The U.S. Air Force says it has received almost two dozen responses to its request for ideas to improve its long-range strike capabilities. The 23 submissions by private industry "effectively address a wide array of capabilities," the Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) told The DAILY in a recent written response to questions. The Air Force said it is reviewing the responses, which were due at the end of May, and has not set a firm deadline for deciding how to proceed.
Italy's Finmeccanica and France's Alcatel have signed a memorandum of understanding to merge their space activities by creating two sister companies containing their satellite industrial and service activities, according to Finmeccanica.
The Defense Technology Security Administration's (DTSA) Space Directorate may have overcharged U.S. satellite exporters almost $2.6 million for the monitoring of overseas launches of U.S. satellites between fiscal years 1999 and 2002, according to the Defense Department's inspector general (IG).
The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) approved a $416.2 billion fiscal 2005 Defense bill June 22 that includes $25 billion in a contingency emergency fund for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and $500 million more for National Guard and Reserve equipment. The Senate bill is $1.7 billion below President Bush's amended fiscal 2005 budget request of $417.8 billion and just below the $416.9 billion defense bill the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) approved June 16 (DAILY, June 17).
The U.S. Navy's Fleet Response Plan (FRP) does not reduce depot maintenance intervals between deployment cycles and the potential impact of the plan on the Navy's maintenance budget is uncertain, the General Accounting Office (GAO) said in a June 18 letter to House lawmakers.
COMBAT READY: A Germany-based U.S. Army battalion recently completed eight months of training with the Boeing Co.'s AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters, the company said. The 2nd Battalion, 6th Cavalry Brigade, based in Illesheim, Germany, was certified combat ready after completing extensive training at Fort Hood, Texas. Battalion members completed a series of comprehensive classroom, flight and field exercises, Boeing said.
Flight testing of a digital flight control system for the EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft is slated to begin next April, according to officials of the U.S. Navy and BAE Systems. The digital system will have a mean time between failure rate that is far better than the analog system now used in the EA-6B, and its cost will be relatively low because it is a modification of the system used in the F-14 fighter, they said. The MTBF is the average amount of time before the digital system would be expected to experience a problem.
A decision on the long-pending A-12 Avenger court case, concerning the 1991 cancellation of the U.S. Navy aircraft program, is expected this September, according to a source close to the case. "An oral argument will take place on June 29 in front of Judge Hodges [in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims] and a decision is expected in September," Jim Stevenson, author of "The $5 Billion Misunderstanding," a book about the collapse of the A-12 program, told The DAILY.
The U.S. Air Force plans to wage a campaign to save the Space Based Radar (SBR) from congressional attempts to dramatically downsize the program, a service official said June 21.
The United States and the European Union (EU) have resolved a dispute over their satellite positioning systems and will sign a pact codifying their agreement in Ireland on June 26. "We have reached completion of a GPS-Galileo cooperation agreement," a U.S. State Department official said at a June 21 briefing.
Test pilot Mike Melvill conducted the world's first private space flight June 21, piloting Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne into suborbital space after taking off from Mojave Airport in California. SpaceShipOne's carrier aircraft, the White Knight, took off with SpaceShipOne attached to its belly at 6:45 a.m. PDT. After an hour of climbing, SpaceShipOne dropped away and fired its hybrid rocket motor for approximately 80 seconds, reaching speeds above Mach 3 and a peak altitude of roughly 62 miles (100 kilometers).
The Department of Defense's inspector general (IG) criticized the MH-47G Chinook Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) in a June 16 report, saying that Army Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has not done enough to ensure the helicopter's interoperability with other aircraft and SOCOM equipment.
STRIKER40: General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products will manufacture the MK47 MOD 0 Weapon System under a $16 million government contract, the company said June 18. The MK47 weapon system, also called the Striker40, is a lightweight 40mm grenade launcher with an integrated fire control system that is capable of firing air-bursting ammunition. General Dynamics and partner Raytheon will build the program's Lightweight Video System (LVS) fire control.
EUROPEAN UNION: The newly formed European Union (EU) defense agency could move out of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in the future to strengthen its independence, says Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the CATO Institute. The EU defense agency, approved June 14, was established to help the bloc's 25 member states coordinate and make the best use of their defense budgets (DAILY, June 17). "The U.S. has been opposed to an EU defense agency independent of NATO because it wants to maintain a predominant role in Europe," he says.
HORIZON LINE: Texas lawmakers have been seeking new programs for Lockheed Martin's Horizon City facility, which has paid off with the news that the company will set up a pilot production line there for the Compact Kinetic Energy Missile (CKEM), state lawmakers say. "We have been working with Lockheed Martin for several years to secure new programs for this facility," Democratic Rep. Silvestre Reyes says. During the CKEM's system development and demonstration phase, work in Horizon City will include engineering integration, testing and limited production.
ENGINE UPGRADE? The U.S. Navy says it is studying the possibility of upgrading the Rolls-Royce F405 engine it uses on its Boeing T-45 Goshawk trainer. The Navy is interested in eliminating surges that cause the engine to run too quickly, forcing the aircraft to land. As part of the fiscal 2007 budget process, the Navy plans to decide whether to pursue the upgrade, which would be made on as many as 213 of the single-engine T-45s, according to Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR).
June 21 - 25 -- National Space & Missile Materials Symposium, "Developing Materials to Transform the Future," Seattle, Wash. For information go to www.usasymposium.com/. June 22 - 24 -- NDIA, 4th National Intelligent Vehicle Systems Symposium & Exhibition, Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, Traverse City (Acme), Mich. For information go to www.ndia.org.
BE SPECIFIC: The U.S. Navy should review its shipbuilding program to establish a consistent requirement for new construction, coupled with a streamlined approach to upgrades and modernization efforts, says the House Appropriations Committee. "The committee remains deeply troubled by the lack of stability in the Navy's shipbuilding program," the HAC says in its report on the fiscal 2005 spending bill, which was approved June 16. "...
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency already plans to take the kinds of steps lawmakers are calling for to increase the realism of testing for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, an MDA official said June 18. "We're doing about everything we can to make this as realistic as we can," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark Shackelford, MDA's deputy for test and assessment, who spoke at a Defense Forum Foundation luncheon on Capitol Hill.
"Numerous changes and improvements" have been implemented to dramatically upgrade the defense of U.S. airspace in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a North American Aerospace Defense Command statement said June 17.
The U.S. Air Force should set its depot maintenance prices high enough that the maintenance activity group will recover all its estimated costs, the General Accounting Office said in a report issued last week. GAO said that prices charged to customers were not set high enough to recover about $1.1 billion of the group's reported costs for fiscal years 2000 through 2003. The average price for Air Force depot maintenance in-house labor work also increased from $200 per hour of work in fiscal 2000 to $238 per hour in fiscal 2004, the report said.
The House Appropriations Committee said the U.S. Navy's development of the DD(X) guided missile destroyer is on a "rush to failure" as it recommended scaling back program funding from the requested level and delaying construction by a year. "The committee believes the DD(X) development schedule does not provide sufficient time for the proper maturation and testing of transformational technologies prior to initiating construction of the first ship," the committee said in its report.
