Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

The U.S. Army plans to test whether an airborne sensor can detect and locate small-arms fire on the ground. The sensor, which the Army's Overwatch program has been developing for use on ground vehicles, will be demonstrated on an airship in Huntsville, Ala., the week of Oct. 4-8, said Col. Kurt Heine, who heads the office that will conduct the demonstration.

MILESTONE: The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) is scheduled for a Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) review Nov. 18, according to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). "This will be when the changes to FCS announced in August by the Army will be put in definitive form," Boeing spokesman Randy Harrison told The DAILY. "At that point, the FCS transition team, made up of the Army and industry [Boeing and Science Applications International Corp.

SUPPORTING COALITIONS: The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) plans to hold its fifth annual worldwide security cooperation conference Oct. 14-15 in Alexandria, Va. The conference will focus on creating a better understanding of the role DSCA plays in overseeing security cooperation programs and the functions that combat commands perform in executing them, DSCA says.

The launch of the first satellite in the Air Force's Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS) is likely to slip several months from its previous June 2007 target as a result of the $27 million cut in the program's fiscal year 2005 budget levied by Congress this summer.

PROVING THEMSELVES: Each of the four teams developing the Small Launch Vehicle (SLV) in Phase IIA of the Force Application and Launch from the Continental U.S.

LOOPHOLES: Regulations requiring that defense companies' small business status be reviewed more often are due to take effect later this year, says a new report by the watchdog group Center for Public Integrity. Defense contractors are taking advantage of a lucrative loophole in the small business rules to retain their small business status through the life of each contract, says the report, released Sept. 29.

NIXING NUKES: The Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) might not be very robust if Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is elected president. The Bush Administration has been studying the potential for new nuclear bunker-buster weapons, including RNEP, which would be created by modifying an existing nuclear warhead. But Kerry says he would kill such programs because they undermine U.S. attempts to discourage nuclear proliferation.

The U.S. Navy has begun fielding the first Aegis destroyer equipped to support the upcoming deployment of a land-based national missile shield, Defense Department and industry officials said Oct. 1. The USS Curtis Wilbur recently started patrolling the Sea of Japan, which borders potential adversary North Korea, and will act as a forward-based sensor for the Army-operated Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. The ship "is equipped" and "is ready," a DOD official told The DAILY.

NEXTVIEW: Orbimage Inc. of Dulles, Va., is joining DigitalGlobe of Longmont, Colo., as the second provider in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGIA) NextView program. Orbimage signed a four-year agreement with NGIA on Sept. 30 that will give the government priority access to its imagery and help fund the development of the company's next-generation OrbView-5 satellite. The potential value of the contract through 2008 is $500 million.

VENUS READY: Alenia Spazio of Italy has completed assembly of the Venus Express spacecraft and is planning a "Venus Express Day" in Turin on Oct. 4 before shipping the spacecraft to prime contractor Astrium in Toulouse, France, in mid-October for readiness testing. Venus Express is the first European mission to Venus, and is to conduct a multispectral examination of the planet to try to understand why it evolved so differently from Earth.

United Defense Industries Inc. won a contract modification from Anniston Army Depot, Ala. worth up to $47.4 million for the overhaul of M113 armored personnel carriers, the company said Oct. 1. Under the indefinite quantity and delivery contract for M113 work, United Defense will perform various services for up to 325 vehicles in 2005 and 2006. The modification to the original contract, awarded in July, brings the total potential value up to $48.8 million, the company said.

The Navy will field a new system for identifying potentially hostile targets on its EP-3E aircraft in 2006, according to Naval Air Systems Command. The system, built by General Dynamics and called "Story Maker," fuses information from a variety of sources to more quickly and accurately identify targets, said Cdr. James Baratta, head of the Special Missions Aircraft Department of NAVAIR's Maritime Surveillance Aircraft office, or PMA-290, at Patuxent River, Md.

