An analysis of alternatives (AOA) review for implementing the next-generation Defense Department command and control system, Joint Command and Control (JC2), should be completed next month, an Army official told The DAILY. The JC2, the follow-on to the current Global Command and Control System (GCCS), still is in its infancy, said Col. Stuart Whitehead, director of the Training and Doctrine Command's Program Integration Office Battle Command.
BEHIND THE WALL: In fiscal 2006, the U.S. Air Force will continue working on a low-collateral-damage warhead, seeking a so-called "behind-the-wall" weapon with a "highly localized lethal footprint," says James B. Engle, the Air Force deputy assistant secretary for science, technology and engineering. The warhead case is a low-density, wrapped carbon fiber/epoxy structure in a steel nose and base. It can survive penetration into a one-foot hardened concrete wall, Engle says.
MMA REVIEW: The U.S. Navy's Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) is scheduled to undergo a system functional review in April to ensure the program is on track for its preliminary design review in September. The Navy says the program successfully completed February's integrated baseline review, which was designed to ensure funding is assigned to the right tasks. MMA, which the Navy is developing to replace the aging P-3, will use a modified 737-800ERX jet and perform anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare and reconnaissance. Boeing is the prime contractor.
TOMAHAWK: A U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missile was launched March 9 from the USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul (SSN 708) - a Los Angeles-class submarine now stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off Jacksonville, Fla. - and recovered 825 nautical miles away on the Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., test range, the Navy said. The Navy has awarded Raytheon Missile Systems a $1.6 billion contract for up to 2,200 Tomahawk block IV missiles for the Navy's surface and submarine strike warfare fleets.
The Abrams tank is getting a tank urban survival kit (TUSK), a series of improvements that will increase the survivability of the vehicle in urban areas off the traditional battlefield. The Abrams, designed for the Cold War, "is still the most survivable weapon in the arsenal from the front," Lt. Col. Michael Flanagan, Army product manager for TUSK, said in an Army statement. "But today it's a 360-degree fight, and these systems are designed to improve survivability in that urban environment."
NEW DEHLI - Seven of the Indian navy's diesel-electric patrol submarines have been retrofitted to carry Russian 3M-54E1 Klub-S submarine-launched cruise missiles, a navy defense official said. The work was done at Russia's Zvezdochka shipyard at Severodyinsk. Three more subs will be equipped within two years under the $78 million deal. The retrofits also involve building platforms to launch the undersea variant of the Indo-Russian supersonic BrahMos cruise missile.
The U.S. Defense Department's chief weapons tester has given the U.S. Air Force's F/A-22 Raptor a mixed review, finding that the stealthy fighter performs well but has problems being sustained in the field, sources said March 11. The rating of operationally "effective" but "not suitable" is contained in a report that DOD's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) recently submitted to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Congress, sources told The DAILY.
MORE HELLFIRES: The Defense Department has invested additional funds in the AGM-114N Hellfire missile and will deliver more than 100 units to the Marine Corps and Special Operations Command by June 2005, according to Ronald M. Sega, director of defense research and engineering. Money came from fiscal 2002 Quick Reaction Munitions Funds, though Sega did not provide further details during a hearing last week of the Senate Armed Services Committee's emerging threats subcommittee.
Technologies developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are helping save the lives of troops in Iraq today, DARPA Director Tony Tether told lawmakers in a hearing on Capitol Hill March 10.
The U.S. Navy's practices for estimating shipbuilding costs, contracting and budgeting have resulted in "unrealistic funding of programs, increasing the likelihood of cost growth," the Government Accountability Office said in a new study.
JFK CONTRACTS: The U.S. Navy plans to award one or more contracts between June and September to mothball the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, with work starting around September, John J. Young Jr., assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told reporters March 10. The move would leave the U.S. fleet with 11 aircraft carriers. The proposed decommissioning is controversial in Congress, with several lawmakers in both chambers pushing legislation that would require the Navy to maintain at least a dozen carriers (DAILY, Feb. 10).
