BAE Systems has pulled out of the competition for the training systems integrator portion of the United King-dom's 12 billion pound ($21.36 billion) Military Flying Training System (MFTS) program, but will continue to work on the advanced jet trainer part of the program, a company spokesman said. "It was a bit of no-brainer," said Mike Sweeney. MFTS, he said in a telephone interview from London, is aimed at giving industry the job of training all U.K. military aircrews - "pilots, rear crew, fast jets, multi-engine, rotary wing."
The selection of a prime contractor for the U.S. Army-led Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) program has been delayed from April until late May or early June, according to a program representative. The choice of a developer for the intelligence-gathering aircraft had been expected April 19, but Richard Sciria, chief of the engineering and sustainment division for the Army's Project Manager for Signals Warfare, told the Precision Strike Association conference at Fort Belvoir, Va., April 21 that the process is taking longer than expected.
AMP WORK: Boeing Integrated Defense Systems will begin modernizing 48 U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Reserve C-130T and KC-130T aircraft under a $3.4 million contract, the company said. The work will build on the company's C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) and will install digital "glass cockpits" in the aircraft, the company said. The work will run through March 2005.
The U.S. Air Force's new subscale aerial target is moving closer to becoming a reality, with the first flight expected to occur "within a few months," a service official said April 22.
The 2003 Naval Transformation Roadmap, released April 20, is more detailed and useful than its predecessor, but needs more metrics and joint vision, according to a naval analyst. The U.S. Navy's first transformation roadmap, from 2002, was half as long as the 2003 one and was less detailed, Robert Work, a senior Navy analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), told The DAILY.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week approved a $1.1 billion authorization for the U.S. Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater Program, but there is disagreement about whether that will accelerate the program. Some lawmakers object to Coast Guard plans to complete the recapitalization program in 22 years, instead of the original 20 years. Rep. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, chairman of the Transporta-tion and Infrastructure Committee's Coast Guard subcommittee, is among those who would like to accelerate its completion to 15 years.
Military fixed-wing trainer deliveries will rise steadily in the next 10 years, totaling 2,238 shipments worth $17.5 billion from 2004 to 2013, according to a new global market overview from Forecast International (FI). "In light of the tactical aircraft re-equipment cycle now under way by many major air forces, the need to address some long-postponed trainer requirements is receiving new impetus," said FI senior aerospace analyst Bill Dane. According to Dane, the next generation of advanced jet trainers will be products of joint ventures.
The 250-pound-class GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb is intended to enable fighters, bombers and unmanned combat air vehicles to strike multiple targets on one pass. The smaller size allows an aircraft to carry more bombs than is possible with larger bombs, and precision technology will help it meet the accuracy goal. The SDB is projected to be as effective as larger weapons, but at a lower cost.
POSTPONED: The Czech ministry of defense has again postponed a tender for the purchase of more than 240 wheeled armored transports. The ministry planned to launch a tender for Czech companies to handle the near-$1 billion purchase at the end of February, but then announced a six-week delay so tests could be carried out on the chassis of contending vehicles. Officials said April 22 that the process would be delayed until the end of May because of "fine tuning" required in the tender specification.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a vocal critic of the U.S. Air Force's lease-buy deal with Boeing for 100 KC-767A tankers, said the guilty plea of a former service acquisition official is "a matter of continuing investigative concern." In a statement released late April 20, McCain said court documents related to Darleen Druyun's guilty plea (DAILY, April 21) "plainly indicate that the conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer and compromise the interests of the warfighter runs farther and deeper than originally suspected."
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a fiscal 2005 U.S. Coast Guard authorization bill April 21 that would provide $7.9 billion for the agency, including $1.1 billion for the 20-year Integrated Deepwater System modernization program. The bill, H.R. 3879, is aimed at accelerating the Deepwater program. It is nearly identical to the version produced by the committee's Coast Guard subcommittee earlier this month (DAILY, April 5).
House budget-writing lawmakers continued to press NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe for details on the Administration's space exploration initiative at a hearing April 21. Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the ranking member of the House Appropriation's Committees VA/HUD/NASA subcommittee, said he "conceptually" supports the president's vision.
