A test of the Arrow anti-tactical ballistic missile defense system, slated for last week at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., was put off until this week because of high winds, a U.S. Army spokeswoman said. The U.S. and Israel are cooperating in the program. The spokeswoman said high winds could have caused debris from the test to blow off the range.
Although the U.S. Army isn't providing future years funding for the Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite (Ke-ASAT) program, Army Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, commander of Army Space and Strategic Defense Command, says the system should be demonstrated. "My belief is we ought to take the program to at least demonstrate the capability," he told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington on Friday. "It doesn't make sense to me to just build the technology and not know whether it works. You need to know whether it works."
The six-man Russian/U.S./German crew on the Mir orbital station was prepared to abandon Mir after a Feb. 23 fire filled the complex with "heavy" smoke" (DAILY, Feb. 25).
U.S. Air Force officials like the upgrades Lockheed Martin is proposing to the Low-Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared by Night (LANTIRN) system, but doubt the program being pitched as LANTIRN 2000 will be funded.
The Pentagon is exploring technologies to reduce the cost and difficulty of detecting airframe stress fractures and cracks, according to Anita Jones, director of defense research and engineering. Two programs are in place to facilitate easier detection of airframe problems, she told the House National Security Committee's research and development panel on Thursday.
Commercial launches of Proton rockets, halted after last year's Mars- 96 failure, will resume in mid-April, according to Yuri Koptiev, general director of the Russian Space Agency. Proton launches had been put on hold after the Mars-96 interplanetary probe failed to leave Earth orbit after a Nov. 16, 1996, launch attempt due to the malfunction of its Block D2 escape stage.
Ranking Senate Armed Services Committee Democrat Carl Levin (Mich.) says at a hearing last week that "we should look carefully at the loss of competition that will result from the Navy's proposal for teaming" between Tenneco's Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics' Electric Boat in the four-ship New Attack Submarine (NSSN) prototype program.
The Pentagon has begun drafting legislation it intends to send to Congress for review that will call for reductions within in the national laboratories, Anita Jones, DOD's director of defense research and engineering, tells the House National Security Committee's research and development panel. She says she expects some type of independent review panel, similar to base realignment and closure commission, to be set up to address the issue. "This process is not yet defined," she says.
TELEPHONICS CORP., a subsidiary of Griffon Corp., Jericho, N.Y., won a contract of about $100 million from British Aerospace to supply communication systems for the Royal Air Force's Nimrod 2000 maritime patrol aircraft program, Griffon said Friday. Telephonics will be responsible for the communications integration and a radio communication suite in the upgrade of the 21 Nimrods. The award is the largest in company history.
The U.S. Army's Space and Strategic Defense Command is developing a vision to guide it into the future. SSDC chief Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson tells reporters that "we are expanding the horizon" of the command. The vision will be briefed to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer April 4. It is intended to move SSDC away from a focus on theater missile defense to greater emphasis on space, national missile defense, and joint theater and cruise missile defense.
Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) has asked the General Accounting Office to review the U.S. Air Force's plans to restructure the F-22 fighter program to avoid a potential cost growth of $15 billion or more. "I am concerned about the causes of the projected cost growth, the viability of actions proposed by the Air Force to avoid the cost growth, and the effect those actions will have on the F-22 test program, program schedule and funding requirements," Bumpers said in a Feb. 24 letter to GAO Acting Comptroller James F. Hinchman.
U.S. Navy Secretary John H. Dalton told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the service will use incentive fees to assure that General Dynamics' Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding focus on price, now that they have an agreement to cooperate in the New Attack Submarine (NSSN) program. The NSSN was originally supposed to be a four-sub competitive prototype program with the two yards each building two prototypes and then competing to build a new class of subs starting with the fifth one.
The Army will run another test soon of the Patriot 2 missile with the Guidance Enhancement Module, Gen. Anderson says. In the last test a standard Patriot 2 intercepted the target before an enhanced Patriot, which was also fired. Next time, the enhanced Patriot will engage the target first and the Patriot 2 will be the backup.
France's Alcatel Espace has applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for a license to launch and operate a 64-satellite low Earth orbit constellation that would share Ku-band frequencies with geostationary satellites. The concept, dubbed SkyBridge, would work by switching off satellites passing between GEO satellites and ground stations to avoid interference. The traffic would be shifted to another satellite in the SkyBridge constellation, allowing the system to share spectrum with the GEO platforms.
The Army, meanwhile, is setting up a battle lab to focus on space and missile defense. It wants to drive space requirements and not be just a user of systems. The battle lab will match space technologies to specific Army needs.
High winds at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., on Friday forced the U.S. Army to postpone a test of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense missile system. The test, the seventh for THAAD and the fourth attempt to intercept another missile, has been rescheduled for this week. The first opportunity is tomorrow, March 4, but the Army says the test probably won't take place until Friday, March 7.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) asks U.S. Navy officials at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to enunciate the "hard justification" for going ahead with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet program instead of just upgrading the F/A-18C/D and waiting for the Joint Strike fighter. Adm. Jay L. Johnson, Chief of Naval Operations,replies that the E/F is "on time, on budget and under weight," and offers multi-mission capability. Perhaps more revealing than Johnson's response is Lieberman's query, since he put essentially the same question to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen.
The second production Joint Tactical Air-Ground System (JTAGS) will go to Korea, Anderson says. The first was fielded in Germany last month. The Korean JTAGS, to be fielded this summer, will replace a prototype system now being used there. JTAGS give Army units access to missile launch data from Defense Support Program satellites.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) believes there must be a clearer definition of the roles of intelligence and law enforcement in dealing with overseas threats. The committee is "at a point now where it has identified a lot of the threats out there," but has more work to do on defining the "roles and responsibilities" for dealing with them, he told The DAILY in a telephone interview.
The Pentagon needs to pay greater attention to missile test targets, says Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski. "Our test targets today have a number of limitations and they are very expensive," he tells The DAILY. But "Given the number of tests we're going to do" in ballistic missile defense, the Pentagon will "be looking at [targets] in a more systematic way."
The Clinton Administration's "three-plus-three" National Missile Defense strategy of three years to develop and three to deploy is "very tough" and "very high risk," the new director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Air Force Lt. Gen. Lester L. Lyles, in testimony before the strategic forces subcommittee on Thursday, said delays in establishing a management team for NMD, including a slip in establishing a lead systems integration contractor who will act as the prime, have "slowed us down."
The U.S./Israeli Theater High Energy Laser system, intended to shoot down short-range rockets, is slated for its first operational system test around November or December. The U.S. Army has just finished a review of the program which concluded that although it's risky because of its schedule, it appears to be on track. Program officials have worked around a $5 million funding shortfall this year.
Cohen says the Navy's Upper Tier ballistic missile defense program is driven by technology, not funding. Some Republicans have pushed for more funding to accelerate the effort, but Cohen says the problem is to come up with a smaller shipboard missile that is sophisticated enough to discriminate targets above the atmosphere.
Andrei Kokoshin, Russia's first deputy defense minister, outlined a plan to modernize Russia's armed forces by 2005, according to reports from Moscow Thursday. The program will focus on reconnaissance, information collection, logistics and ammunition, and would result in 50-60% of Russia's weaponry and military technology being updated.
Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), still pushing for production of more B-2 bombers, wants to take bipartisan members of Congress to the Pentagon to discuss the program with Defense Secretary William Cohen. As a Republican senator, Cohen opposed more B-2s and played a key role in diverting additional funding for the plane to areas that would bolster its precision weapons capability. Cohen, who has not changed his stand, says he welcomes Dicks and his colleagues any time to discuss any issues.
