NSA SUPPORT: SI International Inc. of Reston, Va., has been awarded a four-and-a-half-year, multimillion-dollar contract to support the National Security Agency (NSA), the company said May 9. Exact financial terms were not disclosed. The contract includes a six-month base period and four one-year options. SI International, under the Bridge Technology subsidiary, will provide the NSA with expertise in program management, resource management, cost modeling, business analysis, and software engineering, the company said.
The Bell-Boeing team competing for the U.S. Air Force's Personnel Recovery Vehicle (PRV) program believes its offering could be fielded early because the tiltrotor aircraft would need few modifications to perform the PRV mission.
Northrop Grumman, prime contractor for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program, has begun a series of studies to assess the system's ability to conduct several types of missions beyond its main purpose. KEI initially is intended to shoot down long-range ballistic missiles in their boost phase of flight. But MDA has said that the mobile, land-based system might be useful in other phases of flight and against shorter ranges of missiles.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) has circulated subcommittee allocations for consideration by the full committee this week, including $363.4 billion for the defense subcommittee. That figure is $11 billion more than the fiscal 2005 enacted level but $3.3 billion below President Bush's fiscal year 2006 request. However, Lewis said in a statement that he shifted some national security funds out of the defense panel's jurisdiction while maintaining Bush's total request.
MORE HYPERSONICS: NASA Administrator Michael Griffin plans to increase the agency's support for hypersonic flight research. "I think it's important to the future of the United States, as much for military purposes as for civil purposes, and if we believe that NASA is a core element of the nation's aeronautics research program then we need to be doing more in hypersonics," Griffin says. Following the two successful flights of the X-43A demonstrator in 2004, NASA has no other hypersonic flight demonstrations on the horizon.
JSF MATING: The center and forward fuselage for the first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter flight-test jet were mated May 4 in Fort Worth, Texas. Prime contractor Lockheed Martin supplied the forward fuselage and Northrop Grumman built the midsection. The Lockheed Martin wing and BAE Systems aft fuselage are to be added to the aircraft in the coming weeks. Photo courtesy Lockheed Martin.
EADS BOOM: A new aerial refueling boom system developed by EADS is undergoing ground testing in Madrid, Spain, and is expected to begin flight-testing this fall, a company spokesman says. Although the boom initially will be flown on the Airbus A310, the aircraft's rear resembles that of the A330, which EADS plans to offer if the U.S. Air Force holds a competition for a new tanker. The Air Force prefers pole-like booms over the hose-based refueling systems that Airbus tankers have traditionally used.
May 9 - 11 -- The 3rd Annual Conference on Integrated Defense Architectures, "Needs, Initiatives, Opportunities, Challenges, Tools & Techniques," Holiday Inn Rosslyn at Key Bridge. For more information call (310) 563-1223 or go to www.technologytraining.com. May 9 - 12 -- 13th Global Demilitarization Symposium & Exhibition, John Ascuaga's Nugget, Sparks, Nev. For more information go to www.ndia.org.
DIVIDEND: United Industrial Corp. said May 6 that its board of directors has declared a dividend of 10 cents a share, payable May 30 to stockholders of record as of close of business on May 19.
DEFENSE SPENDING: The federal government's defense-related outlays through April were about 8% higher than in the same period last year, $273 billion versus $254 billion. That's a rate of growth well below the double-digit increases recorded in the past three fiscal years, the Congressional Budget Office said in its latest monthly federal budget review. Including spending from the $82 billion supplemental appropriations measure expected to get Senate approval this week, CBO estimates that fiscal 2005 outlays will total $2.5 trillion.
A new report from the National Research Council (NRC) warns that the U.S. defense and intelligence community must keep better tabs on evolving technologies to avoid "technological surprise" during future conflicts.
TRANSFORMATION: Congress has instructed the Defense Department to provide a report by September detailing the DOD's long-range plan for executing and funding the Army's modular force initiative. The report should identify personnel and equipment requirements, unit restructuring timelines and associated costs. "The conferees are concerned that the budgeting methods employed to support this initiative may result in inefficient program management and acquisition practices," lawmakers said in a report on the supplemental.
