Boeing has laid off 100 workers at its Delta rocket production plant in Decatur, Ala., a move Boeing said was necessitated by the Air Force's ongoing suspension of the company for ethical misconduct during the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) development phase.
GMD DEPLOYMENT: The U.S. Defense Department might not make a public announcement when the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system becomes operational, according to Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita. "I don't think that the goal was ever that we would declare it was operational," Di Rita tells reporters. "I think the goal was that there would be an operational capability by the end of 2004," a timeframe that was later changed to January 2005.
SENSOR CONTRACT: The U.S. Navy has awarded BAE Systems of Rockville, Md., a four-year, $12 million contract for the next phase of the Multi-Sensor Integration (MSI) Phase II Project. The project is developing real-time software to integrate the on-board and off-board sensor information available to the Navy's E-2C aircraft. The contract was awarded by the Naval Air Systems Command.
British infantry troops equipped with a variety of modern high-tech equipment have successfully completed an experimental trial designed to improve their combat effectiveness, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence said Jan. 14.
TEETS LEAVING: U.S. Air Force Undersecretary Peter Teets, who also serves as the Defense Department's space acquisition executive, is expected to leave office in or close to March, joining an exodus of top Air Force officials as the Bush Administration gears up for a second term. Secretary James Roche and acquisition chief Marvin Sambur are stepping down Jan. 20. Before Teets departs, he is expected to handle Roche and Sambur's duties in addition to his own.
The European Space Agency's Huygens probe successfully touched down on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan on Jan. 14, marking humanity's first landing in the outer solar system. The probe began its descent at 5:13 a.m. Eastern time, sampling Titan's atmosphere and taking panoramic photos before touching down on an apparently solid surface at roughly 7:34 a.m. (DAILY, Jan. 13).
ACTIVE PROTECTION: The U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems is soliciting information on Active Protection System technologies and supporting components, the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) says. "FCS is developing a fully integrated hit avoidance suite to provide protection to the manned ground vehicles and current force vehicles," says a Jan. 14 TACOM FedBizOpps notice.
In a two-part Broad Area Announcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is urging industry to help develop a rapid prototype of explosives detection systems for vehicle bombs and to propose longer-range "novel" technologies to detect suitcase or package bombs.
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who heads the Corps' combat development command, said Jan. 12 that the Navy's Sea Basing concept must include protection of the deployed land forces as well as the naval staging area, meaning the Sea Shield concept must be equally developed. "The ashore piece has to be as protected as the afloat piece," he said.
In observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not publish on Jan. 17. The next issue will be dated Jan. 18.
EXTENDED: Thailand's air force has extended its contract with Environmental Tectonics Corp. for maintenance support of its three PC-9 aircraft simulators, the Southampton, Pa.-based company said Jan. 12. ETC provided the simulators to Thailand in the mid-1980s. The maintenance support work, which will be extended through calendar 2005 under the new contract extension, is being handled by ETC's International Logistics Support/Contracted Operations and Maintenance Service division.
U.S. Air Force acquisition chief Marvin Sambur said Jan. 12 that he recently testified before the Government Accountability Office, which is weighing a protest over the service's Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) competition. Lockheed Martin Corp., which lost the competition to the Boeing Co., filed a protest with the GAO in November after former Air Force acquisition official Darleen Druyun admitted she had given preferential treatment to Boeing on several other contracts.
Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have expressed interest in possibly buying the CH-47F, the newest version of the Boeing Co.'s Chinook helicopter, a company official said Jan. 12. Several other countries, including Egypt, Greece and Spain, are also seen as potential candidates to purchase the CH-47F, said Jack Dougherty, director of Chinook programs at Boeing, who spoke at an Army-sponsored press briefing at the Pentagon.
Nordic Satellite AB (NSAB) has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to build its next geostationary direct broadcast satellite, Sirius 4, Lockheed Martin announced Jan. 12. Set to launch in 2007, Sirius 4 will take over for the Sirius 3 and 3 satellites in the Nordic and Baltic markets, providing direct-to-home broadcast and interactive services. It also will enhance coverage in Eastern Europe and Russia and complement coverage of sub-Saharan Africa.
The Navy's vision for its future sea basing concept, the Marine Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future), or MPF(F), is on schedule, although the first ship of the family is not scheduled for procurement until later in the Future Years Defense Plan, service officials said Jan. 13.
A subsidiary of Dayton, Ohio-based MTC Technologies Inc. will provide Sustainment System Engineering and Acquisition Management Support Services (SSE and AMS) for the Nuclear Treaty Monitoring Directorate of the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) under a five-year contract worth up to $15 million, the company said Jan. 12. The award was made to MTC's subsidiary, Command Technologies Inc.'s Kemerait Engineering Group (KEG).
IMPACT TROUBLE: NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft entered a preprogrammed safe mode shortly after deployment from its launch vehicle Jan. 12, apparently in response to higher-than-expected temperatures resulting from a firing of the spacecraft's thrusters, according to a NASA spokesman. All attitude and trajectory maneuvers were successful and all other systems appear normal, the spokesman said.
The U.S. Army has awarded AAI Corp. a $71.9 million contract to produce eight Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) systems, the company said Jan. 13. AAI Corp. is a subsidiary of Hunt Valley, Md.-based United Industrial Corp.
Parsippany, N.J.-based DRS Technologies Inc. has received new orders worth about $36 million to provide 3,600 additional Applique Computer Systems to the U.S. Army's Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Below (FBCB2) program, the company said Jan. 13. The orders were awarded by the Army's Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) in Fort Monmouth, N.J., as part of a five-year contract won by DRS in June 2004.
REHEARSAL: Arianespace conducted a rehearsal for the requalification flight of its Ariane 5-ECA heavy-lift rocket on Jan. 12 at the company's launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, the company announced. The rehearsal included the entire launch countdown and tests of all launcher equipment and ground facilities. The actual flight is scheduled for Feb. 11, 2005. The first flight attempt for the ECA variant failed in 2002, destroying Eutelsat's $250 million Hot Bird 7 satellite and prompting a redesign of the rocket's Vulcain 2 main engine (DAILY, Dec. 13, 2002).
An enemy's relatively easy task of jamming and identifying friendly intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms flying at low and medium altitudes can be offset, but there's no single solution covering all situations and all vehicles, according to a new study from RAND Corp.
The Pentagon's top acquisition official is stressing the importance of defeating the threat of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, issued an unusual plea asking that "U.S. industry, laboratories, and inventors generate as many creative ideas as possible to counter" the devices.
AFFORDABLE RADAR: The Affordable Ground Based Radar (AGBR), produced by Raytheon Co., successfully performed air surveillance and tracking of simulated and real airborne targets during a Marine Corps test in December, the company said Jan. 13. The radar was tested while rotating at both 30 and 60 revolutions per minute. The test results bolster the idea for a battlefield sensor mounted aboard a Humvee, the company said. Further AGBR testing and evaluation are under way.
The U.S. Navy has been experimenting with a converted commercial container ship and trying out its plug-and-play modularity strategy under the Sea Basing forward basing concept, Vice Adm. David Brewer III told the Surface Navy Association's national symposium Jan. 12. The former S-class container ship, which could carry 6,000 containers in its previous commercial configuration, is called the Stockton, said Brewer, head of the Military Sealift Command. As part of its 12-month reconfiguration, command and control modular elements were built in.
