NASA plans to announce several more small Centennial Challenge prize competitions in coming weeks and will begin sharing information about larger prizes later this year, according to Program Manager Brant Sponberg. NASA announced the first two competitions - for high-strength tether materials and wireless power transmission - that will be held on an annual basis starting this year. The 2005 winner will receive $50,000 and the 2006 winner $100,000 (DAILY, March 25).
The Missile Defense Agency should take lessons learned from the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program when designing cooperative acquisition programs, said Lisa Bronson, director of the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA). "It's not good to develop systems and then decide to share them with allied partners later on. Instead, DOD needs to design the systems to share from the beginning," she said last week at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Defense 2005 conference in Washington.
V-22 COSTS: Despite the Pentagon's recent decision to slow the growth rate for V-22 Osprey production - potentially curbing economies of scale - the program remains confident it can still meet its goal to lower the $71 million cost of the Marine Corps version to $58 million by 2010, says Dan Korte, director of the V-22 program for Boeing. The company builds the tiltrotor aircraft's fuselage in Philadelphia.
SPENDING UP: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that all of President Bush's budget proposals for defense would increase outlays by $31 billion in 2005, $139 billion over 2006-2010 and $336 billion over 2006-2015 compared with CBO's baseline projections. If Bush's $82 billion supplemental funding request is enacted, it will add about $28 billion to defense outlays in 2006 and smaller amounts after that. However, the CBO and the White House disagree over whether $11 billion worth of the spending should be defined as defense outlays over 2006-2010.
The U.S. Defense Department has cut the time it takes to approve technology transfer licenses to allies, said Lisa Bronson, director of the Defense Technology Security Administration. "In 1998, it took 42 days on average to process a license. In 2004, it took 21 to 22 days to get a munitions license. Also, we put certain licenses ahead [of others]. It is no longer a first in, first out" procedure, she said.
LPD TO SEA: Three San Antonio-class amphibious ships will join the U.S. Navy fleet over the next year, say Northrop Grumman Ship Systems (NGSS) representatives. The lead ship, LPD 17, will undergo sea trials late next month, while LPD 18 is 78% complete. LPD 19, the third ship expected to join the fleet next year, is 70% complete. LPD 20, another ship in the class that is coming on later, is 52% finished and LPD 21 is 18% done, they said.
EQUAL FOOTING: A Boeing representative says that industry and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have an equal chance of winning a Future Combat Systems contract for the program's Class II unmanned aerial vehicle. "In truth, both the DARPA vehicle and the [lead system integrator] vehicle will be evaluated, and the one that best meets Army requirements will be chosen," Mary McAdam tells The DAILY. Boeing and SAIC are the FCS lead system integrators.
NASA's Centennial Challenges program and partner the Spaceward Foundation announced their first four prize competitions March 23 for advances in strong, lightweight new tether material and wireless power technology. For the Tether Challenge, teams will develop high-strength materials that will be stretched in a head-to-head competition to see which tether is strongest.
Futuristic high-velocity weapons being researched will fundamentally alter U.S. sea power by giving sailors and Marines time-critical strike capability, the head of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) said March 24. The ONR is seeking a direct-fire, pre-prototype, 32 megajoules (mj) electromagnetic rail gun (ERG) that could project a so-called "dumb" warhead at speeds up to Mach 7, Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, chief of naval research, told an audience at the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space 2005 exposition in Washington.
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.
