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.
PENTAGON LEADERS: Ken Krieg, the Defense Department's director of program analysis and evaluation, appears to be the leading candidate to become the Pentagon acquisition chief if Michael Wynne leaves that job, according to an industry source. The Bush Administration also is considering Navy acquisition chief John Young to replace Air Force Undersecretary Peter Teets, who is retiring, but Young might not be given Teets' National Reconnaissance Office responsibilities, the source says.
US101 BOOST?: The Jan. 28 triumph of the Lockheed Martin-led US101 over the Sikorsky S-92 in the U.S. Navy's VXX presidential helicopter contest (DAILY, Jan. 31) could boost the US101's prospects in other American programs, including the Air Force's Personnel Recovery Vehicle (PRV) competition, which also is expected to include the S-92 and two other aircraft, says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation consultant at the Teal Group. Although the PRV ultimately could be killed for budgetary reasons, "the fact that the 101 has been established as a competitor in the U.S.
Microwave technology provider Herley Industries Inc. of Lancaster, Pa., has completed its purchase of Fort Walton Beach, Fla.-based Micro Systems Inc. for $20 million in cash, Herley Industries said Feb. 4. The acquisition was effective Feb. 1. Micro Systems provides systems and services for unmanned aerial, sea and ground targets and missiles.
SAN DIEGO - Despite a widening gap in the U.S. Navy's maritime surveillance capabilities, achieving an initial operational capability (IOC) for an unmanned aerial vehicle to meet its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) requirements could slip again, a contractor official said. Two years ago, the BAMS IOC had been slated for 2008. It slipped several times to where it is now - 2010 - and, depending on what happens in the current budget cycle, it could slide to 2013, the official told The DAILY at the AFCEA/U.S. Naval Institute West 2005 conference here.
LAUNCHED: An International Launch Services Proton/Breeze M booster launched SES Americom's AMC-12 communications satellite on Feb. 3 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. AMC-12 was built by Alcatel Space of Paris and is based on the company's Spacebus 4000 platform. On the same day, ILS also launched a National Reconnaissance Office satellite from Florida on the final Atlas III booster flight (DAILY, Feb. 4).
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) of Minneapolis said its third-quarter fiscal 2005 sales rose 21%, to $684 million, boosted by strong program growth and acquisitions. The growth came in programs such as the company's Minuteman III missile propulsion work and small-caliber ammunition, precision weapons and space structures, ATK said. The recent acquisition of ATK GASL, ATK Mission Research and PSI Group also helped drive the numbers up, the company said.
CAUCUS FORMS: Republican lawmakers are forming the Congressional Modeling & Simulation (M&S) Training Caucus to promote the defense-related business sector. Defense M&S provides "environments" for warfighting training, an increasingly prominent military need as U.S. troops and Marines rotate in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Caucus will showcase M&S training initiatives of the military in a joint task force environment and promote the industry. Caucus members already include Reps. J.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems will provide two additional Improved-Gnat unmanned aerial vehicles under a Feb. 3 contract modification from the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, the Defense Department said. The contract modification is worth $4.2 million and includes three modification kits for legacy hardware and the development and integration of the Gnat's Tactical Automatic Landing System.
Northrop Grumman Corp. is on track to deliver the 17th and final E-8C Joint STARS ground-surveillance aircraft to the U.S. Air Force in March, a company spokesman said Feb. 3. The remanufactured Boeing 707 will be transported March 22 from Northrop Grumman's plant in Melbourne, Fla., to Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, where the Joint Stars fleet is based, Northrop Grumman spokesman Jim Stratford told The DAILY. The base accepted its first production E-8C in 1996 and the 16th in February 2004.
A team of specialized repair experts from the Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, have completed a four-year overhaul of an Egyptian air force F-16 that was damaged in a crash. Egypt bought the F-16 under the Foreign Military Sales program, but it crashed soon after, the Ogden center said Feb. 4. Seeking to save its investment, the Egyptian air force paid the center's 649th Combat Logistics Support Squadron $3.2 million to repair the aircraft, versus the $30 million or more it would cost for a new one.
U.S. spending on missile defense is due to shrink substantially in fiscal 2006 after years of robust growth. After roughly doubling during the Bush Administration's first term, the Defense Department's missile defense budget is slated to fall from $9.9 billion in FY '05 to $8.8 billion in FY '06. The Missile Defense Agency's share will drop from $8.8 billion in FY '05 to $7.8 billion in FY '06.
PANEL SEATED: A new panel of lawyers, federal officials, industry executives and academics associated with government contracting finally is being pieced together after being mandated by the fiscal 2004 defense authorization act. The panel is made up of high-profile experts in government acquisition law and policy who are tasked with reviewing performance-based contracting, government-wide contracts and the use of commercial acquisition practices.
The Army's fiscal 2006 budget request will change little from the service's FY '05 budget, but will be increased considerably by the 2005 supplemental and in the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP), Army senior officials said Feb. 4. The Army's FY '06 budget request totals $98.6 billion, $1.4 billion more than what was requested in FY '05, but slightly less than the $98.9 Congress approved for '05. The FY '07 budget request is $110 billion, an $11.4 billion increase from FY '06, the service said.