SBIR DATA: The director of the U.S. Navy's Small Business Innovation Research program says he would like more reporting from prime contractors when they tap SBIR companies. John Williams says the large defense contractors should report some SBIR data like they do for some subcontracting work. The information would give officials better insight into how well SBIR firms are penetrating the market, along with how well defense prime contractors use the small research outfits.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) said it had "outstanding performance" in its fiscal year 2005, which ended March 31. The weapon and space systems company said sales rose 18% to $2.8 billion, boosted by revenue growth in existing programs such as missile warning systems and military flares and by the acquisition of ATK GASL, ATK Mission Research and PSI Group. ATK's Thiokol division posted sales of $845 million, up from $799 million last year, mostly from the Minuteman III missile program and the sale of flares and decoys.
The new improvised explosive device (IED) jamming technology being speeded to Iraq still will not be a panacea and U.S. military officials already are seeing new IED tactics by insurgents. "From the beginning we have sought the technological solution, regardless of the cost, to try to find the device that would both detect and destroy the IEDs before our troops came within range," Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, Joint Staff director of operations, said at a Pentagon press conference May 5. "We still haven't found the defeat mechanism.
As part of its effort to accelerate the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), NASA has advanced the selection of the CEV prime contractor by more than two years, from late 2008 to early 2006.
F/A-22 CRASH: The U.S. Air Force is not ready yet to announce why an F/A-22 Raptor crashed on takeoff at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., in December, according to Air Combat Command (ACC). Although software problems have been eyed as a potential cause of the nonfatal accident (DAILY, April 7), investigators have not completed their work, ACC says. The Dec. 20 crash came at a sensitive time for the Air Force, which is trying to undo a Pentagon proposal to cut the service's Raptor procurement by almost 100 planes.
DELAYING INEVITABILITY: Lockheed Martin and Boeing's proposed Atlas/Delta merger may delay the government's downselect to a single expendable military launcher, but probably won't save enough money to delay it indefinitely, according to Troy Thrash, division director of space and telecommunications for Futron Corp. "If nothing else, I think it's going to make it less important that the downselect happens very quickly," Thrash says.
ManTech International Corp. of Fairfax, Va., reported revenue of $217.5 million for the first quarter of 2005, up $27.9 million, or 15%, from the same period in 2004. The boost was due to increased spending on defense and homeland security, the information technology and services company said. The company plans to continue this trend with a "steadfast and sharpened focus on the high-end intelligence and defense markets," George J. Pederson, ManTech's chairman of the board and CEO, said in a statement.
Alliant Techsystems and NASA successfully tested the functional deployment and attitude control of a lightweight solar sail propulsion system, ATK said May 6. This was the first of a series of ground tests for the sail technology, which will be tested through July, ATK said. The 20-meter-by-20-meter (65-foot) sail system was deployed in the 100-foot diameter vacuum chamber at the Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook facility in Sandusky, Ohio.
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. said May 6 that South Korea has chosen its S-92 helicopter for its presidential mission and the Stratford, Conn., company will deliver three of its VIP variant helos beginning in 2007. The S-92 was selected over the AgustaWestland EH101 in a competition conducted by the Korean Ministry of National Defense. The competition served as a rematch of a U.S. bid that Sikorsky lost to Lockheed Martin Corp.
PAKISTAN REQUESTS: Pakistan has requested 300 AIM-9M-1/2 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, 40 AGM-84L air-launched Harpoon Block II missiles and 20 RGM-84L surface-launched Harpoon missiles, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress on May 6. The Sidewinder buy could be worth up to $46 million and the Harpoon buy up to $180 million, DSCA said. Raytheon Systems Corp. is the prime contractor for the proposed Sidewinder sale and the Boeing Co. and Delex Systems Inc. are the prime contractors for the proposed Harpoon sales.
