A House panel is expected to give the Deepwater modernization program a significant boost by adding more than $200 million to the Bush Administration's fiscal 2004 budget request for the Coast Guard effort. The House Transportation Coast Guard subcommittee plans to approve $702 million for Deepwater, $202 million above the request, when it takes up a Coast Guard authorization bill June 12, according to a spokesman for Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), who chairs the panel.
NEW DELHI - Officials from Russia's RAC MiG aircraft company plan to ensure that India's Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) is using authentic spare parts as it upgrades the country's MiGs. A team of MiG officials is overseeing the maintenance and upgrading of India's MiGs (DAILY, May 28) to try to avoid future crashes. India has lost more than 200 MiG-21s in the last decade, including two upgraded MiG-21 bis aircraft that crashed within the last eight months.
SPACEX OFFICE: Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which is developing a family of launch vehicles intended to reduce the cost of access to space, will open offices in Washington, D.C., the company said June 9. Frank Sietzen has been appointed director of Washington operations for the El Segundo, Calif.-based company. Sietzen is the former president of the Space Transportation Association, an industry association that represents launch companies on Capitol Hill.
In an open letter published in several national newspapers June 9, Boeing Chairman and CEO Phil Condit said some Boeing employees "did not behave properly" during the company's competition with Lockheed Martin for launch contracts in the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. The Air Force helped fund the development of two rocket families in support of the EELV program, Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V. So far, Boeing has received 22 of 29 EELV launch assignments, with the remainder going to Lockheed Martin.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) will focus on NASA management and culture in its final public hearing in Washington June 12, as members wind down their investigation and continue writing their final report.
PRAGUE - The Czech ministry of defense will present the government with options for future air defense by the end of June as planned, despite the recent resignation of the defense minister over military budget cuts, according to the minister's deputy.
A June 7 shakedown flight of NASA's solar-powered Helios unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ended three hours earlier than planned after flight controllers detected a problem with the aircraft's electric fuel cell system. The flight took off at 8:43 a.m. June 7 from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Researchers from NASA and Helios manufacturer AeroVironment Inc. brought the remotely piloted UAV back to land 15 hours later.
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, is accusing the Bush Administration of moving too slowly to develop anti-missile devices for commercial aircraft. In a June 5 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, Byrd said he is "concerned" that Ridge's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not plan to complete system development and demonstration until the end of fiscal 2005, "despite the fact that the threat is real and our commercial airliners remain defenseless" against shoulder-fired missiles.
In an effort to streamline space functions within the U.S. Commerce Department, the Office of Space Commercialization (OSC) is proposing to move from its current home within the Technology Administration to the International Trade Administration (ITA).
AF SATCOM: Air Force Undersecretary for Space Peter Teets is "absolutely committed" to drawing on commercial satellites for the Air Force's future satcom needs, although the ratio of commercial vs. military still is to be determined, according to Maj. Gen. Robert Dickman (ret.), deputy for military space under Teets. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, 80 percent of the bandwidth used by allied forces was over commercial satellites, Dickman says (DAILY, June 4).
'VISIBLE' DAMAGE: A June 6 foam strike test conducted using reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panels from the shuttle Discovery resulted in "visible and significant" damage to panel 6, some surrounding T-seals, and supporting hardware, according to a spokesman for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). After the strike, "there was a crack in the rib of the RCC panel," Lt. Col. Woody Woodyard said. "Inside it was about three inches long, outside about three-quarters of an inch."
Testing is scheduled to begin on the fire control system of the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System (RAMICS) in about two weeks, according to a program official with Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems sector. The U.S. Navy will conduct the testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Sam Densler, Northrop Grumman program manger told The DAILY in an interview.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) on June 6 announced the first batch of hundreds of cost-saving engineering tweaks planned for the V-22 Osprey, marking the first step in the implementation of a new affordability initiative to cut the aircraft's cost by 21 percent. NAVAIR intends to award a contract to Bell Boeing's tiltrotor team to insert 18 "engineering change proposals" into the V-22's design process, according to a June 6 acquisition notice.
MOSCOW - Russia's Space Forces launched the Kosmos-2398 satellite from Plesetsk Cosmodrome on June 4. Space Forces chief Gen. Anatoly Perminov attended the launch. The satellite is thought to be a Parus-class military navigation satellite intended to augment the Tsyklon-B constellation. That constellation has provided navigation and communication services for Russian ships and submarines since the mid-1970s.
TANKER LEASE: An Air Force proposal to lease 100 Boeing KC-767A tankers for six years would cost $15.5 billion, slightly less than the rough estimate of $16 billion announced in May (DAILY, May 27), according to a new summary of the potential deal. The document is circulating on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers will have 30 days to review the lease plan once they receive formal notification of the proposal. A report detailing the lease agreement should be submitted to the four House and Senate defense committees June 9 or 10, an Air Force spokeswoman says.
The Coast Guard has chosen GE Aircraft Engines (GEAE) to build the engines for its new CN-235-300M maritime patrol aircraft, company officials said June 5. Two GE CT7-9C3 turboprop engines will power each CN-235 aircraft. The aircraft are made by the EADS-CASA division of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS).
PACKARD AWARD: The U.S. Defense Department's top award for weapons buyers, the David Packard Award, goes to four programs in 2003, including two munitions, a small armored boat and a new family of decontaminants. The Air Force's Passive Attack Weapon, tested and fielded within about 90 days to support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the Joint Direct Attack Munition, produced in half the time at half the estimated cost, both won. Awards also went to the Navy's Joint Services Family of Decontamination Systems and the Special Operations Craft Riverine teams.
DEATH PLANET: While NASA is optimistic that its Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission (DAILY, June 6) will succeed, Mars remains the "Death Planet" in the eyes of many spacecraft engineers, according to Associate Administrator for Space Science Edward Weiler. Out of 30 international attempts to reach Mars, 12 have succeeded, two are in transit and 16 have failed, he says. And when it comes to landing, "the world has an even worse record there," he says, with only three successes out of nine worldwide attempts.
June 9 - 12 -- 3rd Annual Intelligent Vehicle Systems Symposium, Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, Traverse City (Acme) Mich. Call Dawn Harper at (703) 247-2584, fax (703) 522-1885, email [email protected] or go to www.ndia.org. June 11 -- AOC Intercrow 2003, Army/Navy Country Club, Arlington, Va. Call (888) OLD-CROW or go to www.crows.org.
LOOSENED GRIP: One of those attempts to reach Mars, Europe's Mars Express spacecraft, accomplished a vital post-launch milestone when it released launch clamps on its Beagle-2 rover last week, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The clamps kept launch vibrations from affecting the rover, but if they had not been released the rover could not be deployed once the spacecraft reaches Mars. "The Beagle-2 mission would have been over before it had even started," says ESA Lander Manager Con McCarthy.
SPACE WEAPONS: Although some Democratic senators expressed reservations about space-based weapons during recent debate over the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill (DAILY, May 22, May 23), the Missile Defense Agency does not appear to be slowing in its pursuit of a space-based test bed that would use interceptor missiles to shoot down ballistic missiles. MDA is soliciting information from industry about its ability to design, develop and implement a test bed. The agency plans to hold an industry day in August to discuss its acquisition plans.
The U.S. delegation traveling to the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) 2003 that begins June 9 in Geneva, Switzerland, is pledging to fight perceived spectrum threats to the Global Positioning System (GPS) and some U.S. Navy radars. WRC, held every three years, is a month-long meeting convened to administer disputes over spectrum allocation. Each invited country sends a delegation that has a single vote.
