POST-WAR COSTS: U.S. defense spending could jump 11-12 percent if additional U.S. ground forces are required after the Iraqi war to counter guerilla forces and their logistics support from Syria and Iran, according to senior aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan of Merrill Lynch. If 200,000 peacekeepers are needed after the war, "then FY '04 and possibly FY '05 DOD [Department of Defense] spending could be 11-12 percent higher than budgets now planned," he says.
BYE BYE NANO: As nanotechnology becomes more firmly embedded in every technological discipline, it will cease to be spoken of as a separate field, according to Murray Hirschbein, senior advisor to the chief technologist at NASA. "Some time in the future ... nanotechnology will go away," Hirschbein says. "It'll be ingrained in the system deeply enough that nobody bothers to talk about it. Our materials will start at the atom level, our life science will start at the atom level, our sensors will start at the atom level.
Although the Department of Defense's (DOD) fiscal year 2004 funding request for nanotechnology is $21 million less than its FY '03 request, DOD's final FY '04 investment could end up roughly equal to the previous year's spending, according to a DOD research official.
The U.S. Navy is reviewing whether it will continue allowing two shipbuilders to build the next block of SSN-774 Virginia-class submarines, a senior Navy official said April 3. The submarines are being built by the Newport News Shipbuilding sector of Northrop Grumman Corp. and the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics Corp.
United Defense Industries will remanufacture 138 Bradley Fighting Vehicles under a contract modification worth $197.3 million, the company said April 3. This modification to a multi-year contract calls for 103 Bradley M3A3 cavalry vehicles and 35 Bradley M2A3 infantry vehicles. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in July 2004 and continue through December 2005. The multi-year contract, issued in 2001, covers the remanufacture of 389 Bradley A3 vehicles and up to 77 other Bradley variants.
The Defense Department's first effort to solicit industry ideas for ways to improve existing acquisition programs attracted nearly 200 proposals before the invitation expired April 1. The Pentagon's Challenge Program was created by Congress in the fiscal 2003 Defense Authorization bill, which provided a $12.5 million budget.
The Air Force's fiscal 2004 budget plan allows the F/A-22 Raptor's testing schedule to slip by several months if a current effort fails to resolve severe software reliability problems. Marvin Sambur, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition, told a Senate panel April 4 that he is only 80 percent certain the F/A-22 will be ready to enter a dedicated initial operational test & evaluation (DIOT&E) phase in October.
The head of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is trying to restore about $500 million that the Defense Department cut from his long-term budget, a JSF program spokeswoman said April 3. The JSF program learned in February, shortly after releasing its fiscal 2004 budget request, that its multi-billion-dollar FY '04-FY '09 spending plan would be cut by about $500 million, apparently because DOD revised its inflation estimates downward, program spokesman Kathy Crawford said.
TDRS-1: NASA's original Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-1, has put in two decades of service as of April 4, according to the aerospace agency. TDRS was launched from the shuttle Challenger in 1983 and was nearly immediately lost when its upper stage failed. NASA engineers used the spacecraft's thrusters to gradually nudge the satellite into a geosynchronous Earth orbit.
An MIT-based institute is developing technologies that could one day enable a multifunctional "dynamic battle suit" that would use nanotechnology to protect soldiers, keep them healthy, and possibly even increase their strength. Speaking at the National Nanotechnology Initiative's (NNI) annual conference in Washington April 3, Edwin Thomas, director of The Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT, said the prime consideration in developing nanosystems for soldiers is keeping them lightweight.
MOSCOW - The Russian government agreed April 3 to redistribute space program funding in order to build additional transport vehicles to support the International Space Station. At the request of Yuri Koptev, the general director of Rosaviakosmos, the Russian aviation and space agency, the government agreed to shift 1.3 billion rubles ($42 million) from later in the year to the second quarter, to support building Progress cargo ships.
NEW DELHI - Indian military planners have recommended that the Indian air force put more emphasis on buying beyond-visual-range (BVR) technologies and training pilots to use them. An Indian Ministry of Defence official told The DAILY that military planners are taking seriously the results of last month's French-Indian joint air exercises, which showed that French Mirage 2000s with BVR technology were more capable than the non-BVR Mirage 2000s India operates.
FCS PO: The Boeing/SAIC lead systems integrator program office for the Future Combat Systems program will be headquartered in St. Louis effective June 1. The city was picked because of its "strategic location" and because it would be co-located with Boeing Integrated Defense Systems headquarters, the company said.
The revenue growth for leading information technology service providers to the federal government could grow between 10-12 percent in the next five to 10 years, according to a report by investment banking firm Stephens Inc., of Little Rock, Ark. Timothy Quillin, analyst and author of "Defense IT Services: A Brief Investment Overview," said reports about defense-related spending on information technology projects may be understated.
The Sensor Fuzed Weapon (SFW) is the latest in a growing list of new weapons to make a battlefield debut, Air Force officials announced April 3. Air Force B-52 crews used six SFW cluster bombs to attack a column of Iraqi tanks on April 2. The armored column was moving south out of Baghdad. No reports on the effectiveness of the bombing were available, but is sure to be intensely analyzed in after-action reports.
The U.S. Marine Corps is exploring the feasibility of putting Northrop Grumman Litening targeting pods on its F/A-18D Hornet fighter aircraft, according to company and military officials. Northrop Grumman Corp., which makes the Litening II, Litening (ER) Extended Range and Litening AT (Advanced Targeting) pods, is working on a demonstration of the Litening ER on the F/A-18D, a company spokeswoman said April 3.
Northrop Grumman Ship Systems sector said April 2 it has received several contracts, worth a total of nearly $129 million, to execute the detailed design and procurement of long-lead items for the Coast Guard's first National Security Cutter.
The U.S. Air Force is competing a contract to demonstrate a semi-autonomous search and attack munition after rival bids emerged to challenge a sole-source award to Lockheed Martin.
General Dynamics Corp. has completed an acquisition company officials say likely will improve the company's chances of receiving additional information technology contracts from the intelligence community. General Dynamics announced March 31 it had acquired Creative Technology Inc. (CTI), of Herndon, Va. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. CTI provides network engineering services and software systems for digital imagery analysis, data integration, information assurance and protection, and information management.
MILSTAR LAUNCH: The U.S. Air Force plans to launch the last Milstar II satellite aboard a Titan IVB launch vehicle on April 6 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. built the satellite and launch vehicle. The satellite will join four Milstar spacecraft already on orbit. It is the fourth Milstar satellite to use Boeing's Medium Data Rate payload, which can process data at speeds up to 1.5 megabits per second.
The U.S. Air Force plans to formally ask Congress in about a year for "relief" from the production cost cap for the F/A-22 Raptor, a service official said April 2. If the F/A-22's testing and production efforts stay on track, the Air Force intends to seek that relief as part of the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill, which Congress likely will begin writing about a year from now, said Lt. Gen. John Corley, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition.
In testimony before a Senate subcommittee April 2, former NASA historian Alex Roland recommended NASA phase out the space shuttle, calling it "unsustainable as a safe, reliable, and economical launch vehicle." Testifying before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee's subcommittee on science, technology, and space, Roland said NASA made two crucial mistakes in the late 1960s and early 1970s when it began developing the shuttle.
HIMARS: Lockheed Martin has received a $96.4 million contract to begin low-rate initial production (LRIP) of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the company said April 2. During LRIP, the Army plans to buy 89 HIMARS launchers and the Marines will buy four. First unit equipped status is planned for calendar year 2005, the company said. Total joint procurement of the system is expected to be more than 900 launchers.
