RESERVE FUND: The Senate has approved the $25 billion reserve fund President Bush requested for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (DAILY, May 6), including $3 billion that would go to research and development, testing and evaluation, Coast Guard operating expenses, personnel and classified accounts. The fund also would provide $14 billion for the Army, $1 billion for the Navy, $2 billion for the Marine Corps and $1 billion for the Air Force. The measure was approved 95-0 as the Senate continued work on the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill.
June 7 - 10 -- AHS International 60th Annual Forum and Technology Display, "Vertical Flight Transformation," Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, Md. For information go to www.vtol.org. June 11 -- NASA's Glenn Research Center Technology Showcase, Cleveland, Ohio. For more information go to www.grc.nasa.gov. June 14 - 16 -- International Armaments Technology Symposium & Exhibition, "Armaments Technology in Support of Current and Future Joint Military Operations," Hilton Parsippany, Parsippany, N.J. For information go to www.ndia.org.
NET-CENTRIC NATO: NATO is become net-centric, a new area for the alliance, according to two military officials involved with NATO transformation. The NATO Network Enabled Capability (NATO), stood up in June 2003, will activate a Joint Forces Training Center in Poland this month and plans an industry day in Berlin in September to encourage interoperable capability, says Canadian Forces Lt. Gen. Michel Maisonneuve, chief of staff at NATO's Office of Transformation. The NATO Response Force is another focus for NNEC, he says.
NORWEGIAN AEGIS: The Fridtjof Nansen, the first of five Norwegian navy frigates equipped with the Aegis Integrated Weapon System (IWS), was launched last week, Lockheed Martin said June 4. The company provided the IWS, which is based on the Aegis Weapon System developed for the U.S. Navy. The frigate also carries the SPY-1F radar, a scaled version of the AN/SPY-1D radar, the company said.
Boeing's Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) successfully demonstrated its new retargeting capability in a recent test, the company said last week. An F/A-18C Hornet, operating from the USS John C. Stennis at Point Mugu, Calif., launched a SLAM-ER to destroy a simulated radar site on San Nicolas island in the Pacific, Boeing said.
An effort by the Navy's Strategic Systems Programs unit to define a conventionally armed, submarine-launched intermediate range ballistic missile is now focusing on cost, a Navy spokeswoman said. When the effort started last summer, she said, the concentration was on the feasibility of such a system. "Now that they know what's feasible, they have to know how much it costs," said Lt. Amy Gililland.
Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne will attempt the world's first privately financed space flight on the morning of June 21st after taking off from the Civilian Flight Test Center at Mojave Airport in California. Although skies are almost always clear in Mojave, the flight could be postponed if winds are too high, according to Scaled spokeswoman Kaye LeFebvre. The flight will begin at 6:30 a.m. local time, before winds usually pick up.
BUYING AUVs: Most major navies are planning to buy autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to cut manpower and large vessel expenses, according to a forecast from technology and market consultant Frost & Sullivan. Until recently, technical barriers restrained the development of maritime applications for unmanned vehicles, the report says, but shrinking fleet budgets in the post-Cold War environment will drive navies to shift to commercial-off-the-shelf AUV platforms with versatile payloads. For example, the U.S.
THAAD DELAY: The first flight test of the revamped Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is being delayed about three months, from September to December, because the program was forced to change sources for the interceptor missile's motor, says U.S. Army Col. Chuck Driessnack, who manages THAAD. Aerojet is taking over the motor work from Pratt & Whitney (DAILY, April 12), which was rocked by two explosions last year at its propellant-mixing facility in San Jose, Calif.
The U.S. Defense Department is struggling to determine when the military services should take control of anti-missile systems that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency has developed for them to use, according to the head of MDA.
FINAL REPORT: The final report of the President's Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy, known as the "Moon, Mars and Beyond" commission, will be delivered to President Bush the morning of June 10 and published later that day on the commission's website (www.moontomars.org). Commission Chairman E.C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr. and NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will deliver the 60-page report to the White House. The commission was formed to advise the president and NASA on the implementation of the country's new vision for space exploration (DAILY, Feb.
SWARM: The European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen a mission called "Swarm" as its next Earth Explorer Opportunity mission. A constellation of three magnetometry satellites, Swarm would provide the best survey of Earth's magnetic field, offering scientists new insights into the planet's interior and climate, according to ESA. After launch in 2009, the satellites would circle the Earth in near-polar orbits - one at 329 miles (530 kilometers) and two at 280 miles (450 kilometers) altitude.
The international export control system can't prevent the proliferation of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), according to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
The E-2C Hawkeye is a carrier-based early warning and command and control aircraft. Its mission is to extend perimeters of a task force by detecting enemy units and by vectoring interceptors into attack positions. It also provides strike control, radar surveillance, search and rescue assistance, communications relay, automatic tactical data exchange, and has shown its value in drug interdiction missions.
The Department of Defense is unable to determine the number of Stinger missile systems sold overseas and lacks procedures for conducting inspections of international inventories, according to a new report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).
NASA officials provided details about how a robotic servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) could work during a meeting in Washington June 2, while touting the concept as a way for the program to "take back" its destiny from the uncertainties inherent in shuttle servicing.
U.S. and British companies have won nearly all of the subcontracts awarded by the prime contractors and their teammates for the development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, according to a new report by the General Accounting Office.
Prospects for Malaysia to become the first international buyer of the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet are generating differing opinions. Although the Malaysian government continues to maintain publicly that it is interested in the strike fighter, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tome Walters, head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), said June 3 that Malaysia seems unlikely to acquire the American-made aircraft, partly because the country's large Muslim population strongly opposed the U.S.-led Iraq war.
CKEM: Lockheed Martin was tapped by the U.S. Army to develop the Compact Kinetic Energy Missile (CKEM), the company said June 3. The company competed with a Northrop Grumman-led team for the program, a next-generation hypervelocity anti-tank weapon. Lockheed Martin will proceed as sole contractor under a $21.3 million, 36-month CKEM Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) contract, with the remainder of the contract valued at $60 million, the company said. Once the ATD program is completed in 2006, a two-year system development and demonstration phase is scheduled.
The international Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is now less than 10 million miles from the planet Saturn as it prepares to swoop through the planet's rings and perform a critical orbital insertion maneuver June 30. Launched in 1997, the $3 billion mission is the most sophisticated spacecraft ever launched to the outer planets. NASA built Cassini, while the European Space Agency (ESA) developed the Huygens probe.
No shortfalls of U.S. intelligence-gathering technologies have been found by Congress as it reviews the 9/11 attacks and preparations for the war in Iraq, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told The DAILY June 3. Goss said the United States has an abundance of intelligence-gathering capabilities and that research and development are progressing. "There are people coming to my office everyday with a new technology," Goss said. "The question is, how do we use it?"
The Department of Defense is preparing the latest update to its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) roadmap and expects to publish it at the end of this year, according to Dyke Weatherington, deputy in charge of DOD's UAV Planning Task Force. The previous UAV roadmap, dated 2002, was released in March 2003. In addition to information on several new UAV programs, the new roadmap also will contain a section on airships, according to Weatherington.