SECOND SOURCE: Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says he wants a Pentagon review into Navy efforts to find a second industrial source of decoy flares for fighter aircraft. Weldon - who praised the current sole-source provider, Alloy Surfaces Company Inc. of Chester Township, Pa., for meeting demands - expressed concern on March 10 over potential patent infringement as part of the Navy's move.
COMBAT SKYSAT: The Air Force Space Battlelab plans another near-space demonstration on March 16 using free-floating balloons carrying inexpensive two-way radios in Chandler, Ariz. The "Combat Skysat" demo will feature near-space operations technology developed by Space Data Corp. and PRC-148 two-way radios manufactured by Thales Communications Inc. The system will demonstrate beyond line-of-sight communications in support of Air Force tactical air controllers.
HIGH THROUGHPUT: In its quest for a network-centric combat force structure, the Defense Department's "toughest challenge" is to find affordable, high-throughput (greater than 10 megabits per second) directional antennas. But the Army believes it has found a solution in distributed, multi-element antenna arrays that enable steerable beams, says Thomas H. Killion, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology.
Beginning in fiscal 2006, if Congress approves, the Defense Department would slice part of the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program for new Joint Capability Technology Demonstrations (JCTDs), said Ronald Sega, director of Defense Research and Engineering.
DAB POSTPONED: The U.S. Army is waiting on a decision by the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) on whether it will approve an Army request to replace UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters rather than upgrade them. The DAB, scheduled for March 10, was postponed until the middle of March, an Army representative told The DAILY. The Army's replacement requirement is for 1,200 or more aircraft, he said.
NASA has identified a total of 2,680 full-time equivalent positions throughout the agency for which it will have no work starting in fiscal year 2007, although it hopes ultimately to avoid layoffs through buyouts, reassignments and other measures. The positions are funded through FY '05 and FY '06, according to James Jennings, NASA's deputy associate administrator for institutions and asset management. If enough personnel can't be bought out or transferred to other work by late summer 2006, then layoffs may be required.
Piasecki Aircraft Corp. is offering the U.S. Army technology it says would increase the speed, range and altitude of existing Army helicopters, such as the Black Hawk and the Apache, company Vice President John Piasecki told the DAILY. The retrofit on each aircraft would be about half the cost of building a new helicopter, Piasecki said.
LONDON - Although the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MOD) recently capped a year of negotiations with the EADS-led AirTanker consortium by naming AirTanker as the preferred supplier of tanker/transport aircraft, there are still hurdles to overcome, a consortium official said. AirTanker noted that the final contracts for the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) program have yet to be signed.
U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and congressional research officials agreed with some lawmakers on March 10 that alternative funding mechanisms for shipbuilding - such as advanced appropriations and multiyear procurement - would be helpful, but cautioned that they would not result in a significant increase in the size of the future fleet.
As of the beginning of the year, NASA had implemented 18 out of 44 financial reform recommendations made by the NASA inspector general (IG) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), according to a recent IG report. Some of the 26 open recommendations are more than a year old, the IG said. Although this is due in part to their complexity, the lack of an "organized tracking system" also was a factor, according to the report.
The U.S. Navy official responsible for acquisition said on March 10 that he expects to recommend awarding DD(X) multimission destroyer work to just one shipyard. John J. Young Jr., assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said he will make the recommendation to Michael W. Wynne, acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, around the time of the program's April 11 milestone review.
Boeing Co. has reached an agreement with Sweden's air force to modernize the avionics of the country's fleet of eight C-130E/H aircraft, the company said March 10. The Swedish air force has signed a letter of offer and acceptance that will lead to a foreign military sales contract between Boeing and the U.S. Air Force. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the contract would be the largest ever between the U.S. Air Force and Sweden's government, Boeing said. The contract is set to be completed by early summer.
