PHANTOM DRONES: BAE Systems said June 7 that it received a $25.1 million U.S. Air Force contract to provide 20 QF-4 full-scale aerial targets and associated technical support. The QF-4 is an F-4 Phantom aircraft modified for remote-control operation. The contract is the second of five possible options exercised under an original agreement in effect until 2013. BAE Systems, the exclusive provider of QF-4 drones to the Air Force, will perform the modification work at its facility in Mojave. The production effort will be completed by July 2008.
WINGS AWARD: Albert Lee Ueltschi, founder and chairman of FlightSafety International Inc., has been chosen to receive The Wings Club's 2006 Distinguished Achievement Award. The award, which honors outstanding accomplishments in aviation and astronautics, will be presented Oct. 27 at The Wings Club's 64th annual dinner-dance in New York City.
The three industry teams vying to build the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) submitted their bids to the U.S. Army this week. Raytheon and EADS CASA North America jointly submitted two proposals based on the C-295 and CN-235 aircraft. The company says that the C-295 is the only two-engine aircraft in its class that can carry five cargo pallets, providing additional flexibility for intratheater lift.
The House passed a fiscal 2007 appropriations bill for the Homeland Security Department late June 6, funding $32.08 billion altogether, $1.8 billion above the FY '06 enacted level and $1.065 billion above President Bush's request. The chamber voted 389-9 to pass the annual spending bill, which was mostly separate from the ongoing border security and immigration policy and supplemental spending debate now in Congress.
The Army remains committed to fully funding aviation modernization and transformation as it crafts future budgets in the ongoing program objective memorandum (POM) process for fiscal 2008 through FY '13, according to the director of Army Aviation, Brig. Gen. Stephen Mundt.
China's Beijing Spot Image and Apogee of Australia will distribute radar imaging data and services from Germany's TerraSAR-X remote sensing satellite under exclusive agreements signed last week with operator Infoterra. The agreements follow an earlier pact with Pasco of Japan and a general agency agreement with Spot Image, which like Infoterra is controlled by EADS.
Lockheed Martin will launch the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover for NASA in late 2009 on an Atlas V under a nearly $195 million contract covering spacecraft integration and launch services. NASA selected the Atlas V for the mission over a Boeing Delta IV. The 3,000-kilogram (6,613-pound) launch mass for the MSL rover is about triple the launch weight of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers both launched on Delta IIs in 2003. The launch will be carried out at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 41.
SUPPLEMENTAL: House and Senate appropriators were scheduled to meet late June 6 to try to hammer out details of their fiscal 2006 supplemental budget compromise. Capitol Hill newspapers reported without attribution that negotiators have reached an agreement to keep the overall bill near President Bush's and the House's top-line figure of about $95 billion. Congressional staff wouldn't comment officially ahead of an agreement.
The Pentagon's latest cost estimate for the scaled-back National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program is $11.5 billion through 2020, according to a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman. NPOESS is built by Northrop Grumman and managed jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Air Force and NASA. Plagued by sensor development problems, NPOESS breached the 25 percent Nunn-McCurdy cost growth cap last year.
