest round of Pentagon budget cuts. No major programs were canceled, despite persistent speculation that such technologically challenging efforts as the Airborne Laser and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor might be killed. The majority of cuts would simply delay future programs that still are being defined.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a critical voice on Capitol Hill overseeing defense procurement, will lead a Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee hearing Nov. 15 on defense acquisition issues related to tactical aviation and Army programs. McCain will call for opinions from John Hamre of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Gene Porter of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Frank Anderson Jr. of the Defense Acquisition University and auditor Katherine Schinasi of the Government Accountability Office.
A plan to help South Korea obtain military goods quickly in case of war is being discussed with the United States, South Korea's defense ministry said Nov. 8.
CONTRACT WINNER: Technest Holdings Inc. said Nov. 8 that it has won a U.S. Navy Small Business Innovation Research contract to develop a compact pan-tilt-zoom optical sensor for unmanned combat aerial vehicles. The newly designed optical sensor, called OmniBird, will be used by the Navy for close-range machine vision applications, specifically aircraft carrier flight deck operations and autonomous air-to-air refueling, the company said.
AMENDMENT: The Senate late Nov. 8 was expected to vote on a Democratic proposal to shift $50 million from missile defense funds into Cooperative Threat Reduction efforts. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, said subcontractors working on ground-base interceptors would be hurt by the manufacturing delay caused by the move and would have to be recertified later. Democrats said the money should be used to fight weapons proliferation, a more immediate threat.
Deliveries of F-16 night vision kits to South Korea and power conditioning units to the U.S. Navy's Tactical Tomahawk missiles program helped Astronics Corp.'s sales to more than double in the third quarter of 2005, the company said Nov. 8. The East Aurora, N.Y.-based company, which manufactures lighting, electronics and electrical power systems, said its third-quarter military sales were $8.3 million, a 94% increase over the same period the year before. The company also reported a $1.1 million jump in total net income.
The Defense Department's future TacSat small satellites still are awaiting a decision from the Air Force about how they will be launched, although an answer is expected shortly, according to Lloyd Feldman, assistant director of the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation.
Lockheed Martin has delivered the second modernized Global Positioning System Block IIR satellite to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., the company said Nov. 8. The GPS-IIR is scheduled for launch in January. Lockheed Martin is modernizing eight GPS satellites to improve military and civilian navigation worldwide. The first modernized GPS-IIR satellite was launched in September from Cape Canaveral (DAILY, Sept. 27) and is performing normally after a series of precision maneuvers and deployment of its spacecraft systems, the company said.
The strike by Boeing workers that has put Delta rocket launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral on hold has entered its second week with no new negotiations between the parties currently planned. Roughly half of Boeing's Delta work force went on strike just after midnight on Nov. 2, following the recent expiration of a three-year contract between the company and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 725. Best offer
Defense electronics company Orbit International said Nov. 8 that its net sales, earnings, net income and backlog all increased for the third quarter of 2005 and for the first nine months of the year. Hauppauge, N.Y.-based Orbit reported that net sales for the quarter were up 43.3 percent to $6.5 million; earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) zoomed up 110 percent to $1.1 million; net income increased to $772,000 from $604,000 in the same period the year before; and backlog went up 4.4 percent to $13.1 million.
The U.S. Navy's EA-18G program is considering pursuing a next-generation jammer and other upgrades that could be fielded on the electronic attack jet after it enters service in a few years, a government program official said Nov. 8. While the ALQ-99 radar jamming system has done "a great job" on other Navy aircraft and initially will be adequate for the EA-18G, it might eventually have to be replaced due to high support costs and the need to keep up with changing threats, said Capt. Steve Kochman, the Navy's EA-18G program manager.
Following an October announcement by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), congressional negotiators working out the fiscal 2006 Department of Energy spending measure did not include previously requested funds for the proposed nuclear bunker-buster. "The conference agreement provides no funds for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) feasibility study," they said in their conference report, available Nov. 8.
