Northrop Grumman Corp. will supply its AN/AAQ-24(V) Nemesis directional infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) system to Australia's new fleet of A330 tanker/transport aircraft under a $24 million contract from EADS CASA, the company said March 14. Deliveries of the laser-based Nemesis system are expected to begin in January 2007. This contract marks the first use of the Nemesis technology on an Airbus aircraft, said Bob Del Boca, vice president of infrared countermeasures and laser systems at Northrop Grumman's Defensive Systems Division.
NEW DELHI - Global Positioning System components provider NovAtel Inc. of Calgary, Canada, has received an order from Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Co. for Space Based Augmentation System equipment in support of the Indian Geostationary Earth Orbit Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) program, NovAtel said. Financial terms were not disclosed. The equipment is set to be delivered in the first half of this year.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has called on the Defense Department to resist Senate efforts to make sure the previous Boeing air tanker contract with the U.S. Air Force is competed, and reiterated that he would fight against such a move again this year.
IED RESPONSE: The Defense Department is finalizing a new technology to thwart improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and expects to rush it into use in Iraq using new authority that allows the DOD secretary to waive acquisition regulations, according to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said during a March 10 hearing that the anti-IED technology is being finished at the U.S. military's testing grounds in Yuma, Ariz.
The U.S. Army has made progress in speeding up the delivery of critical equipment to soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom, said Claude M. Bolton Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.
RECRUITING: The U.S. Army is having trouble meeting its recruiting goals for the Army National Guard, Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey said. The Army has reached 74% of its recruitment goals for the Guard this year, while hitting 94% and 90% of its goals for active duty and Reserve forces. To address the problem, the Army has boosted the number of recruiters from 9,000 to 12,000 across the board and increased incentives, Harvey said. Gen. Pete Schoomaker, U.S. Army chief of staff, said, "we have more than satisfactory tools for this.
At an industry day in Washington, NASA revealed details of the systems engineering and integration (SE&I) contractor that will help pull together all the technologies being developed in support of the agency's space exploration plans. NASA is leaning toward a hybrid model for the SE&I team, which would incorporate government and industry personnel (DAILY, Jan. 4). "We're looking at a combination of industry, NASA, and an FFRDC [Federally Funded Research and Development Center]," Doug Cooke, SE&I deputy associate administrator, said March 11.
KEI: Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a one-year delay in the Kinetic Energy Interceptor will help the program iron out system design questions, which is important because space systems have to last a long time. "There are vulnerabilities associated with these systems," he said March 10 during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. "We have to address those in the designs of new systems, and ...
ARMY McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded on March 7, 2005, a $24,818,361 firm-fixed-price contract for Contractor Logistics Support Depot Repair. Work will be performed in Mesa, Ariz., and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2006. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on March 7, 2005. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (DAAH23-00-C-0001). AIR FORCE
United Defense Industries Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., will provide Stryker Add-on Armor kits to the U.S. Army under a contract amendment worth up to $90.6 million, the company said. The contract was awarded by General Dynamics Land Systems. United Defense will provide 289 full-vehicle Add-on Armor kits and spares to coincide with the delivery of the fourth brigade of Strykers to the Army. Initial contract funding is $30 million.
USB DRIVES: More than 1,000 USB memory "thumb" drives have been provided to the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq for evaluation for storing medical records as part of a series of Office of Naval Research (ONR) medical initiatives to support combat operations, ONR chief Rear Adm. Jay M. Cohen said March 9.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), has warned European countries and their defense industry companies that Congress would respond to their possible sale of arms to China. "We think it's an unwise move, but it's not going to be without a response from Congress," Hunter said March 10 while standing with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Capitol Hill after a HASC hearing. "That will be manifested in legislation. It relates to our relationship with European defense companies."
March 17 - 18 -- Grid Networks, "Net-Centric Operations in the Emerging Global Information Grid," Sheraton National Hotel, Washington, D.C. For more information go to www.technologytraining.com. March 21 - 22 -- 13th Annual Conference on Quality in the Space and Defense Industries, "Strategies for Mission Success," Radisson At The Port Hotel & Conference Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla. For more information call (254) 776-3550, email [email protected] or go to http://www.asdnet.org/cqsdi.
An analysis of alternatives (AOA) review for implementing the next-generation Defense Department command and control system, Joint Command and Control (JC2), should be completed next month, an Army official told The DAILY. The JC2, the follow-on to the current Global Command and Control System (GCCS), still is in its infancy, said Col. Stuart Whitehead, director of the Training and Doctrine Command's Program Integration Office Battle Command.
C-130 AMP: By late April, the U.S. Air Force plans to finish studying whether it would be feasible to recompete the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP), a service spokesman says. The Government Accountability Office recently called for the study, saying the AMP competition, which Boeing won in 2001, was tainted by Darleen Druyun, who began talking with Boeing about a job while still serving as an Air Force acquisition official (DAILY, Feb. 25).
MORE HELLFIRES: The Defense Department has invested additional funds in the AGM-114N Hellfire missile and will deliver more than 100 units to the Marine Corps and Special Operations Command by June 2005, according to Ronald M. Sega, director of defense research and engineering. Money came from fiscal 2002 Quick Reaction Munitions Funds, though Sega did not provide further details during a hearing last week of the Senate Armed Services Committee's emerging threats subcommittee.
MMA REVIEW: The U.S. Navy's Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) is scheduled to undergo a system functional review in April to ensure the program is on track for its preliminary design review in September. The Navy says the program successfully completed February's integrated baseline review, which was designed to ensure funding is assigned to the right tasks. MMA, which the Navy is developing to replace the aging P-3, will use a modified 737-800ERX jet and perform anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare and reconnaissance. Boeing is the prime contractor.
Armor Holdings Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., has received a $35 million order to provide the U.S. Army with a new armoring system for M1151 and M1152 Humvees, the company said March 11. The order was issued under a teaming agreement by military parts supplier AM General of South Bend, Ind. The Humvees will be armored to specified levels during production and fitted so that additional add-on armor can be quickly installed in the field with limited tools and manpower, the company said.
The White House on March 11 announced the nomination of Johns Hopkins University physicist and former In-Q-Tel President Mike Griffin to be the next administrator of NASA. The nomination ends months of speculation over who would be chosen to fill the post vacated by former Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who announced his intention to leave NASA in mid-December and began serving as chancellor of Louisiana State University last month (DAILY, Dec. 14).
SECOND SOURCE: Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says he wants a Pentagon review into Navy efforts to find a second industrial source of decoy flares for fighter aircraft. Weldon - who praised the current sole-source provider, Alloy Surfaces Company Inc. of Chester Township, Pa., for meeting demands - expressed concern on March 10 over potential patent infringement as part of the Navy's move.
HIGH THROUGHPUT: In its quest for a network-centric combat force structure, the Defense Department's "toughest challenge" is to find affordable, high-throughput (greater than 10 megabits per second) directional antennas. But the Army believes it has found a solution in distributed, multi-element antenna arrays that enable steerable beams, says Thomas H. Killion, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology.
