SUBCOMMITTEE APPROVAL: The House Appropriation's defense subcommittee approved a Defense Department plan to lease 100 Boeing 767-200 tankers, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) said July 18. "I look forward to the prompt approval in the other [defense] committees so we can proceed with the production of these tankers," Dicks said.
NASA FUNDING: The full House Appropriations Committee remains on track to take up the fiscal 2004 NASA appropriations bill late July 21. The committee's NASA subcommittee approved the legislation July 15 (DAILY, July 16). The Senate Appropriations Committee's NASA panel will take up its version of the bill as early as the week of July 21-25.
VIPER DEPLOYMENT: The U.S. Army is considering deploying the Viper Strike weapon system with its Hunter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as soon as possible, according to John Sundberg, deputy project manager at the Army's UAV Systems Project Office. Viper is a modified Brilliant Anti-armor (BAT) submunition featuring a semi-active laser seeker. "You laze a target like you do for ... a guided missile like a Hellfire, drop the BAT, and the BAT will go right to that spot," Sundberg says.
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.
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.
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.
A House-Senate conference committee is trying to wrap up negotiations on the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill by the end of next week, but many tough issues still need to be resolved, including the House's controversial Buy American provisions.
The Missile Defense Agency is defending its boost-phase anti-missile programs in response to a report questioning the feasibility of developing such systems to protect U.S. territory. "MDA is confident we are headed in the right direction," the agency said in a statement. "We continue to believe that boost-phase technology has great potential for playing a vital role in a layered missile defense."
Former Sen. Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire will lead an independent review of the Boeing Co.'s policies and procedures in the wake of allegations the company misused a competitor's information for a key Air Force space launch program.
An interagency expert panel is being formed to examine technical and budget lapses plaguing the Alliant Techsystems (ATK) Hard Target Smart Fuze (HTSF) program, a critical component for advanced penetrator weapons, sources told The DAILY. The panel, described as a "red team" of U.S. Air Force, Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Sandia National Laboratory experts, may open the door for alternative technologies, such as the abandoned Multi-Event Hard Target Fuze (MEHTF), to replace the troubled FMU-159A/B HTSF capability, sources said.
UCAR: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Northrop Grumman as one of the two contractor teams that will proceed into Phase II of the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) program. Work is to be completed by April 2004. Another Phase II contractor will be chosen from the remaining Phase I competitors - Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Sikorsky.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes said July 17 that it will reduce employment by an additional 4,000-5,000 people by the end of this year due to a continued weakness in the commercial airline industry. The reductions will be made through layoffs and attrition. The job cuts are in addition to the reduction of 5,000 employees the company had forecast in November 2002, and the company now predicts its year-end employee total will be between 55,000-56,000 people.
U.S. Army officials are discussing how much funding they will try to get to purchase additional Force 21 Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force Tracking systems for the service's combat vehicles. FBCB2/Blue Force Tracking is a tactical command-and-control system that links satellites, sensors, communications equipment, vehicles, aircraft and weapons in a seamless digital network to provide a continuous, all-weather picture of the battlefield.
An experimental upgrade for missiles aimed at reducing targeting mistakes and improving battlefield damage assessment (BDA) operated successfully in a flight test debut, company officials say. The Alliant Techsystems (ATK) Quick Bolt capability is a U.S. Navy AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM) equipped with a transmitter that collects refined targeting data and sends a near-real time picture of the target to a battlefield controller to assist with BDA.
Thailand's Korat air base has received the final three of 16 refurbished F-16 Fighting Falcons, aircraft builder Lockheed Martin said. The country has modernized its air force, and the July 11 delivery completes the Thai air force's third F-16 squadron, the company said. The U.S. Air Force refurbished and delivered the aircraft.
BALTIMORE, Md. - The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is sponsoring an effort to develop or identify data standards to govern mission planning for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), according to Dyke Weatherington, head of the UAV Planning Task Force at OSD.
BALTIMORE, Md. - As military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems proliferate rapidly, U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is taking a lead role in experimenting with and promoting joint UAV operations, according to a JFCOM official. "The UAV force structure is really on the verge of explosive growth, and DOD funding for UAVs is escalating three- or four-fold per year for the next few years," said Christopher Jackson, deputy director of intelligence for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) integration at JFCOM.
SIMULATOR SUPPLY: CAE of Toronto will provide six full-flight simulators to JetBlue Airways for a total of $61.2 million under the terms of a letter of intent (LOI) signed by the companies, CAE said July 17. The company is to provide four Airbus A320 simulators and two Embraer 190 simulators. Under the LOI, CAE would become JetBlue's exclusive provider of full-flight simulators for 10 years.
HUGHES ELECTRONICS will pay Boeing $360 million in cash to settle Boeing's claim that Hughes had overvalued its satellite-building arm, which Boeing bought in 2000 and renamed Boeing Satellite Systems. The payments will not have a large impact on Boeing's 2003 earnings, the company said. "We are pleased to put these matters behind us and look forward to our continued productive partnership with Hughes, including next year's launch of the Hughes Spaceway satellite," Dave Ryan, the vice president and general manager of Boeing Satellite Systems, said in a statement.
General Dynamics and Rockwell Collins are negotiating to jointly build the Integrated Computer Systems (ICS) for the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. Negotiations are taking place with the Army's lead systems integrator (LSI) team of the Boeing Co. and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).
Northrop Grumman Corp. has completed the Critical Design Review for the Navy's BQM-74F, an upgraded version of the BQM-74E aerial target. The review will lead to rollout early next year and first flight later in 2004, the company said July 15. The three-day CDR was conducted during the last week in June at Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems' Unmanned Systems facility in San Diego, said Cynthia Curiel of Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems.
Any future Czech Republic tender for supersonic fighter aircraft will be a transparent process, Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla assured U.S. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a meeting in Washington July 15. Spidla, who is on a six-day visit to the United States, said Rumsfeld has not shown "the slightest tinge of doubt" that the process would be open. U.S. officials criticized a previous Czech tender - won by BAE Systems but canceled last year after the Czech senate blocked the buy - as being non-transparent.
MONGOOSE TEST: BAE Systems conducted a third successful flight test of the Mongoose mine-clearing system it is developing for the U.S. Army, the company said July 16. The test of the system, which uses shaped charges to detonate mines, was one of a series of four to demonstrate its design. Success in that phase is expected to lead to Army qualification and operational testing in 2004.
