Aerospace North America is canceling its ANA2006 aviation conference and trade exposition and ceasing operations as an association later this month. "Citing the difficulty in structuring an event with a theme and focus that differentiated it from the increasing number of other aerospace industry events, the board concluded that limited support from affiliates and some leading industry companies made it doubtful that conference delegate and exhibition sales would reach acceptable levels," the group said in a statement issued last week.
NAVY OUTSOURCING: Consulting firm BearingPoint Inc. said the U.S. Navy awarded it a contract worth up to $55.8 million over five years to help with the service's outsourcing, privatization, divestiture and military conversion efforts. The company will help the Navy perform A-76 competitions - as in the Office of Management and Budget's revised Circular A-76, the Bush Administration's guidebook for competing federal services between federal employees and the private sector.
NEW MANAGER: Gordon England, formerly the secretary of the Navy, has taken over the duties of the second-highest ranking official at the Defense Department. President Bush designated England as acting deputy secretary of defense, replacing Paul D. Wolfowitz, whose resignation was effective May 13 as he prepares to become president of the World Bank. England awaits formal Senate confirmation, which is expected.
CLOUDSAT: NASA's CloudSat spacecraft is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., beginning final preparations for launch later this year. Built by Ball Aerospace Technologies Corp., CloudSat will share space on its Delta II rocket with another NASA spacecraft, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO). Together the two satellites will give scientists new perspectives on Earth's clouds and aerosols that will answer questions about how they evolve and affect our weather, climate, water supply and air quality.
SM-1 CONTRACT: The Defense Department announced on May 13 that the Navy awarded Raytheon Co. an $11.2 million contract to provide full service support for the Standard Missile-1 (SM-1) program for U.S. allies. The contract combines purchases for Egypt (43%), Taiwan (26%); Spain (10%); Japan (6%); Turkey (6%); France (3%); Italy (3%); Bahrain (1%); the Netherlands (1%); and Poland (1%) under the Foreign Military Sales Program. The work should be finished by September 2006. The contract was not competitively procured, the DOD said.
The U.S. Defense Department's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is about to kick off formal negotiations with its foreign partners aimed at settling key production and sustainment issues for the stealthy jet. The talks are scheduled to begin the week of May 23 in Charlottesville, Va. The first session is expected to last about a week and is "just one of many" such meetings planned for the coming months, a program spokeswoman said May 16.
DRS Technologies Inc. of Parsippany, N.J., has been awarded several contracts worth about $25 million to design and produce power conversion, distribution and machinery control equipment for existing and next-generation U.S. Navy combatant surface ships and submarines, including new ships in the Littoral Combat Ship program, the company said May 16.
AIR FORCE Composite Engineering, Sacramento, Calif., is being awarded a $19,823,973 firm fixed price contract modification to provide for Air Force Subscale Aerial Target, Exercise of Low Rate Initial Production Option for Lot 2 (quantity of 36 AFSATs) and the procurement of Exhibit B-Data. No funds have been obligated. This work will be complete by March 2007. The Headquarters Air Armament Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., is the contracting activity (F08635-02-C-0005, P00019).
NOMINATED: Gen. T. Michael Moseley has been nominated by President Bush to become the next Air Force chief of staff. Moseley, currently the Air Force deputy chief of staff, would succeed Gen. John Jumper. Moseley has been the Air Force's deputy chief of staff since August 2003. Jumper is set to retire in September after serving four years as Air Force chief of staff.
MDA LEADERSHIP: U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Marvin McNamara has been tapped to become the deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency, succeeding Army Maj. Gen. John Holly, who is retiring, the Defense Department announced May 16. McNamara has been MDA's deputy director for force structure, integration and deployment.
NASA and Boeing have postponed the launch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) NOAA-N satellite until no earlier than May 20 as engineers check for possible contamination of the spacecraft. During a de-tanking procedure May 12, a vent hose in the Delta II's intertank area broke loose, possibly allowing gaseous hydrocarbons into the rocket's payload fairing. Preliminary analysis of samples seems to indicate that the satellite is in the clear, according to NASA spokesman George Diller.
The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program is seeking additional funding from its overseeing agencies to try to stay on schedule for a first launch in November 2009, following a series of delays with a prototype demonstration satellite that have exhausted the program's budget reserves.
MOSCOW - Khrunichev Center has begun testing KazSat, a small telecommunications satellite that the center is building for Kazakhstan. In late April, thermal tests of the spacecraft were completed, and dynamic testing is now under way and expected to be finished by June. In the meantime, previously announced plans for piggybacking KazSat on a December 2005 launch along with Russia's Express AM-3 communications satellite have changed.
The Defense Department has awarded Force Protection Inc. a contract for roughly 120 mine-protected Cougar Joint Explosive Ordnance Disposal Rapid Response Vehicles for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first delivery order, for $45.7 million, was announced May 16 for 71 vehicles, the company said. The first Cougars are expected to reach the field by early fall.
Backing its warnings with action, the Senate Armed Services Committee has included several provisions in the latest annual defense authorization bill that take aim at the Pentagon's acquisition practices, including requiring congressional approval of major weapons programs operating under accelerated procedures designed for commercial items. "These provisions would increase the size and quality of the acquisition work force, strengthen defense ethics programs and reduce the risk of contract fraud," according to a SASC announcement May 13.
The U.S. Navy's Naval Sea Systems Command has awarded Titan Corp. a $19.9 million contract to provide installation, testing, and training for the Navy's Total Ship Training Systems (TSTS) program, the company said May 16. TSTS is a fleet-wide effort to train more on Navy platforms to maintain combat readiness.
Both the House and the Senate will consider their versions of the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bills over the next two weeks. Subcommittees on both sides of Capitol Hill marked up their portions last week, and the full SASC even agreed to a committee version (DAILY, May 16). The HASC will meet May 18 to hash out its final version.
EA-18G MODS: The Boeing Co. has finished building the second of two F/A-18F Super Hornets that will be converted to flight-test assets for the U.S. Navy's EA-18G electronic attack aircraft program. The second aircraft was delivered to the modification shop in St. Louis in the middle of the week of May 9-13, trailing the first jet by about two weeks (DAILY, May 4). The conversion process, which will include installing mission equipment and making final structural modifications, is expected to last about a year.
