BIPARTISAN FUNDING: Aerospace industry representatives would like federal funding for space programs to be dealt with in a bipartisan fashion, as is the defense budget, says Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) President John Douglass. In other words, space programs should continue to be funded even when the White House changes hands, he says. In both space and defense, programs take a long time to complete, involve lots of engineering support and need the sustained financial support of the federal government, he says.
MDA MICROSATS: SpaceDev of Poway, Calif., will conduct a distributed sensing experiment for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) using three microsatellites flying in formation under a $43 million, five-year contract awarded April 1. The contract also contains options for a laser communications experiment and other microsatellite studies, according to the company. The satellites will be based on the company's Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer satellite (CHIPSat), a microsatellite built for NASA and launched last year.
AURA DELIVERED: Northrop Grumman has delivered NASA's Aura satellite to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in preparation for its summer launch, the company said April 2. The satellite will be the first capable of collecting data for gauging the concentration and movement of gases in the troposphere, the region that "most affects daily human life," the company said.
April 6 - 7 -- DoD Chemical Biological Advance Planning Briefing for Industry (APBI), Kossiakoff Center, Laurel, Md. Contact Angie Gress at (703) 247-2568, email [email protected], or go to www.ndia.org. April 6 - 8 -- Sea Air Space Exposition 2004, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC. For more information go to www.sasexpo.org/2004/.
SHOPPING: Air Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, head of the Indian air force, is in France through April 7 to discuss India's possible acquisition of more Mirage fighters. India is seeking multirole aircraft from international markets to replace its aging MiG-21, MiG-23 and MiG-25 aircraft. The Indian defense ministry also is considering a proposal from Dassault Aviation to build Mirage 2000-5 aircraft in India under license (DAILY, Jan. 29). Indian defense planners favor the idea, but a final decision has been postponed under after upcoming elections.
The U.S. Coast Guard's Deepwater program should be completed in 15 years, not 20 or more, Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), who chairs the House Transportation Committee's Coast Guard subcommittee, told The DAILY April 2. "We want to make sure first it doesn't slip beyond 20 years and then we want to see it completed in a faster period of time," LoBiondo said. LoBiondo said the changing nature of the U.S. Coast Guard's mission, particularly its expanded role in homeland security, makes it crucial to upgrade the fleet.
SENATE ACTIVITY: Senate lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee plan to hold a hearing April 7 to consider fiscal 2005 budget requests for National Guard and Reserve programs. On the same day, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee plan a hearing on defense intelligence programs and lessons learned from recent military operations. Among those scheduled to testify are Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and intelligence chiefs from the services.
SALES MANAGER: Air Force Lt. Gen. Tome Walters is scheduled to retire July 1 as the head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). Richard Millies, DSCA's deputy director, will serve as acting director until a new director is appointed. During Walters' tenure of almost four years, he has overseen an average of $13 billion a year in foreign military sales.
ACCOUNTABILITY: The U.S. Navy's use of spiral development and capabilities-based planning could hinder Congress' ability to oversee programs and spending, says Congressional Research Service naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke. "When asked about the current uncertainty regarding the planned size and structure of the fleet, Navy and DOD officials sometimes make reference to the concept of capabilities-base planning, and have argued that numbers of ships and aircraft per se are not as important as the total amount of capability represented in the fleet," O'Rourke says.
MOSCOW - Anatoly Perminov, the new head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, said he supports President Bush's proposed expeditions to the moon and Mars, and said both Russia and the European Space Agency (ESA) should participate in it. Perminov, who was named to the post last month (DAILY, March 12), spoke at a meeting here with ESA officials. His predecessor, Yuri Koptev, who headed the agency when it was named the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, had been skeptical of U.S. space exploration plans.
NANO FUNDING: The president's fiscal year 2005 budget request for nanotechnology programs at the Department of Defense (DOD) is $276 million, according to Clifford Lau of the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Laboratories and Basic Science. Although this is less than the $315 million the DOD will spend on nanotechnology in FY '04, Lau says he expects a "substantial increase" in the FY '05 enactment as a result of congressional plus-ups.
