The U.S. Department of Defense is striving to become a better commercial satellite communications customer by interacting more with industry and streamlining its acquisition process, according to military officials.
The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon Co. a $265.9 million contract for Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) production, the company said March 23. Raytheon will produce 75 Block IIIB missiles; 79 Block IIIB ordnance alteration kits to upgrade older SM-2 missiles to the Block IIIB configuration; and telemeters, spare sections and rocket motors. Raytheon also will produce 64 Block IIIB rounds, 99 Block IIIA rounds, telemeters and shipping containers for foreign military sales, the company said. The work will be done at Raytheon's Missile Systems business.
The U.S. Navy has directed roughly $28 million to support a "Manhattan-like" project to defend military personnel against improvised explosive devices (IED), including realigning 10% of the baseline budget, and 75 scientists, from the Office of Naval Research, the chief of naval research said March 24.
A U.S. Navy E-2C Hawkeye recently underwent structural loads tests at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center's Flight Loads Laboratory to see if increasing the aircraft's gross weight will affect its performance, NASA said late March 23. Results of the tests were not provided. The work was completed in mid-March, "about three weeks ahead of schedule," the aerospace agency said. Project engineer Jason Brys said the Navy is pleased with the progress so far, according to a NASA statement.
The Office of Naval Research is studying how to employ dust-abatement measures for tactical use, Rear Adm. Jay Cohen said March 24. Technology already exists to help lower the amount of dust kicked up when a U.S. helicopter lands or takes off in Iraq or Afghanistan. But typically the technology - which Cohen did not further detail - is applied in safer, established basing areas. The ONR is looking at expanding the technology into the tactical realm, Cohen told the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space 2005 exposition in Washington.
International sharing of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter technology will be a key issue when the United States negotiates a production and sustainment agreement with the program's partner-nations, according to an official at prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
NASA should "establish a sound business case" for its Prometheus 1 program to avoid cost overruns, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released March 23. Prometheus 1, aimed at developing nuclear power and propulsion technologies for exploring the outer reaches of the solar system, depends on groundbreaking technologies, GAO said, but it warned NASA must match its resources to its requirements "to avoid outstripping available resources."
A panel of Navy and Marine Corps acquisition chiefs told an audience of defense industry executives on March 23 that the services need their help to build better cost-effectiveness into U.S. military acquisitions. "We have to learn to live in the current world with less," said Vice Adm. Walter Massenburg, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command. "We've been incentivizing the wrong behavior for years," he said, referring to consumption over fiscal conservation.
Lockheed Martin Orincon's sensor data fusion software for the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program will be tested in the summer of 2006, with initial integration into the program set for 2008, a company official said. The company is further along in its production schedule than some FCS contractors because its data fusion capability already had been developed for previous contracts, Tom Ward, the company's Air Force/Army business unit director, told The DAILY March 21.
The Boeing Co. soon will feature or demonstrate new capabilities on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet it is building for the U.S. Navy, company officials said March 24. Boeing plans to deliver the first Block II Super Hornet to the Navy in April, incorporating several new components, with the "biggie" being Raytheon's active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, which will increase situational awareness and reduce pilot workload, said Chris Chadwick, vice president of Boeing's F/A-18 program.
Brig. Gen. William Catto, commander of Marine Corps Systems Command, urged an audience of defense industry executives on March 23 to make sure their products live up to their billing. "We need you guys to produce consistently reliable products," Catto said. "We've had some problems with our optics ... where the products have not been up to snuff," he said. "We need these things to be as good as you say they are going to be because we've got guys using them right now and they're losing confidence in some of the products."
Raytheon Co. will conduct five more Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM) flight-tests early this summer, and has completed 90% of the program's system development and demonstration phase, a company official said. Meanwhile, the company is using many ERGM components to develop its Excalibur long-range projectile for the Army.
The Marine Corps is surveying industry for potential candidates to fill an urgent requirement for a Tier II unmanned aerial vehicle, one that would give commanders persistent surveillance out to about 50 miles. The UAV - midway in capability between Tier I and Tier III types - would conduct near-real time reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition, collect intelligence, and support convoys, according to a March 23 FedBizOpps notice from Marine Corps Systems Command.
Northrop Grumman Corp. on March 24 announced a quarterly dividend of 26 cents per share, an increase of 13%, updated its guidance for 2005 and released its 2006 guidance. The company expects 2005 sales of $31-31.5 billion and 2006 sales of about $33 billion, which assumes the current two-shipyard acquisition plan for the U.S. Navy's DD(X) next-generation destroyer.
NEW TRUCK: Oshkosh Truck Corp. will begin production of a new military tractor-trailer, based on the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement chassis, for the U.S. Navy, the company said March 24. The $24 million contract covers 92 vehicles, with production beginning in August.
FAA and the U.S. Air Force are proposing common federal standards to make launching expendable rockets safer, more efficient and cheaper, FAA said March 23. "These rules make it easier and safer to launch commercial rockets," FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said in a statement. "We can aid [the] growth of this industry with a unified set of strong safety standards and transparent rules that ease the launch application process."
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) of Japan plans to begin offering commercial launches on its H-IIA rocket starting in 2007, according to Shoichiro Asada, the company's director of H-IIA launch services. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) currently delegates responsibility for managing H-IIA flights to Rocket System Corp., a consortium led by MHI. The eighth, ninth and 10th flights for the H-IIA are expected by the end of the year, according to Asada. Sole responsibility
The U.S. Air Force wants two additional F-15E aircraft, and prime contractor Boeing anticipates a request for proposals for the planes in the coming weeks. The service also plans a long-lead effort for four more of the aircraft. Boeing has produced 236 F-15Es for the Air Force, and the two new planes would be built after production of 40 F-15Ks for the South Korean air force is completed in 2008, according to Bill Barksdale, a Boeing spokesman. The first production F-15E was delivered in 1988.
VirTra Systems Inc. of Arlington, Texas, reported increases in total revenue and net profits in its annual audited 2004 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said March 22. Total 2004 revenue was $1.3 million, up 35% compared to $984,490 in 2003. Net profits for 2004 were $1.6 million after a net loss of $1.5 million in 2003.
Future users of the Boeing-developed EA-18G electronic attack jet are starting to be surveyed to determine what type of upgrades they would like after the U.S. Navy starts fielding the aircraft in fiscal 2009. The Boeing Co. is working with the Navy to generate that feedback. "We're right at the beginning stages," a company official said March 23.
NEW DELHI - Pakistan and India conducted back-to-back missile tests on March 19 and 20, just after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had congratulated the nuclear rivals on recent peace efforts. Rice had just departed from the region when Pakistan test fired its 2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) range missile Shaheen II at an unspecified location, followed a day later by a test of India's Nag anti-tank missile at Ahmednagar. The Nag, a surface-to-surface, short-range "fire and forget" missile, was test fired eight months ahead of schedule.
