The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has awarded a $288 million contract modification to the National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) to design and build a fourth ship in the Dry Cargo/Ammunition Ship (T-AKE) class. NASSCO is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics Corp. Work will be performed at NASSCO's facility in San Diego and is expected to be completed by December 2006. The award is an option on a $709 million contract awarded to NASSCO in October 2001 for the design and construction of the first two ships in the class.
A bipartisan group of representatives introduced a bill last week in the House designed to improve federal oversight of private contractors convicted of violating federal contract regulations. The bill, called the Contractor Accountability Act of 2003, calls for the creation of a central database of legal actions taken by the government against federal contractors "to provide debarring officials with the information they need to protect the business interests of the United States," according to a joint statement released by the representatives.
STREAKER: SpaceDev of Poway, Calif., will design and begin developing Streaker, a small launch vehicle, under a U.S. Air Force small business innovative research contract, the company said July 18. Streaker will be designed to affordably launch up to 1,000 pounds to low-earth orbit, the company said.
Metal Storm Inc. wants to show officials in the U.S. its ability to fire ammunition at a rate of one million rounds per minute. The Arlington, Va., company will license the "electronic ballistic" technology to allow such a feat from its Australian sister, Metal Storm Ltd., and plans to conduct a U.S. demonstration this year, according to G. Russell Zink, senior vice president for business development.
CAE will upgrade two combat mission simulators for the U.S. Army's AH-64A attack helicopters under a $9.5 million contract the company announced July 21. The upgrade includes the CAE Medallion-S visual system and new instructor operator stations, the company said. One simulator, at the Western Army Aviation Training Center, Marana, Ariz., is scheduled to be ready in September 2004. The other, at Fort Campbell, Ky., is set to be operational for training in January 2005.
The Block 4 Tactical Tomahawk is moving into operational testing this fall after completing a government technical flight test evaluation period, the U.S. Navy announced July 21. A July 20 flight test using the first missile configured with a live warhead completes an 11-month-long series of developmental tests on the Raytheon Tactical Tomahawk.
A July 21 panel of space industry experts agreed that NASA's Orbital Space Plane (OSP) must be capable of evolving beyond only serving the needs of the International Space Station (ISS) if it is to be a worthwhile and sustainable investment. The OSP is intended to provide crew return from the ISS as early as 2008, and crew transfer up to orbit shortly thereafter. NASA has offered an OSP cost estimate of $2.4 billion for FY '03 to FY '07, although the agency has said that number is a placeholder and will be revised as development progresses.
Efforts to ease export restrictions on U.S. satellites suffered a double blow last week during the House's consideration of a foreign relations authorization bill.
MOSCOW - Russia's aviation and space agency, Rosaviakosmos, needs funding to complete Khrunichev Center's research module for the International Space Station, an agency official said last week. Cash flow problems have delayed work on the module, a problem made worse by the need to support the station while NASA's shuttle fleet remains grounded, said Alexander Kuznetsov, Rosaviakosmos' deputy general director.
The Senate late July 17 approved its version of the fiscal 2004 defense appropriations bill after four days of debate, clearing the way for a conference with the House after the August congressional recess. Earlier in the day, the Senate defeated an amendment by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) that would have shifted $1.1 billion from procurement and research and development to anti-disease programs.
ARMY ROADMAP: The Army's evolving Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is spurring the service to revise its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) roadmap, according to Lt. Gen. John Riggs, director of the Objective Force Task Force at Army headquarters. "The Army put together a UAV roadmap, submitted it to Congress in April '03, and it's currently under revision," Riggs says. "The reason it's under revision is I don't think we took fully into consideration the impact that Future Combat Systems would have on the Army's total unmanned systems programs.
MIG REVIEW: The crash of yet another Indian MiG-21 fighter has led the Indian defense ministry to begin reassessing the airworthiness of its MiG fleet. The July 15 crash, which killed the crew, has cast in doubt earlier military statements that the MiG-21 would remain a mainstay of India's air force (DAILY, June 27). The air force has lost six fighters in the last seven months to crashes, three of which were MiG-21s.
The joint investigation by DOD and the Air Force into alleged misconduct by Boeing during the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) competition has resulted in a criminal indictment against two former Boeing managers, DOD announced July 18. Kenneth Branch, 64, and William Erskine, 43, have been charged with conspiracy to conceal and possess trade secrets by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, for the misuse of proprietary Lockheed Martin documents during bidding for Air Force EELV launch contracts.
Industry teams led by General Dynamics, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin will submit preliminary designs for the Littoral Combat Ship. The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) made the announcement after the close of trading on July 17. Six industry teams competed for the design contracts, which were worth $9-10 million. Other teams were led by Northrop Grumman, Textron Systems and Titan Corp.
NUKE FUNDING: The Bush Administration's fiscal 2004 budget request for nuclear weapons research is getting a mixed reception from Congress. The House-passed version of the FY '04 energy and water appropriations bill cuts $10 million from the $15 million request for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and denies the $6 million request for advanced concepts work. House members seem reluctant to put a lot of money into new nuclear weapons programs until the Energy Department revamps its Cold War-era nuclear weapons complex.
AGILE COMMUNICATIONS: Plans for the Force 21 Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force Tracking system include developing mobile and mounted versions that can be operated regardless of the communications system used, according to Army and contractor officials. The system currently is designed to work with certain digital radio and satellite systems.
The Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) has validated a recent claim by the F/A-22 Raptor's contractor that the program's avionics stability record is greatly improving, a Pentagon memo released July 18 says. The board, now headed by Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of acquisition, technology and logistics, plans to review the program again in September before the F/A-22 enters initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E).
July 21 - 24 -- National Defense Industrial Association, National Experimentation, Testing, Training, and Technology (NET3) Conference & Exhibition, Rosen Centre Hotel, Orlando, Fla. For more information call Phyllis Edmonson at (703) 247-2588, fax (703) 522-1885, or go to www.ndia.org.
Two weeks before bids are due to the U.S. Air Force, Boeing performed its "most complete test" yet in the competition to win the Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) competition, the company announced July 18. An F-15E dropped the 250-pound warhead, one of the Air Force's top munition development priorities, at the Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., test range in a successful flight, Boeing said.
BAE Systems North America is negotiating with the U.S. Army's lead systems integrator team for work on the Future Combat Systems program, company officials said July 18. The Army and its lead systems integrator (LSI) team of the Boeing Co. and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) selected BAE Systems and 14 other contractors on July 10 to begin developing the initial systems for the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program (DAILY, July 11). Other contractors will be named later this summer.
Congressional proposals to transfer the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) from the Army to the Missile Defense Agency would "significantly impact the technical performance, schedule and cost of both programs," the Defense Department is warning lawmakers. DOD recently transferred both anti-missile, anti-aircraft programs from MDA to the Army on the grounds that they are mature enough to be handled by the service that will operate them. But lawmakers disagree.
LEASE RESISTANCE: The U.S. Air Force's next attempt to lease equipment on a large scale isn't likely to be any easier than its controversial proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767-200 tankers, says Marvin Sambur, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition. It took 18 months to persuade senior Pentagon and White House officials that a lease's ability to deliver the tanker fleet five years sooner than a purchase outweighed the extra financing cost, estimated by the Pentagon to range from $150 million to $1.9 billion.
With an eye toward future crewed vehicles such as the Orbital Space Plane (OSP), NASA has released its first agency-wide policy document specifying top-level requirements for human-rating its space flight systems. The new document will serve as a blueprint "for providing the maximum reasonable assurance [that] the design and operations of future human space flight systems present minimum risk to the flight crew and occupants," according to NASA.
