EADS Defence & Security Systems of Amsterdam plans to buy the professional mobile radio business of Finland-based Nokia, EADS said May 4. Financial terms were not disclosed. The purchase's closing is expected before the end of 2005, pending regulatory approval, the company said. EADS would take over Nokia's PMR business, including its Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) infrastructure and terminals.
Australia soon will pick either the Boeing Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) or the Lockheed Martin Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) to equip its F/A-18 Hornet and AP-3C Orion aircraft, an Australian official said. A third candidate, Europe's Taurus, is no longer in the competition, said Air Commodore Graham Bentley, the Royal Australian Air Force attache at the Australian Embassy in Washington.
House Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) late May 4 shot a warning toward the Homeland Security Department - and the White House - by slashing $466 million off the Bush Administration's fiscal 2006 Coast Guard budget request for its Deepwater program and cutting funding back to its pre-Sept. 11 level.
Contractor teams are awaiting word from NASA on its new acquisition strategy for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which newly appointed Administrator Michael Griffin seeks to accelerate to close any gap in U.S. manned spaceflight capability following the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010. The front-runners in the competition are a team led by Lockheed Martin and a team led by Northrop Grumman and Boeing. The teams expect NASA to spend the next month or two re-evaluating the program before getting back to industry with the changes.
The U.S. Navy and Army have awarded Markland Technologies Inc. two contracts worth up to $36 million, the company said May 4. The first award, worth up to $11 million, was made by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. It is for system design, engineering support and systems integration for a new, unidentified land-based Marine Corps vehicle. It is the first award Markland has received from the Navy, the company said.
Despite Bush Administration requests, lawmakers negotiating the $82 billion supplemental spending measure decided to prevent the U.S. Navy from retiring the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier and competing the DD(X) destroyer program.
The long-awaited launch of the first of three next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-N) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA has been postponed from May to late June to allow technicians time to replace potentially faulty pressure vessels onboard the Delta IV rocket.
Federal government information technology (IT) spending will grow from $71 billion in fiscal 2005 to $92 billion in FY '10, driven by homeland security and defense spending as well as cyber security concerns, according to Reston, Va., consulting firm Input. "Homeland security initiatives will continue to be the primary driver behind significant growth for another one to two years," Payton Smith, Input's director of public sector market analysis, said in a statement.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are set to launch the latest Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES), NOAA-N, on the morning of May 11 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. NOAA maintains a constellation of two primary polar-orbiting satellites, which provide data for NOAA's weather and climate forecasting. To be renamed NOAA-18 once in orbit, NOAA-N will replace NOAA-16 and join NOAA-17, which was launched in 2002.
COUNTDOWN REHEARSAL: The crew of STS-114 conducted a countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center in Florida May 4. Known as a Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT), the exercise is held before every flight. The test ended with a mock countdown culminating in a simulated main engine cutoff. Following the engine cutoff, the crew performed an emergency escape in which they exited the orbiter and practiced getting into baskets that would carry them away from the launch pad on a slidewire. Discovery is scheduled to launch during a window in July.
NOAA CHANGES: The House Science Committee intended to mark up its authorization bill for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 4, but the panel delayed the move due to squabbling over the measure's language. "Both we and the Democrats have brought up significant additional changes to the bill," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), the committee chairman. He said the NOAA markup could be rescheduled for as soon as next week.
The once-lauded bomb dud rate goal of 5% now is far too high for U.S. military forces to accept, and industry and the Defense Department must work to cut that failure rate, the U.S. Navy program executive officer for strike weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles said May 3. Rear Adm. Timothy L. Heely told the 2005 Navy Opportunity Forum in Reston, Va., that with the use of fewer but dramatically more precise weapons, the 5% level is "unacceptable" in modern warfighting. Every weapon strike must be effective when it is needed, he said.
The U.S. Army is considering developing a smaller, more deployable variant of its Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), the sprawling chemical-laser demonstrator that has shot down rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds in tests, an industry official said May 4.
Eric Anderson, Takafumi Horie and J. Craig Venter have been elected to the board of trustees. Anderson is president and CEO of Space Adventures Ltd. Horie is CEO and president of Livedoor Co. Ltd. Venter is founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute and the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation.
Lockheed Martin has reported successful completion of a "jitter" test of the Space-Based Infrared System High (SBIRS High) satellite. The test, which ran from Feb. 21 to April 8 at the company's Sunnyvale, Calif., facility, focused on the Pointing and Control Assembly (PCA) of the geosynchronous orbit satellite. Lockheed Martin said this "allows the satellite's two optical systems to be positioned to scan and stare at designated areas, enabling operators to modify areas of surveillance according to national priorities."
International Launch Services (ILS) has announced upcoming launches for the Nordic Satellite AB (NSAB) Sirius 4 satellite and a classified National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) spacecraft, both to take place in 2007.
