The National Reconnaissance Office and Naval Research Laboratory have declassified Poppy, a Cold War-era electronic intelligence reconnaissance program that involved seven satellites launched from 1962 to 1971. NRO Deputy Director Dennis Fitzgerald hosted a recognition ceremony at NRO headquarters in Chantilly, Va., on Sept. 12 to recognize key program participants.
Kimberly Johnson, Airports editor for our sister publication Aviation Daily, has embedded in Iraq with the 2nd Marine Division for three months. She is reporting for The DAILY from there, covering the performance of specific weapon systems, the realities of warfare in Iraq and other topics important to our readers. She also writes and takes photographs for "Mother of All Blogs," a Web journal about her experiences. It is located at http://www.moab-iraq.blogspot.com.
William W. Parsons has been named the new director of the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, NASA said Sept. 13. Parsons succeeds Rear Adm. Thomas Donaldson (USN Ret.) and returns to the position he held before becoming space shuttle program manager in 2003.
BAE Systems said Sept. 13 that it has been awarded a ZAR 15 million (USD $2.3 million) contract to upgrade a second batch of the South Africa army's Olifant MK1B Main Battle Tanks. The award follows a ZAR 11 million (USD $1.7 million) contract the company received in 2003 for similar work.
Representatives of Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., still shaking off their loss of the presidential helicopter replacement program to a Lockheed Martin Corp.-led team, are expressing cautious optimism that their consortium will win the U.S. Air Force's Combat Search and Rescue-X (CSAR-X) aircraft program.
Boeing's first in-flight test of the Northrop Grumman Multi-mode Electronically Scanned Array radar aboard a 737 aircraft for Australia's Project Wedgetail was "very successful, very clean," according to a Boeing official. The six-hour test, conducted Aug. 1 over Washington state, achieved mission objectives, said Jack DeLange, airborne early warning and control integration and test manager. "Northrop Grumman was wildly enthusiastic about the data that they got," he said in a telephone interview.
Boeing says it will have to begin shutting down the production line for the C-17 cargo aircraft if it does not receive by January 2006 firm commitment from the Air Force for additional procurement beyond the initial program buy of 180 aircraft.
Hoping to reverse cuts in its purchase of F/A-22 Raptors, the U.S. Air Force has begun arguing that the reductions could inadvertently hurt the multiservice F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.
PRAGUE - Bristol, United Kingdom-based communications products firm Scotty Group said Sept. 13 that the prototype phase of its Aero Mission Gear package has been successfully completed in flight trials with a German army helicopter.
Four Republican senators representing NASA research centers and a Democrat from Washington state are trying to amend the agency's appropriations for the next fiscal year to maintain the same level for aeronautics research and development programs as in fiscal 2005. Sens. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), George Voinovich (R-Ohio), George Allen (R-Va.), John Warner (R-Va.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have proposed an amendment to the FY '06 spending bill covering NASA that would earmark $906.2 million for aeronautics R&D out of NASA's budget.
The retooled Joint Unmanned Combat Air System program is expected to appoint a Navy flag officer to head its new joint office within the next few weeks as the program transitions from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency over to Air Force ownership.
A contractor was not treated unfairly when the U.S. Army gave its anti-improvised explosive device technology a poor rating, the Government Accountability Office said Sept. 12. Foster-Miller Inc. (FMI) of Waltham, Mass., a subsidiary of United Kingdom-based QinetiQ, was among companies competing to improve the Counter Remote Control Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (CREW) system.
Lockheed Martin is talking with the Air National Guard about the possibility of installing the company's LongShot munition range extension system onto Guard F-15C fighters to give them air-to-ground strike capability, according to the company.
Northrop Grumman Corp. expects to test its Viper Strike munition as a standoff precision-guided weapon on the AC-130 gunship next fall, but is already in discussions with officials about deploying the platform on legacy fixed-wing aircraft such as A-10s and U.S. Marine Corps Harriers, company representatives said Sept. 12.
ARMY Rockwell Collins Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was awarded on Sept. 1, 2005, a delivery order amount of $5,700,000 as part of a $5,700,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Common Avionics Architecture System. Work will be performed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is expected to be completed by April 26, 2008. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on March 14, 2004. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (DAAH23-03-D-0015).
MACHATZ 1 CONTRACT: Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. has been awarded a contract worth more than $50 million to supply the Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system, called Machatz 1, to Israel's air force, the company said Sept. 11. IAI said it will deliver the first UAV soon and also will provide maintenance. The Machatz 1 can fly at up to 30,000 feet for more than 40 hours, the company said. It can carry multiple sensors such as maritime patrol radar, a synthetic aperture radar, and communications intelligence and electronic intelligence systems.
AWS CERTIFIED: The U.S. Navy has certified that the latest advancement of the Lockheed Martin-developed Aegis Weapon System, Baseline 7, has been approved for deployment, the company said Sept. 12. The Baseline 7 AWS contains the first complete commercial-off-the-shelf Aegis advanced processing computing architecture and the new AN/SPY-1D(V) radar.
TRANSPARENT ARMOR: BAE Systems said Sept. 12 that will provide more than 1,000 Transparent Armor Gun Shields kits and spares for U.S. Marine Corps vehicles under a contract modification worth as much as $40 million. The kits will be installed on Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement units, Humvees and Logistics Vehicle Systems starting in October and continuing through next February. The U.S. Marine Corps System Command has already funded $19 million under the modification.
