Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

Reps. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) and Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), the ranking Republican and Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee's terrorism and unconventional threats subcommittee, have urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to fill the vacant position of assistant secretary of defense for networks, integration, and information (ASD-NII). The ASD-NII serves as the Defense Department's chief information officer and oversees the largest computing system in the world. DOD has not had an ASD-NII for more than a year.

Bell/Agusta Aerospace Co. said Feb. 7 that SEACOR Holdings Inc. has ordered 20 AB139 helicopters, the largest AB139 order so far. The order raises the Bell Helicopter-Agusta joint venture's backlog to 100 helicopters, the company said. Delivery of the aircraft is to begin later this year and be completed by 2009. They initially will be used to support offshore oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico, Bell/Agusta said.

NASA's fiscal year 2006 budget request would boost funding for space exploration to $3.165 billion from $2.684 billion in FY '05, while putting the agency's aeronautics budget on a fairly steady decline through FY '10. The agency's exploration systems area includes all the technologies NASA is developing to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 and pave the way for a human Mars landing. By FY '10, its annual budget is slated to rise to $5.125 billion.

Goodrich Corp. said its military and space sales grew by almost 14% in the fourth quarter of 2004. The company reported a quarterly net income of $37 million on sales of $1.3 billion, up from $23 million reported for the same period in 2003. For the full year, Charlotte, N.C.-based Goodrich reported net income of $172 million on sales of $4.7 billion, up from $100 million of income on $4.4 billion in sales reported for 2003.

ARMY

VOICE SYSTEMS: L-3 Communication Systems East of Camden, N.J., has been awarded a $19.8 million contract to furnish the Navy with six FY 04/05 MarCom Integrated Interior Voice Communication Systems (IVCS) for installation on DDG 51 Class Aegis destroyers. The systems provide a computer-controlled voice communication system for reliable and survivable interior voice communications in Navy combatant ships.

General Dynamics Land Systems will provide logistics support for the Fox M93A1 Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicle under a $39.3 million contract from the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, the company said Feb. 7. The work is expected to be completed by July 31, 2006. The Fox vehicle is used to survey battlefields for nuclear, biological or cheimcal contamination.

Defense-related federal contract awards amounted to only $6.4 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2005, as opposed to $15.6 billion in the final quarter of FY '04, according to a government contracting consulting company. That's off by nearly 59%, Reston, Va.-based Input said in a Feb. 4 report.

The U.S. Navy confirmed plans to deactivate one aircraft carrier this year and cut back the number of ships it would build in fiscal 2006, according to the proposed $125.6 billion Navy budget request the Bush Administration unveiled Feb. 7. A senior Navy budget official briefing reporters Feb. 4 declined to identify which carrier - rumored to be the 36-year-old USS John F. Kennedy (DAILY, Jan. 7) - saying only that the budget plan calls for 11 aircraft carriers, including whenever the futuristic CVN-21 aircraft carrier is launched.

Democratic colleagues have affirmed Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) to serve as the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Aviation Subcommittee. Costello took over from Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), who gained the ranking position on the Highways, Transit and Pipelines Subcommittee. The Illinois Democrat left his ranking position on the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee for Aviation (DAILY, Jan. 10). 'Critical time'

BIDDING ALLOWED: The prime contractors bidding to build NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) also will be allowed to bid for the upcoming systems integration contract, which NASA plans to award by December. However, "there have to be protections in place to make sure that organizational conflicts of interest don't come up as an issue," Lockheed Martin's Pat McKenzie says. The winner probably will work in partnership with a NASA center (DAILY, Jan. 4).

Feb. 10 - 11 -- 8th Annual Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference, The Renaissance Hotel, Washington, D.C. For more information call (202) 267-8568 or go to www.organization21.com/ast.faa. Feb. 16 - 17 - Aviation Week presents World Aerospace Symposium, Pierre Baudis Toulouse Congress Center, Toulouse, France. For more information or to register go to http://www.aviationnow.com/conferences.

GUARD RECRUITMENT The U.S. Army National Guard is at 80.5% of its fiscal 2005 recruiting goals, and 56% of its January goal, said Army Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, director of the Guard. "It is way too early to admit defeat. My point is, we have eight more months of recruiting left," he said, referring to the fiscal 2005 year that ends in September. "The National Guard is not in crisis but it is significantly stretched," said Army Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau.

Contractors for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have begun placing exterior surface panels on the major pieces of the first test jet, a significant step in the U.S. Defense Department-led program, according to government and industry officials.

2006 SUPPLEMENTAL?: Even before Congress receives the Bush Administration's pending $80 billion supplemental spending request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, senators are trying to wheedle information about the expected fiscal 2006 request. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) tried to tease out a figure from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

CONTRACTOR CONFUSION: Defense firms can look forward to some guidance on how to deal with contractors on the battlefield in the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), says Army Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, the Joint Staff's director of strategic plans and policy. The military will look at the right mix of contractors and military "and also look at what capabilities contractors need," Sharp says. Sharp spoke last week at an Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare breakfast in Arlington, Va.

President Bush's budget request proposes $16.456 billion for NASA in fiscal 2006, an increase of 2.4% over the FY '05 level. The amount was $500 million less than projected last year. NASA Comptroller Steve Isakowitz said the budget continues the effort to tighten the focus on the year-old plan to explore the moon, Mars and beyond with robots and humans, in light of the overall federal budget realities.

SAN DIEGO - Despite successes in incorporating jointness into programs such as the Joint Tactical Radio System and the Deployable Joint Command and Control System, the U.S. Navy's procurement of new systems in a timely manner is not as effective as it should be, said John J. Young, Jr., the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. "There are things that are close to broken," he said, and the way requirements are identified and approved is one problem.

The U.S. Department of Defense's fiscal 2006 budget request, released Feb. 7, focuses billions of dollars on the war against global terrorism, the restructuring of U.S. forces and the building of joint capabilities to battle future threats.

MISSION MODULES: The U.S. Navy expects to award a contract for the Littoral Combat Ship mission package integrator (MPI) in the first quarter of fiscal 2006, says a Naval Sea Systems Command representative. A draft request for proposals for the MPI was released Jan. 26, the representative tells The DAILY. The MPI contract is expected to last five years and be worth about $85 million, he says. "The role of the MPI will include market research to identify new and available technologies to fulfill capability gaps.

The Air Force plans to request $9.9 billion for military space systems in fiscal year 2006, up from $8.1 billion in FY '05, as the service continues what a senior Defense Department official called an "across-the-board" modernization of all of its major systems. "All of our capabilities are being updated - weather, communications, missile warning, navigation, launch," a DOD official told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon on Feb. 4.

SHORT-SHRIFTING SCIENCE: House Science Committee Ranking Democrat Rep. Bart Gordon (Tenn.) warns that science and technology probably will be "severely underfunded" in NASA's fiscal year 2006 budget, to be released Feb. 7. "Everyone is willing to tighten their belt if it's in the national interest, but when the administration cannibalizes NASA's other important missions and vital domestic spending programs government-wide in an attempt to cover the costs of the president's moon-Mars initiative, it does more harm than good," Gordon says.