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.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems has been awarded a $28 million contract by the U.S. Navy to provide system integration and design agent services for the Open Architecture Track Manager (OATM), the company said March 23. The track manager is an improved component within combat systems that receives and translates information from air, surface and subsurface sensors to create an integrated picture of the locations and paths of aircraft, ships and submarines in battle.
Allen Barber has been promoted to president. James J. Cataldo has been named chief financial officer. Robert A. Fleck has been appointed vice president of customer service. William J. Frain has been appointed senior vice president. Jay H. Payne has been hired as vice president of cargo. Steven Williams has been named managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) completed the second phase of its Organic Air Vehicle II (OAV-II) program in July 2004, said Paul Eremenko, an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, which DARPA contracted to run the program. Phase II of the program developed generic technologies and explored scalability, Eremenko said March 23 at the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement's UAV Summit in Washington. Preferred choice
Dave Ryan, head of Boeing Satellite Systems (BSS), predicts an upsurge in orders for commercial communications satellites toward the end of the decade, driven largely by replacement orders as current satellites are retired. The commercial satellite world still suffers from overcapacity in orbit, which has limited orders for new spacecraft to 15 or 16 per year. Ryan said he thinks that number could bounce back to the level of the late 1990s, roughly 20 to 30 new spacecraft per year, by 2007-2009.
Robert B. Sanders, recently named group vice president for Sypris' Electronics Group, also has been named president of Sypris Electronics. He will replace James G. Cocke.
Robert G. Richards will retire as CEO effective April 3. He will continue to serve as a director. John C. Carson has been chosen to succeed Richards. Carson is the company's president, chief operating officer and a director.
Lockheed Martin will provide 15 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Future Fire Control Systems (FFCS) to the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence, the company said March 21. The systems, when combined with a new Electric Launch Drive System, will give British forces a launcher capability similar to the U.S. Army's MLRS M270A1, Lockheed Martin said. The FFCS also will enable the U.K. to fire precision munitions, such as Global Positioning System-enabled versions of the Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A and the Guided Multiple Launch System.
MOSCOW - Officials from Russia and Kazakhstan are discussing developing a joint air launch complex, called Ishim. Danial Akhmetov, prime minister of Kazakhstan, and Yuri Solomonov, head of the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering (MIT), met March 23 on the proposed complex, which could use MiG-31D fighter aircraft to launch the MIT-designed solid-fuel booster rockets to deliver small commercial satellites into low earth orbit. Akhmetov reportedly has ordered an Ishim feasibility study to be done as soon as possible.
Robert Bednarek and Alexis Livanos have joined the board of directors. Bednarek is executive vice president of corporate development for SES Global. Livanos is corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman's Space Technology Sector.
The U.S. Navy is expected to decide in the coming months whether to add a data-link to its Harpoon missile to allow operators to retarget the anti-ship weapon after it is launched. In-flight retargeting would help with attacking moving targets and avoiding accidental strikes on friendly forces.
On April 1, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plans to release a request for proposals (RFP) for the Space Technology 8 (ST8) spacecraft, set to launch in December 2008. ST8 is to provide in-space validation of new technologies as part of NASA's New Millennium Program. NASA already has chosen four teams to develop payload experiments for ST8 (DAILY, Feb. 2). JPL in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission. A conference to discuss the RFP is planned for April 15.
MORE MONEY: The American Shipbuilding Association (ASA) said Congress should appropriate $983.7 million above President Bush's fiscal 2006 budget request for naval shipbuilding. If a 2014 delivery of the CVN-21 aircraft carrier is to be maintained, for instance, $86.7 million needs to be added to the program in FY '06, ASA said. Otherwise, a CVN-21 delay, and the proposed retirement of the USS John F. Kennedy, would drop the nation's aircraft carrier force from 12 to 10.
U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon England on March 22 signed off on a 30-year shipbuilding plan, formally laying down the service's current total fleet projection in calling for 260-325 ships, the U.S. Navy official responsible for acquisition said March 23.
The Future Combat Systems' lead system integrators are seeking industry input on a dismounted controller device (DCD) which would give soldiers an easy-to-use interface with remotely controlled FCS battle components. "It will allow the soldier to remotely control the operation of ground and air platforms, sensor, and intelligent munition systems in real time," said Boeing and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), which released an RFI on the system earlier this month.
The U.S. Air Force plans to kick off the next competition for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program by releasing a draft request for proposals (RFP) in the fall or late summer and a final RFP in the October-December quarter, a service official said March 22. Contract awards for a total of about 18 to 24 launches are slated to occur sometime in 2006. Teets said the Air Force already is talking daily with the two EELV suppliers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and has developed a "framework" for conducting the acquisition.