J-UCAS BROKER: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., a $26.9 million contract to serve as the integrator/broker for the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System's (J-UCAS) common operating system. To ensure interoperability, DARPA is requiring the competing Boeing and Northrop Grumman-led J-UCAS teams to adopt a common operating system capable of controlling either team's J-UCAS vehicle.

Through the acquisition of The Specialty Group Inc., a Department of Defense supplier of individual protective equipment, Armor Holdings Inc. expects to add about $90 million to its fiscal 2005 revenues, Armor Holdings said Sept. 30. Armor Holdings would pay $92 million in cash for The Specialty Group, including the assumption of any debt. The transaction, which is subject to the approval of Specialty Defenses' shareholders and federal antitrust clearance, is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2004.

General Dynamics C4 Systems won a $22 million contract modification from the National Guard for ruggedized, secure fax machines, increasing the value of orders executed on the company's common hardware/software II contract (CHS-2) to more than $1 billion, the company said Sept. 29.

The U.S. Navy is expected to take delivery of its first Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle next week, a spokeswoman for prime contractor Northrop Grumman said Sept. 30. The RQ-4A Global Hawk will be flown from a Northrop Grumman production plant in Palmdale, Calif., where the Navy will formally accept the air vehicle, to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., the company spokeswoman told The DAILY.

ITT Industries of White Plains, N.Y. has won a contract to finish development of the advanced technology Digital Receiver based Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) and related integration with the AVR-2 Laser Warning Receiver (LWR), the company said Sept. 29. The contract was awarded by the U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Command in Huntsville, Ala. The terms were not disclosed.

Australian Defence Industries' Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicle recently underwent successful testing in a pair of three-day trials in the United Arab Emirates, ADI said Sept. 29. The five-year-old, left-hand-drive prototype vehicle took on 1,553 miles of desert, sand dunes, and rocky tracks in 136-degree temperatures, New South Wales-based ADI said. ADI was required to provide a driver for the vehicle while a UAE observer was a passenger throughout the trials.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun a program to develop advanced radar capabilities for tactical-level unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), the agency announced Sept. 29.

Boeing Co. next week plans to deliver the first modernized MH-47G Chinook helicopter to the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces, a company spokesman said Sept. 30. Boeing delivered a G model to Army SOF last May, but it was the first of three reconstituted CH-47D Chinooks intended to replace combat losses. The other two will be delivered early next year, closing out that particular program, according to Jack Satterfield, a spokesman for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems' Rotorcraft Enterprise Capability Center in suburban Philadelphia.

The U.S. Defense Department should speed up fielding two new sensors designed to support the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, according to two Democratic lawmakers. Reps. John Spratt (D-S.C.) and Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said that when GMD is deployed later this year to destroy long-range ballistic missiles, it will lack its "most essential" sensors: the Missile Defense Agency's Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) and the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX).

Researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, flew a 7 percent scaled Joined-Wing Technology Demonstrator for the first time last week, the Air Force said Sept. 29. The flight supports development of the SensorCraft, an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) program intended to study how sensors, links, components and propulsion systems can be used on a future long-range, high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle.

CABLE ASSEMBLIES: Meggitt Safety Systems (MSSI) of Simi Valley, Calif., will supply Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. with silicon dioxide cable assemblies for the F/A-22 Raptor's electronic warfare system, Meggitt Safety Systems said Sept. 29. Meggitt Safety Systems is a unit of the Meggitt Aerospace Equipment Group. MSSI will provide its amplitude stable and highly advanced phase cable assemblies for the electronic warfare and leading-edge flap communication navigation information systems for the F/A-22, the company said. MSSI will be the sole supplier for 203 ship sets.

NASA has chosen Lockheed Martin's Atlas V rocket to launch its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in April 2008, International Launch Services (ILS) announced Sept. 30. The first Space Weather Research Network mission in NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) program, SDO will study the sun's influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere in multiple wavelengths simultaneously. NASA's Kennedy Space Center is managing the launch contract, while Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the SDO project.