TANKER PRODUCTION: Northrop Grumman plans to announce Oct. 24 that it will produce the KC-30 tanker at the downtown airport in Mobile, Ala., if it wins a potential U.S. Air Force competition. EADS North America, Northrop Grumman's main subcontractor, had already said it would build the basic aircraft in Mobile (DAILY, June 23). Northrop Grumman would be responsible for the military modifications. A Defense Department-commissioned study of tanker modernization options, which is due to be completed in the next few weeks, is expected to endorse acquiring new tankers.
Oct. 24 - 26 -- SAFE Association 43rd Annual Symposium, Grand America Hotel, Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information go to www.safeassociation.org Oct. 25 - 26 -- Border Management 2005, "Securing America's Air, Land and Sea Borders," Georgetown University Conference Center, Washington, D.C. For more information go to www. idga.org. Oct. 25 - 28 -- Science and Technology for Chem-Bio Information Systems (S&T CBIS) Conference, Hilton Albuquerque, Albuquerque, N.M. For more information go to www.cbis2005.com.
A decrease in demand for science, technology and defense satellites pushed Orbital Sciences Corp.'s third quarter 2005 net income down 40.3 percent, the company said Oct. 20. Revenues also fell 7.2 percent, and operating income declined 14.6 percent.
The global demand for new military transports is expected to be 929 aircraft worth nearly $54 billion over the next decade, Forecast International said Oct. 21. Boeing's C-17 and Lockheed Martin's C-130J likely will maintain their hold on the market, but "some major changes are in the offing," Forecast said. Boeing will deliver the last of 180 C-17s by mid-2008, and the line is expected to close by the end of 2010 even with an expected order of 40 more units. Boeing may instead build KC-767 tankers for the Air Force starting around that time.
COMING HOME: Particles gathered near a comet in deep space are scheduled to arrive at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in January, so scientists can study them to learn more about comets and their role in the early solar system. The Stardust spacecraft collected particles from the comet Wild 2 last year and will be ending its two-year, 708-million mile journey back to Earth in January 2006.
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.
