The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.'s new aerial refueling boom is using electrical instead of hydraulic systems as much as possible to reduce weight, EADS officials said Sept. 14 at the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference in Washington. "We are reducing the workload on the boom, and making it fail-safe so no single failure could abort it, and using as many commercial off-the-shelf equipment as possible to reduce cost," said David Ferro, EADS' technical director for its advanced tanker team.
Aculight Corp. of Bothell, Wash., will develop a compact, rugged, short-pulse fiber laser source under a $750,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the Department of Energy, the company said Sept. 14. The system could be used in active imaging and remote sensing systems, the company said, and will be based on Aculight's pulsed fiber laser technology. Aculight also will produce a compact ultraviolet laser for use in Raman spectroscopy for the National Institute of Health under a $100,000 SBIR contract.
Information technology provider Titan Corp. will open its new 280,000 square-foot office complex in Reston, Va. on Sept. 15, the company said. Titan's new, 16-story facility, located at Two Freedom Square, will serve as the company's Washington headquarters for five of its eight business sectors that provide technology and systems to the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community and other government agencies, the company said Sept. 14.
Intelsat has been tapped to be the lead provider of satellite capacity for oil and gas companies, as Houston-based SkyPort International has bought two long-term capacity leases on the IA-7 satellite, the company said Sept. 14.
The damage done to NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) by Hurricane Frances is not a "showstopper," according to Administrator Sean O'Keefe, and should not interfere with the agency's goal of returning the space shuttle to flight by March or April of next year. Although the three shuttles were undamaged by the storm, damage done to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the facility that manufactures the shuttle's thermal tiles and blankets were seen as possible threats to a spring 2005 launch (DAILY, Sept. 8).
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing a prominent role in the war on terror, and the retooled CV-22 Osprey has an "awesome capability," the commander of the Air Force Special Operations Command said Sept. 14. Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley, speaking at the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference in Washington, said the UAVs act as "tiny eyes in the sky" and are saving coalition forces' lives. Some of the UAVs weigh as little as two pounds, he said.
The cost of the future U.S. Air Force Personnel Recovery Vehicle (PRV) will be approximately $1.1 billion in development funding, including the engine, and a total of $9 billion, said David Oliver, EADS North America's chief operating officer. The $9 billion figure doesn't include support over the life of the program, Oliver said Sept. 14 at the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference in Washington.
ITT Industries will deliver instruments for the next generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) under a NASA contract that could be worth up to $359 million through 2029. The company will deliver infrared and visible-wavelength environmental imaging instruments for the GOES-R satellite series, to replace older instruments.
The U.S. Air Force/Department of Defense's acquisition system needs to go "back to the future" to improve its speed and efficiency, a retired lieutenant general's study has concluded.
CIT: BAE Systems Information & Electronic Systems Integration Inc. of Greenlawn, N.Y., will provide 33 new F/A-18 combined interrogator transponder (CIT) receiver-transmitters under a $6.5 million contract, the Department of Defense said Sept. 13. The contract combines purchases for the U.S. Navy (94 percent of the contract) and the government of Australia under the Foreign Military Sales program, DOD said.
U.S. Air Force officials are expressing renewed confidence about the service's two fighter aircraft acquisition efforts. Air Force Secretary James Roche told reporters late Sept. 13 that the F/A-22 Raptor, now in a key test phase, is exceeding a requirement to be twice as capable as the F-15 it is designed to replace. "The data so far show it to be more than twice as capable over and over and over and over," Roche said at a press briefing at the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference.
Northrop Grumman is on schedule to deliver by year's end the first four B-2 bombers to be equipped with new bomb racks that will enable the aircraft to drop five times as many precision weapons on a single flight, according to company officials. "We promised that we'd have four airplanes all equipped, certified and ready by the end of this year, and in fact we'll make that commitment," Harry Heimple, manager of government requirements for Northrop Grumman's Air Combat Systems division, said during a briefing in Washington Sept. 14.
