The Department of Defense's Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE) program reached initial operational capability (IOC) Sept. 30 at the first six joint staff-approved locations, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) said. The GIG-BE is scheduled to be fully operational by September 2005, with all 100 worldwide locations activated, DISA said.
Lockheed Martin's Maritime Systems & Sensors unit has received contracts worth $625 million as part of the work on the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program's design and development phase, the company said Oct. 4.
The U.S. Air Force is releasing a draft request for proposals for Spiral 1 of the Rapid Attack Identification, Detection and Reporting System (RAIDRS) defensive counterspace program, and wants industry feedback by Oct. 6 on plans to move to Spiral 2.
Export licensing reform will be a top aerospace legislative priority for the next session of Congress, said John W. Douglass, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). Douglass told an Oct. 4 press briefing at AIA's headquarters that the association was "disappointed" in the Bush Administration's lack of action on export licensing reform despite "promises" during the 2000 campaign to take action. He said he doesn't expect any action on reform until after the election and the new Congress is in session.
The U.S. Navy has awarded Knight & Carver YachtCenter of San Diego a $6 million contract to build a high-speed transport vessel, the company said Oct. 1. San Diego-based M Ship Co. designed the vessel, the "M Ship 80," Knight and Carver YachtCenter said. Work will begin on Nov. 1, and the ship will take about eight months to build. The company said it would immediately start hiring additional workers for the project.
Lockheed Martin said Oct. 4 that it is awaiting a "clearer understanding of the facts" before commenting on news that Boeing may have received preferential treatment in a competition to modernize the avionics on U.S. Air Force C-130s.
The U.S. Army is working on two initiatives it hopes to deploy to soldiers in Iraq in the near future - the RAM counterstrike capability, to protect troops against rockets, artillery and mortars, and a soldier squad radio that would transmit through dense urban buildings, according to the Army News Service. The new technologies are being developed by the Army's Futures Center at the Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Monroe, Va.
JTAMDO CONTRACT: The Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization (JTAMDO) has awarded Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif. a contract worth up to $122 million to continue providing technical advisory, engineering and scientific services, the company said Sept. 30. CSC will provide senior liaison support, integrated homeland air security support, engineering, force protection, interoperability, analysis, architecture, and concepts to combatant commands for the JTAMDO worldwide.
V-22 TESTS: A squadron from Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., is visiting Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., to test the V-22 Osprey in austere, desert environments similar to those in Iraq. The activity, scheduled to last until Oct. 8, is among several tests that are slated to occur before the Bell-Boeing tilt-rotor aircraft begins a five-month operational evaluation (OPEVAL) in January.
The U.S. Navy has begun fielding the first Aegis destroyer equipped to support the upcoming deployment of a land-based national missile shield, Defense Department and industry officials said Oct. 1. The USS Curtis Wilbur recently started patrolling the Sea of Japan, which borders potential adversary North Korea, and will act as a forward-based sensor for the Army-operated Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. The ship "is equipped" and "is ready," a DOD official told The DAILY.
EADS rolled out its first buried target fuze (BTF), integrated with a missile, in July, with the first missile to be delivered to the German military in November, Helmut Muthig, president and CEO of TDW, a German company owned by EADS, told THE DAILY. EADS' "smart" BTF is the only target fuze to date that can preprogram itself to detonate in specific areas, as opposed to being preprogrammed to go off at a certain time, Muthig said.
LOOPHOLES: Regulations requiring that defense companies' small business status be reviewed more often are due to take effect later this year, says a new report by the watchdog group Center for Public Integrity. Defense contractors are taking advantage of a lucrative loophole in the small business rules to retain their small business status through the life of each contract, says the report, released Sept. 29.
NIXING NUKES: The Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) might not be very robust if Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is elected president. The Bush Administration has been studying the potential for new nuclear bunker-buster weapons, including RNEP, which would be created by modifying an existing nuclear warhead. But Kerry says he would kill such programs because they undermine U.S. attempts to discourage nuclear proliferation.
SUPPORTING COALITIONS: The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) plans to hold its fifth annual worldwide security cooperation conference Oct. 14-15 in Alexandria, Va. The conference will focus on creating a better understanding of the role DSCA plays in overseeing security cooperation programs and the functions that combat commands perform in executing them, DSCA says.
The U.S. Army is looking for opportunities to test its JLENS cruise missile surveillance demonstrator, according to a program official. The Roving Sands 2005 joint air operations exercise or a similar event are among the possibilities the Army is considering to verify the capabilities of the demonstrator, said Army Col. Kurt Heine, the JLENS project manager.
VENUS READY: Alenia Spazio of Italy has completed assembly of the Venus Express spacecraft and is planning a "Venus Express Day" in Turin on Oct. 4 before shipping the spacecraft to prime contractor Astrium in Toulouse, France, in mid-October for readiness testing. Venus Express is the first European mission to Venus, and is to conduct a multispectral examination of the planet to try to understand why it evolved so differently from Earth.
NEXTVIEW: Orbimage Inc. of Dulles, Va., is joining DigitalGlobe of Longmont, Colo., as the second provider in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGIA) NextView program. Orbimage signed a four-year agreement with NGIA on Sept. 30 that will give the government priority access to its imagery and help fund the development of the company's next-generation OrbView-5 satellite. The potential value of the contract through 2008 is $500 million.
MILESTONE: The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) is scheduled for a Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) review Nov. 18, according to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). "This will be when the changes to FCS announced in August by the Army will be put in definitive form," Boeing spokesman Randy Harrison told The DAILY. "At that point, the FCS transition team, made up of the Army and industry [Boeing and Science Applications International Corp.
Oct. 5 - 7 -- Strategic Space 2004, Omaha, Neb. For more information call 1-800-691-4000 or go to www.stratspace.org. Oct. 7 - 8 -- 11th Annual Aircraft Financing Forum, Marriott Marquis, New York, NY. For more information call 1-800-666-8514 or go to www.srinstitute.com/aff. Oct. 12 - 14 -- Aviation Week presents MRO Asia, Shanghai Convention Center. To register go to http://www.AviationNow.com/conferences.
Former top Air Force procurement official Darleen Druyun was sentenced to nine months in prison Oct. 1 after admitting to helping Boeing Co. obtain a $23 billion tanker refueling contract in exchange for an executive job at the company, according to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
NASA's Genesis science team is nearly finished recovering the solar wind samples contained in the Genesis sample recovery capsule, which crashed to Earth Sept. 8 when its parachute failed to deploy.
United Defense Industries Inc. won a contract modification from Anniston Army Depot, Ala. worth up to $47.4 million for the overhaul of M113 armored personnel carriers, the company said Oct. 1. Under the indefinite quantity and delivery contract for M113 work, United Defense will perform various services for up to 325 vehicles in 2005 and 2006. The modification to the original contract, awarded in July, brings the total potential value up to $48.8 million, the company said.
