The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) broke ground on the site of a new $61 million Satellite Operations Center in Suitland, Md., on April 11. Scheduled to open in 2005, the new building will house $50 million in equipment, including 15 antennas. The facility will control approximately $3 billion worth of satellites, including the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES).
AsiaSat 4 was launched successfully April 11 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., satellite maker Boeing said. The Boeing Satellite Systems 610HP spacecraft was launched by International Launch Services for the Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. of Hong Kong.
The Boeing Co. is hoping the U.S. Navy will help it develop the Harpoon 21, a next-generation variant of its original Harpoon surface-warfare missile. Boeing already has developed a Block II variant of the ship-launched Harpoon missile. The Block II has been sold to nine countries, but the Navy so far has opted to retain its older Block 1C variants, although it is testing the Block II.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper praised the close link of space assets to warfighters in Iraq, but said it isn't enough. The theater's Combat Air Operations Center, has successfully used satellites to help coordinate complex strikes on fleeting targets in Iraq, and "it gets better every day, he said. " But, he said, "I look at it and I shake my head because I'm not happy with it yet. We're 10 percent of where we've got to be."
NEGATIVE IMPACT: Although it would be premature to draw conclusions about the performance of the weapon systems used in the war with Iraq, two market areas could be hurt, says senior aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan of Merrill Lynch. The first is attack helicopters, because of the damage inflicted on them by Iraqi forces in at least one battle. "But we think it is premature to leap to this conclusion and [will] await more complete details," he says. The second could be the number of tactical combat aircraft needed in the U.S.
Four of the U.S. Marine Corps' new Silver Fox unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been deployed to Iraq, with four more en route, according to the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Built by ONR and Advanced Ceramics Research (ACR) of Tucson, Ariz., the lightweight UAV was rushed into the field to serve Marine units that normally wouldn't be able to tap a scarce system such as the Predator, according to Capt. John Hobday, director of the Tech Solutions group at ONR.
FORT WORTH, Texas - A two-day demonstration of Viper Strike last month validated the concept of the U.S. Army's newest precision munition, but two hits came close enough to missing to require a new round of tests in July, Northrop Grumman officials said. Viper Strike is a derivative of the Brilliant Anti-Armor (BAT) submunition. It was developed in nine weeks under a quick-reaction program sponsored by Northrop Grumman's Land Combat Systems and the Army's Precision Fires Rocket and Missile Systems and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Project Office.
April 15 -17 -- Sea Air Space 2003 Exposition, presented by the Navy League of the United States, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C. For more information go to www.sasexpo.org/2003/. April 15 - 17 -- Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul Conference and Exhibition, Broward Convention Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. To register go to http://www.AviationNow.com/conferences or call Ryan Leeds at (212) 904-3892 or (800) 240-7645 (U.S. and Canada only).
JLENS DEPLOYMENT: The Army is deploying a JLENS aerostat for the first time. The balloon-like system has been sent to Afghanistan with a sensor and communications suite to conduct surveillance for small arms, mortar and rocket attacks, as well as to extend the range of the Army's Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System. The deployed aerostat, which is tethered to the ground, is 15 meters (49 feet) long. By comparison, the full-scale version that the JLENS project office is developing is 71 meters (233 feet) long.
FORT WORTH, Texas - The U.S. Army is postponing by several months a planned sales pitch to the Pentagon for authority to buy an additional 169 RAH-66 Comanche helicopters, program officials said April 11. Army officials had expected to push for the added aircraft during next month's Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) Milestone B review of the Future Combat System (FCS) (DAILY, Jan 8). The Comanche is an armed scout designed to replace the OH-58 Kiowa and some of the Army's AH-64 Apache fleet.
ENHANCING TRAINING: A deployable simulator system called Flight School 21 is moving forward this year despite being unfunded in the fiscal 2003 budget, says Maj. Gen. John M. Curran, chief of the U.S. Army Aviation Center. "We're going to get this money and we're going to bring Flight School 21 to the field," Curran says. An industry source says the Army reprogrammed $1 million in FY '03 to launch the program this year, leading to a request for proposals being issued next year. Flight School 21 is part of an intensive effort by the Army to enhance its training systems.
TEST EQUIPMENT: The Defense Department says it is re-examining the way it handles the acquisition of automatic test equipment (ATE) used to test components on military aircraft. DOD's comments come in response to a new report by the General Accounting Office, which says DOD has made slow progress in meeting its 1994 goal to increase efficiency by acquiring ATE that can be used on multiple aircraft instead of just one.
CTR REPORT: The Department of Defense's (DOD) fiscal year 2003 report to Congress on the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program is an improvement over its FY '02 report, although it still omits certain important details, according to the General Accounting Office (GAO). The FY '02 report was submitted late and didn't clearly indicate how much the Department planned to spend on the program. In its FY '03 report, DOD estimates it may spend more than $2.3 billion from FY '02 to FY '07.
CAIB SPEAKS: The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) is expected to release its first interim recommendations for NASA this week, according to a spokesman for the board. The CAIB plans to begin writing its full report on the cause of the Feb. 1 shuttle disaster in roughly six weeks, according to Aerospace Daily affiliate Aviation Week & Space Technology. The board's next public news briefing is scheduled for April 15 at 2 p.m. EDT in Houston.
NASA's plan to shrink the International Space Station's crew from three to two while the shuttle fleet is grounded should not hurt safety on the station, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) said in a white paper released April 11. "We were concerned that the workload might be very high or there might be a problem caused by not having three people on board," said Art Zygielbaum, one of the principals who investigated the issue, but he said NASA has "taken appropriate and mitigating action" for a two-person crew.
The Air Force will have to reduce its purchase of Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptors by 41-51 aircraft if Congress does not increase the aircraft's production cost cap, a defense official told a congressional panel April 11.
Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com has created a special website to provide coverage of the war with Iraq and informational links. For updated daily coverage from The DAILY and other Aviation Week publications, please visit http://www.AviationNow.com/gulfwar.
CHANGING DECK CHAIRS: The takeover of DirecTV by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is unlikely to result in additional satellite launches, at least in the short term, according to Phil McAlister, director of Futron Corp.'s Space & Telecommunications Analysis division. "You can't confuse customers with suppliers. The [number of] customers [is] going to dictate whether they can launch more satellites," McAlister says. Murdoch may have a vision and an aggressive plan for growing DirecTV's customer base, he says. That could result in a few more satellite launches.
Credit analysts with Standard & Poor's said April 11 the ratings for the Boeing Co. could be lowered if weak commercial aircraft and space markets continue to hurt the company.
ENGINE WORK: Rolls-Royce will supply more than 240 AE 2100 engines for U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps C-130J transports under a contract from Lockheed Martin, the company said April 11. The six-year agreement includes engines, spares and other equipment and is worth more than $300 million, Rolls-Royce said.
The floating platform for the Missile Defense Agency's sea-based X-band radar (SBX) will be towed later this month from Norway to the U.S., sources said April 10. The platform, which resembles the kind used for oil drilling in the ocean, is being manufactured in Norway. In the U.S., it will be mated with its Raytheon-built radar, as well as several other elements, including its power plant, propulsion system and bridge unit, which will control the platform's movement.
Arianespace successfully launched a pair of communications satellites on the company's Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket at 6:52 p.m. EDT April 9 from the company's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