The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser (ABL) is expressing cautious optimism that the program will meet its goal to achieve two key milestones by year's end.
The next flight-test of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is being delayed at least two more months, MDA said Sept. 14. Integrated Flight Test 13C (IFT-13C), which previously slipped from mid-to-late August to mid-to-late September to fix a computer glitch in the interceptor's booster (DAILY, Aug. 18), now will be moved to late November or early December, partly to give program officials more time to find the root cause of the computer problem, MDA said.
Starting Sept. 14, a NASA-led team will spend two weeks in the desert near Flagstaff, Ariz., testing prototype equipment that could be used for the human exploration of the moon and Mars. The sand, dust, rough terrain, and temperature variations in the desert help approximate conditions that may be encountered on the moon or Mars, according to NASA. As part of the Desert Research and Technology Studies (RATS) program, engineers and scientists from inside and outside NASA will wear new prototype spacesuits as they evaluate the new gear.
Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) has been given responsibility for exploring the military utility of "near-space" altitudes, according to AFSPC Commander Gen. Lance Lord. Near-space is defined as altitudes of 65,000 to 350,000 feet, according to Lord. Because this area is not technically part of space, some have wondered whether near-space would be under the province of AFSPC or Air Combat Command (ACC).
Lockheed Martin's Maritime Systems and Sensors will provide the design and system engineering to the U.S. Navy for the Advanced Deployable System (ADS) program under a $21 million contract, the Department of Defense announced Sept. 13. The work will be used to provide a preliminary design and integrated baseline for the ADS variant to be deployed by the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), DOD said.
Russian engineers are analyzing an intermittent problem with the International Space Station's primary oxygen generating device, according to NASA. The crew is in no danger, NASA said, but engineers want to fully understand the situation before they try to correct it. The device, known as Electron, has been shutting down, NASA said.
In an office-wide broad agency announcement (BAA) issued Sept. 8, DARPA's Special Projects Office (SPO) is seeking ideas from industry on topics ranging from countering underground facilities (UGFs) to urban combat and precision navigation in the absence of a Global Positioning System (GPS). The agency expects to begin awarding exploratory funding contracts of less than $1 million each in fiscal year 2005. All responses are due by Sept. 15, 2005.
The U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman held a keel-laying ceremony Sept. 10 for the amphibious transport dock ship New York (LPD 21), the company said. The ship was named to honor the victims and heroes of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Its bow stem is cast from more than 24 tons of steel from the World Trade Center. The ship is the fifth of 12 San Antonio-class ships Northrop Grumman is building.
United Defense Industries, Inc. of Minneapolis has successfully fired a 120mm Electrothermal Chemical (ETC) gun from a hybrid electric drive combat vehicle, the company said Sept. 13. The U.S. Army's Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) staged the tests through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement and used a fully integrated 100kJ pulse power system.
The U.S. Air Force plans to buy "hundreds" of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) configuration, a key general said Sept. 13, adding further clarity to the service's plans for the JSF variant. The specific figure remains under review, said Gen. John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff. "I can't give you an exact number, but it's going to be more than a handful," Jumper said at a press briefing at the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference in Washington.
NETCENTS: The Centech Group of Arlington, Va.; Multimax of Largo, Md.; NCI of Reston, Va.; Northrop Grumman of McLean, Va.; Booz-Allen Hamilton of McLean, Va.; General Dynamics of Needham, Mass., and Lockheed Martin of Manassas, Va., were awarded a $9 billion contract for the Network Centric Solutions (NETCENTS) program, the Department of Defense said Sept. 13. The work is to be completed by September 2009.
NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B) spacecraft has completed its initialization and orbit calibration phase and entered the science phase, the aerospace agency said last week. "This is the moment we have been waiting for," Francis Everitt, the GP-B science principal investigator at Stanford University, said in a statement.