ALCATEL SPACE of Paris has been selected as the prime contractor for the European research and development project Service of Coordinated Operational Emergency & Rescue using EGNOS (SCORE), the company said. EGNOS is the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, and the company would integrate its positioning data with that of the planned Galileo satellite navigation service. "Alcatel Space will lead a European consortium in setting up emergency call positioning ... and rescue force guidance services during accidents or natural disasters," the company said.
LOCKHEED MARTIN COMMERCIAL SPACE SYSTEMS (LMCSS) will build another telecommunications satellite for JSAT Corp. of Japan, the company said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The satellite, JCSAT-10, is scheduled to be launched in 2006 to provide communications services throughout Japan and Asia. The satellite will carry Ku-band and C-band transponders and will be based on LMCS' A2100AX platform. The Newtown, Pa.-based company already is building JCSAT-9, which uses the same bus and is scheduled to launch next year.
AEROASTRO INC. of Ashburn, Va., which provides small satellites and related equipment, said it will develop joining techniques for reconfigurable spacecraft based on Vaccro technology, developed by VACCO Industries of South El Monte, Calif., which AeroAstro said could be used in a way similar to Velcro. "By leveraging VACCO's proven Vaccro technology, AeroAstro will quickly turn the concept of reconfigurable spacecraft into reality," AeroAstro CEO Rick Fleeter said in a statement.
Some Senate appropriators expressed concern April 21 over the high cost of the planned ballistic missile defense program, saying the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is rushing to deploy it at a time when threats to the country have changed. "This is a lot of money for a system that has not been tested in its entirety," Sen. Dianne Feinsten, (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, said at a hearing on the agency's fiscal 2005 budget request.
The U.S. military needs to improve its joint urban warfare operations to ensure smoother transitions between combat and support and stability operations, according to an upcoming RAND Corp. study that focuses on the lessons learned from Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The study, due to be released in October, was sponsored by the Joint Forces Command.
General Dynamics' 2004 first quarter revenues were $4.8 billion, a $1.4 billion increase over 2003 first quarter revenues of $3.4 billion, the company said April 21. "Our business aviation and marine groups both improved margin performance," Nicholas D. Chabraja, General Dynamics chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "In addition, information systems and technology [IS&T] and combat systems provided healthy margins on materially increased volume, evidencing the successful integration of the GM Defense and Veridian acquisitions."
A study funded by the U.S. Navy is exploring the possibility of adapting the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) for use against ships, service officials said April 21. The study is slated for completion this summer, said Dale Bridges, program manager for JASSM, a joint Air Force and Navy program.
NASA has modified its competition to operate its NASA Shared Services Center, which is to perform consolidated administration activities and transactions now performed at NASA Headquarters in Washington and at agency field centers. The aerospace agency had received six proposals for the NSSC site, and had assumed that "one site would be materially superior to all others," and companies competing for the work would factor that site into their proposals, NASA said.
ANALYTICAL GRAPHICS INC. (AGI) of Malvern, Pa., has joined the Coalition for Space Exploration, a group of companies aimed at increasing public support for NASA programs. The coalition was established in January and is promoting President Bush's call for missions to the moon and Mars. "The coalition aims to support not just the health and longevity of space exploration and technology, but that of our nation and world," Lauren Miller, AGI's director of marketing, said in a statement.
EMS SATELLITE NETWORKS, a division of EMS Technologies Inc., has launched a new DVB-RCS hub, the company said. The hub is designed to support thousands of terminals and hundreds of megabits of data traffic. "Our release 2.0 DVB-RCS hub is economically attractive for smaller service providers and private networks, while maintaining the scalability and performance expected from our carrier-class customers," Don Osborne, the company's senior vice president and general manager, said in a statement.
Full effects of an effort to revise the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) High program will be known by June, the Air Force said in an April 21 statement. The statement followed an April 20 Pentagon review of the program, which has had cost and schedule problems. "Preliminary cost estimates indicate a program growth at approximately $1 billion through FY '13, and a 1-year delay in the launch of the geostationary satellites," the statement said.