ON TARGET: "Increased activity" by the U.S. Navy, Marines and Joint Forces Command in the Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Suffolk, Va., area prompted the Boeing Co. to open an Integrated Defense Systems field office in Norfolk last week, the head of the new office says. Capt. Louis Lalli (USN, ret.) says Boeing is taking to heart the Pentagon's mandate for transformation and joint warfighting.
KOREA AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES (KAI) has begun flight testing of the T-50 Golden Eagle supersonic trainer with external stores, KAI and partner Lockheed Martin said. Flight testing with captive AIM-9 air-to-air missiles began in November and the first flight with external fuel tanks occurred in February, the companies said. The initial flights were to verify the aircraft's stability and control, flutter and handling qualities. Later flights are to verify its performance, store functionality and interfaces, and store separation.
Taiwan has requested a sale of early warning radars that could be worth nearly $1.8 billion, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency has notified Congress. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S. is seeking two Ultra High Frequency long-range early warning radars and related equipment to improve Taiwan's planned command and control infrastructure. "These radars will assist the recipient to identify and detect ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and air-breathing targets," DSCA said in a statement.
NEW DELHI - The Indian air force plans to buy 20 AgustaWestland EH101 helicopters for multimission operations, a defense ministry official said. The decision to buy the AgustaWestland helicopters was based on an Indian air force proposal submitted last year, which mainly sought to acquire a helicopter powered by GE T700 engines. The EH101s are powered by three of the engines, and are expected to be very effective for use in the high-altitude regions of Jammu and Kashmir.
Northrop Grumman says it is ramping up activities for two major manned aviation programs for the U.S. Navy. Operational testing of Northrop Grumman's Increased Capability (ICAP) III radar-jamming system was scheduled to begin April 1 and last five months, paving the way for an initial operational capability (IOC) in the summer of 2005, company representatives said at a March 31 press briefing.
Some big-ticket defense programs, including the Navy's future aircraft carrier (CVN-21), the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and the Airborne Laser (ABL) are entering system development before all of their technologies mature, a new General Accounting Office (GAO) report concluded.
BOEING has selected FR-HITEMP of the United Kingdom as a supplier of fuel pumps and valves for the 7E7 Dreamliner mid-sized passenger aircraft. FR-HiTemp will provide pumps to be used for engine fuel feed, fuel override and jettison, the auxiliary power unit, the center fuel tank and water scavenging, Boeing said. "With this announcement, we have completed more than 60 percent of the systems awards for the 7E7," program Senior Vice President Mike Bair said in a statement. FR-HiTemp is a business unit of Cobham plc's Aerospace Systems Group.
Several key lawmakers and the General Accounting Office are expressing concern that the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is facing steep technological hurdles that could cause major cost and schedule overruns.
EURO-ART has delivered the first French Counter Battery Radar (COBRA) production system for the French armed forces, the consortium said. The consortium is made up of Thales Air Defence of France and Thales Defence of the United Kingdom, EADS Defence and Communications Systems of France and Lockheed Martin of the U.S. The highly mobile weapon-locating radar, which has a full active phased-array antenna, initially will be used for training, peacetime trials and exercises. Final delivery of the French order for 10 radars is expected to be completed by the end of 2006.
One of the U.S. Navy's prototypes for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the High Speed Vessel 2 (HSV) Swift, made a port call to Alexandria, Va., this week to showcase the LCS' transformational platform and modules. The Navy is leasing Swift, a double-hulled catamaran made by the Australian company Incat, through a joint venture with Bollinger Shipyards to use as a test platform for LCS development. Swift was delivered to the Navy on Aug. 15, 2003. The Navy is leasing the ship for two years, although the deal could be extended to five years.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Two offensive counter-space systems are coming into use, according to Lt. Gen. Brian A. Arnold, commander of Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. One is the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System (CSRS) and the other is the Counter Communications System (CCS), Arnold said at the National Space Symposium here. Both are ground-based, and both are designed to create only temporary effects, he said. CSRS "will be out there around 2007," and CCS will come later, Arnold told reporters March 31.
