AEROSPACE COMPOSITE STRUCTURES, Rio Rancho, N.M. Matthew W. Donnelly has been named vice president of production. AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION, Washington Bruce Mahone has been appointed assistant vice president of technical operations. He currently is AIA's director of space policy. ENGINEERED SUPPORT SYSTEMS, St. Louis
Over the next several days, NASA will attempt to fix the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on its Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity," which apparently jammed Aug. 14 when a pebble became stuck in its cutting mechanism. The RAT is used to bore into martian rocks, exposing their interiors for further analysis. The possibility of a small rock jamming the mechanism was a "known vulnerability" of the RAT, but should be reversible, according to Opportunity Mission Manager Chris Salvo.
Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Aug. 18 that if elected he would focus on modernizing the military with advanced sensors and munitions in a "system of systems" approach to transformation. Responding to President Bush's criticism of missile defense opponents, Kerry also said he would reform defense acquisition while cutting funding for missile defense.
A national military command and control system has been delivered to Bulgaria by the Northrop Grumman Corp., the company said Aug. 18. The system, located in Sofia, is fully compatible with NATO and U.S. systems and is the first in Eastern Europe, the company said. It became fully operational in May and was delivered three months ahead of schedule.
A broad base of companies will help Lockheed Martin in the development of the Aerial Common Sensor (ACS), the U.S. Army's next generation manned airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system, the company said Aug. 16. More than 800 new jobs in the U.S. will be created under the program's six-year, $879 million system development and demonstration (SD&D) phase, the company said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Senate lawmakers Aug. 17 that moving control of defense intelligence agencies outside the Defense Department could place barriers between military commanders and combat support. "It would be a major step to separate these key agencies from the military combatant commanders which are major users of such capabilities," Rumsfeld said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - The U.S. Defense Department will be ready to field the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system once it has achieved a comfort level with a host of issues, including crew training, operational procedures and GMD's technical capabilities, according to an official at U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), DOD's integrator for missile defense operations.
Taiwan's air force has received the first of two new Hawkeye 2000 airborne early-warning and command-and-control aircraft from the Northrop Grumman Corp., the company said Aug. 17. The second aircraft will be delivered to Taiwan in October 2004. The Hawkeye 2000 will help Taiwan monitor and control its airspace and the surrounding seas. The Hawkeye 2000 has new advanced color workstations and a commercial off-the-shelf mission computer. Its first combat deployment was during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.
Sensor technology that was to be used on the canceled RAH-66 Co-manche helicopter program will be deployed as part of the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) ground sensor equipment. "A lot of the technology [going on the FCS ground sensors] came from the Comanche aircraft sensor program," Bob Costello, FCS program director for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, of Orlando, Fla., told The DAILY.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Lockheed Martin Corp. is working with the Air Force to develop a decision-making system that will allow faster attacks on fleeting targets. The Time-sensitive target Dynamic Decision Enabler (TDDE) program, company officials said, focuses on automating the processes that go into making various decisions, therefore rapidly presenting a commander with clearer choices.
Thirty-one teams already have signed up for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) next Grand Challenge robotic vehicle race, to be held Oct. 8, 2005, in the Mojave Desert area. Fifteen of the teams that applied also participated in last year's Grand Challenge - although not all of them made it to the finals - and 16 of the teams are new to the competition. DARPA expects to receive "many more" applications before the submission deadline of Feb. 11, 2005, the agency said.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - The next test of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system has been delayed about a month because of a computer glitch in the interceptor's booster, officials said Aug. 17. The test, Integrated Flight Test-13C (IFT-13C), had been scheduled to occur between Aug. 18 and 23, but has now been moved to about mid-September, said Army Maj. Gen. John Holly, GMD's program director, who spoke at the 7th Annual Space and Missile Defense Conference here.
The U.S. Navy has awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat a $16.4 million contract to perform routine maintenance work on a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, the USS Dallas (SSN-700). Electric Boat will perform alterations, maintenance work and repairs, which is called a Drydock Selected Restricted Availability. The work will be done at the Navy Submarine Base in Groton, Conn. between February and April 2005, the company said.
Rockwell Collins and NASA recently conducted tests of synthetic and enhanced vision using a Gulfstream GV aircraft, Rockwell Collins said Aug. 17. The tests used the company's Head Up Guidance Systems and head-down cockpit displays with computer-generated images, and showed that synthetic and enhanced vision could be used for complex visual approaches at night or in bad weather. Test flights were conducted in Reno, Nev., to see how the system worked in mountainous terrain.
Under a $1.5 million contract from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Boeing Co. is developing parachute guidance technology that could help future Mars landers touch down accurately in windy areas such as the polar caps or the Valles Marineris.
LONG LEAD: Northrop Grumman Ship Systems' Avondale Operations, La., has been awarded a $107 million contract modification to buy long-lead materials for construction of the Amphibious Transport Dock Ship LPD 23), the Department of Defense said Aug. 17. Work is to be completed by December 2008.
RAPID RESPONSE: The Bush Administration's new plan to cut the number of U.S. troops based overseas by up to 70,000 means the military will need to improve its "rapid response capabilities for distant contingencies, because our forces will not likely fight where they are stationed," the White House said in a "fact sheet" released Aug. 16. "This requires an updated transport infrastructure to facilitate movement of forces, prepositioned equipment along transport routes, and lean command structures for deployable operations," the fact sheet says.
LONDON - The Franco-German defense giant European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS), a major partner in the Eurofighter Typhoon multirole aircraft consortium, is blaming the British government for holding up a second production run of 236 aircraft, a delay it says could add to the program's final cost.
ACS ENGINE: A derivative of Rolls-Royce's AE 3007 engine will power the first five Embraer ERJ 145 regional jets built for the U.S. Army's Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) intelligence-gathering aircraft, Rolls-Royce said Aug. 16. The announcement came two weeks after a Lockheed Martin-led team Aug. 2 won an $879 million contract for the ACS system development and demonstration phase, which includes the production of five aircraft (DAILY, Aug. 4). The AE 3007 powers the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle and 20 variants of the ERJ regional jet family.
A recent report prepared by the deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy recommends that the Department of Defense (DOD) focus on new rotorcraft concepts and programs - including heavy-lift - to stimulate the U.S. rotorcraft industrial base.
The U.S. Army's Stryker vehicle, developed to fit into the service's transformational plan of becoming lightweight and rapidly deployable, will be too heavy to be transported by C-130 aircraft in many circumstances, especially when equipped with add-on armor, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
