The German Bundestag's budget committee has approved low-rate production of the Puma infantry fighting vehicle, Puma maker Rheinmetall DeTec said Dec. 2. The LRIP contract, valued at 350 million euros ($455 million), is to be awarded to Projekt System und Management of Kassel, Germany, a joint venture of Rheinmetall Landsysteme and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
The U.S. Air Force and Navy have begun a joint study on the future of air-launched "air dominance" weapons, which are to help the American military maintain superiority in the skies, according to the Air Force. The study will explore the next generation of weapons that will handle missions now performed by the AIM-7 Sparrow, AIM-9X Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, as well as the AGM-88 HARM air-to-surface missile, which destroys radar-equipped air defenses.
STUDENT SAT: European students are putting the finishing touches on SSETI Express, an experimental satellite that largely has been designed and built by students collaborating over the Internet. SSETI Express - SSETI stands for Student Space Education and Technology Initiative - is scheduled to launch in May, says the European Space Agency, the program's main sponsor. The dishwasher-sized spacecraft carries three smaller "cubesats" built by universities in Germany, Japan and Norway.
LAIRCM RETROFIT: Boeing will retrofit 15 C-17A aircraft with Northrop Grumman's Large Aircraft Infrared Counter Measure (LAIRCM) Follow-on Retrofit kits, the U.S. Department of Defense said Dec. 3. The work will be done under a $40 million Air Force contract. The contract also calls for procuring "tooling necessary to operate four total lines to support the retrofit effort," DOD said. Northrop Grumman got a contract for similar work on 18 C-17s last month (DAILY, Nov. 22).
AUTHORIZING NASA: House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) "would really like to move a NASA authorization bill" next year, according to Bob Palmer, democratic staff director for the committee. However, he's not sure that NASA's space exploration vision will have sufficient support if it's put to a vote on the House floor. "I don't know if there's a way to get the 218 votes on the floor and still satisfy [Majority Leader Tom] DeLay and the president in terms of the space vision," he says. "It's very expensive.
GETTING READY: Three Space Shuttle Main Engines will be moved from the Main Engine Shop to the Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., this week for installation on the shuttle Discovery, NASA says. The work is part of the continuing effort to return the shuttle to flight.
The French defense procurement agency DGA awarded Thales the contract to construct the ground segment for the Syracuse III military satellite network, Thales said Dec. 3. The ground segment will help provide all French armed forces, either in country or deployed abroad, with high-speed, secure satellite communications, the company said. The contract opens "new opportunities for growth on European and NATO markets at a time when the emergence of network-centric operations is driving a deep-seated transformation of the armed forces," Thales said.
JIMO STUDY: NASA and Northrop Grumman are conducting a study of alternate missions that could be performed by nuclear fission-powered spacecraft such as Prometheus One, which is being developed for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission. "It's really looking at it as a set of spirals, and what are the different possible spirals that one could do - JIMO being a mission within a spiral set," says Peggy Nelson, vice president and project manager for Prometheus One at Northrop Grumman.
Alliant Techsystems was named winner - for the second time - of the U.S. Army's competition for the XM395 Precision Guided Mortar Munition (PGMM) program, which the company said Dec. 2 ultimately could be worth $500 million. Lockheed Martin in February successfully protested the Army's January selection of ATK, and the service reopened the competition in May. Competitor Raytheon filed its own protest in August, but it was quickly denied by the Government Accountability Office, which said it wasn't filed in a timely manner (DAILY, Aug. 20).
Eleven reports by 122 authors detailing the discovery by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover that areas of the red planet were wet and possibly habitable in the past have been accepted for publication in the journal Science, NASA announced Dec. 2. The Opportunity rover discovered evidence in Mars' Meridiani Planum region that a shallow, salty sea once existed in the area (DAILY, March 24.). Certain characteristics of the rocks there suggest that water came and went repeatedly, as it sometimes does in shallow lakes and deserts on Earth.
The U.S. Air Force plans to ask industry in early January to develop proposals for a new training system for the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, a service official said Dec. 2. Air Force Col. Michael Chapin, director of the training systems product group at the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, said the Air Force plans to buy eight Predator training systems, which will be located mostly in Indian Springs, Nev., where the UAV's operations are based.
MV-22 MONEY: The Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office was awarded an additional $10 million for the development program of the MV-22, the Marine Corps variant of the Osprey tiltrotor. The work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and Ridley Park, Pa., and is expected to be completed in October 2005. Initial fielding of the MV-22 is scheduled to begin in 2007 (DAILY, July 9).
Ireland's defense minister, Willie O'Dea, has authorized the defense ministry to begin negotiating for six new Irish Air Corps helicopters, the ministry said last week. Ireland plans to buy two light utility Eurocopter EC135 helicopters, mostly for pilot training, and four AB 139 helicopters from Bell Agusta Aerospace Company of Italy for general purpose operations and training. The contract negotiations will be conducted "as a matter of urgency," the ministry said, with contracts expected by mid-December.
The Defense Information Systems Agency has awarded Melbourne, Fla.-based Harris Corp. a contract worth up to $175 million to provide maintenance and engineering for the agency's Crisis Management System, the company said Dec. 2. CMS is a secure voice, video and data network that allows senior U.S. government officials to communicate during emergencies, the company said. The system operates over a dedicated Internet protocol backbone.
Engineers for St. Louis-based Boeing Integrated Defense Systems have successfully completed the first series of wind tunnel tests for the 737 Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) program, the company said Nov. 30. The low-speed tests, conducted on an 11% scale model of a 737 MMA, began on Oct. 28 and concluded Nov. 5 at Boeing's subsonic wind tunnel facility in Philadelphia.
General Dynamics Land Systems of Sterling Heights, Mich., has won three delivery orders worth $206 million to provide the U.S. Army with 95 additional Stryker armored combat vehicles, the company said Dec. 2.
Aerojet will build an attitude control system (ACS) for the second and third stages of the Kinetic Energy Interceptor's booster for Orbital Sciences Corp., the company said Dec. 1. The ACS will stabilize the booster during ascent. The second-stage ACS is scheduled to be delivered for a test flight in 2007. Aerojet, owned by GenCorp Inc., also is building a divert and attitude control system for the KEI kill vehicle under a contract from Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.
PROPULSION: Curtiss-Wright Corp. will work on an advanced electric motor for the U.S. Navy under a $5.4 million contract, the company said Dec. 2. The company's experience with naval nuclear systems allowed it to provide an innovative but "readily producible" motor design, the company said.
CHINOOK PARTS: Arkwin Industries of Westbury, N.Y. has been awarded a $760,800 delivery order from the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Ala., as part of a $10.1 million contract for Chinook helicopter spare parts, the Defense Department said Dec. 2. The work will be performed in Westbury, N.Y., and is expected to be completed in 2009.
More than 5,000 military rotorcraft worth about $84 billion will be produced through 2013, Forecast International said in a new report. This includes new helicopters and major modifications, such as Boeing's AH-64D and Sikorsky's UH-60M, Forecast said. A total of 1,668 such modifications, worth about $14.3 billion, are expected.
The U.S. Army is changing its training for drivers of Stryker vehicles and installing new seat belts to help address a rollover problem that is killing more soldiers than attacks from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
Virtual training systems maker FATS Inc. of Atlanta has won a $1.7 million contract from the U.S. government to provide law enforcement training systems to the Baghdad police academy, the company said Nov. 30. The police training systems contain multi-user configurations and scenarios and can monitor weapon diagnostics for instructional feedback, the company said. FATS' Bluefire Glock 17, a sensored, wireless firearm simulator, also is included in the contract.
