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.
AAR Corp. of Wood Dale, Ill. will furnish logistical support for the U.S. Navy's fleet of C-40A aircraft under a one-year contract, AAR said Feb. 3. Financial terms were not disclosed. Link Simulation Training, a systems integration firm based in Arlington, Texas, awarded the contract. Link is the prime contractor for the C-40A (B737-700) logistics support program. The contract contains four one-year options.
SAN DIEGO - To counter militant Islam, the United States needs to rethink how it fights, said Major Gen. Robert Scales (USA Ret.). Despite the United States' experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, its military is still preparing to fight large-scale battles against a technologically rich enemy, he said. The U.S. should concentrate on defeating the Islamists, Scales, coauthor of "The Iraq War: A Military History," told the AFCEA/U.S. Naval Institute West 2005 conference here last week.
The U.S. Air Force is requesting $102.9 billion for fiscal year 2006, up from $96.7 billion enacted in FY '05, which will include $11.9 billion for aircraft procurement. The budget includes $4.4 billion for the F/A-22 Raptor in FY '06, down from $4.7 billion enacted in FY '05. The money will buy 25 new aircraft and fund long-lead items for 29 more, according to an Air Force budget official.
Bell/Agusta Aerospace Co. is relocating its company headquarters from Fort Worth, Texas, to Reston, Va., to boost its "visibility," the company said Feb. 3. The company is a joint venture of Bell Helicopter, a Textron company, and Agusta, an AgustaWestland company. Initial plans call for 20 to 25 employees to occupy about 8,000 square feet beginning in mid-March.
A new study from the National Academies endorses exploration as NASA's primary goal, calling it "a form of science" if conducted properly. The Space Studies Board of the National Research Council performed the study, which explored the role science should play in NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 and prepare for landings on Mars and beyond.
The U.S. Defense Department's fiscal 2006 budget request is expected to be $418.1 billion - $4.6 billion less than the department predicted it would need just a year ago - and it may undermine troop support and shipbuilding, among other U.S. military needs, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) said Feb. 3.
A key U.S. lawmaker said Feb. 3 that he remains unconvinced that the American military needs the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), despite a recent push by RNEP proponents to revive work on the bunker-buster weapon.
EADS Defence Electronics of Ulm, Germany, has successfully conducted its first ground tests with the missile launch detection sensor MILDS-F on a Denmark air force F-16, the company said Feb. 2. The tests sought to show that the MILDS-F can be integrated into the F-16 Electronic Warfare System, and to collect data for the MILDS-F software that will be adapted to the environmental conditions on F-16 aircraft, the company said.
SAN DIEGO - The U.S. Navy "is not appropriately shaped for the world that we will face in the future," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark said at a conference here, repeating concerns he voiced earlier at a conference near Washington (DAILY, Jan. 12).
In preparation for the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), in a few months the Department of Defense's Joint Staff will roll out a series of strategy documents on U.S. national security, defense, military, and military strategy to win the war on terrorism, said Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp (USA), the Joint Staff's director of strategic plans and policy. Sharp spoke Feb. 3 at the Associa-tion of the U.S. Army's Land Warfare breakfast in Arlington, Va.
U.S. Coast Guard stations have been unable to meet current Coast Guard standards and goals in the areas of staffing and boats, an indication that stations are "still significantly short" of desired readiness levels in these areas, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Feb. 1. Furthermore, because Coast Guard funding practices for personal protective equipment (PPE) have not changed, stations may have insufficient funding for such equipment in the future, GAO said.
Three companies have received U.S. Air Force contracts worth $1 million each for work on the Orbital Deep Space Imager (ODSI) program, a projected constellation of geosynchronous orbit satellites that would significantly improve the ability of the United States to track and characterize objects in space.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Electronic versions of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report dated Feb. 7 will not be sent out or placed on the Web until shortly after 10:30 a.m. on that day, so we can include a special section detailing the U.S. Department of Defense's fiscal year 2006 budget request, which is embargoed until then. Print subscribers will receive the special section as part of the Feb. 8 issue.
The Boeing Co. announced Feb. 3 that its EA-18G electronic attack jet and laser-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) have achieved key goals. The EA-18G, which Boeing is developing for the U.S. Navy, completed its wind-tunnel testing, which confirmed that the F/A-18F Super Hornet airframe is well-suited to the electronic attack mission, the company said. Boeing conducted 1,412 hours of tests in five wind tunnels from June 2004 until Jan. 27.
Several members of Connecticut's congressional delegation, including both U.S. senators, will host a closed-door session with U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon England late Feb. 9 to protest the recent upset award to provide the next fleet of presidential helicopters to a team led by Lockheed Martin Corp.
SPARE ENGINES: United Defense Industries Inc. of York, Pa., will provide the Army with 20 spare engines for M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicles under a $9.9 million contract modification, the company said Feb. 3. The contract was awarded by the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. The work will be done in York. Deliveries are set for February 2006 through October 2006. United Defense designs and produces combat vehicles, artillery, naval guns, missile launchers and precision munitions.
Lockheed Martin has been selected over Boeing to develop RATTLRS, a demonstration program intended to increase the capabilities and performance of expendable supersonic vehicles. "They won," said Jennifer Huergo, a spokeswoman for the Office of Naval Research, when asked Feb. 3 to confirm that Lockheed Martin had beaten Boeing.
