MOAB TEST: The U.S. Air Force on March 11 conducted the first live test of the 21,000-pound Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb. The conventional weapon, a follow-on to the 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter" used in Afghanistan (DAILY, March 7), detonated on a range at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., after being dropped by a C-130. It wasn't immediately clear if the test was successful.
A newly released video of the shuttle Columbia taken shortly after its launch Jan. 16 offers a better view of debris impacting the underside of the orbiter's left wing than previous footage, although the root cause of the Feb. 1 disaster remains "elusive," according to investigation chairman Adm. Hal Gehman.
The U.S. Coast Guard believes it could save $4 billion by reducing the Deepwater program's implementation period from 20 years to 10 years, the service told Congress in a report released late March 11. The report said that such an acceleration is "feasible" and would not strain the industrial base. While acceleration would require more money to be spent upfront, it ultimately would reduce the government's costs from $16 billion to $12 billion, the report says.
Rising federal deficits don't necessarily inhibit the growth of defense spending, according to a leading Wall Street analyst. Instead, rising defense budgets appear to drive the growth of deficits, at least in the short term, according to Joseph Nadol, an aerospace and defense analyst and vice president with JP Morgan. He spoke at the Strategic Research Institute's 2003 Defense & Aerospace Investor, Supplier and Customer Conference-East, sponsored by the investment banking firms of Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin and Philpott Ball & Werner.
HELO HEARING: The House Armed Services Committee's tactical air and land forces subcommittee will receive testimony on the DOD's fiscal year 2004 budget request from two panels of rotorcraft experts on March 12. Witnesses will include Rear Adm. Tom Kilcline, Sikorsky president Dean Borgman, and Bell Helicopter Textron chairman John Murphy.
The Army program to acquire a surfaced-launched version of the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) is expected to take a significant step forward in April with the release of a request for proposals to develop and produce the air defense system. The selection of a prime contractor for SLAMRAAM is slated for the first quarter of fiscal 2004, and the Army hopes to begin fielding the system in 2007.
The Boeing Delta IV launch of the first payload for the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program was rescheduled for March 10, after two consecutive scrubbed launch attempts over the weekend at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Delta IV medium launch vehicle will deploy the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) spacecraft, DSCS III A3, to a geosynchronous transfer orbit.
LONDON - The Airborne Stand-Off Radar (ASTOR) high-altitude battlefield surveillance program has passed a significant milestone with the formal opening of Raytheon Systems Ltd.'s new 3.5 million pound ($5.6 million) production and assembly facility at Broughton, in North Wales.
The last Atlas IIAS booster was scheduled to arrive at Vandenberg AFB., Calif., on March 11 on a C-5 Galaxy airlift aircraft, the Air Force said. The booster will be accompanied by the upper stage Centaur, which places the spacecraft into final orbit. The 2nd Space Launch Squadron has been launching Lockheed Martin's Atlas vehicle since 1959 and will be complete the program with the final launch scheduled later this year.
CORRECTIONS: Due to an editing error, a word was omitted from the first sentence in the V-22 article in the Mar. 10 issue of the Daily. The complete sentence is: "The V-22 program has put a critical series of flight tests on hold for replacement of German-made hydraulic tubes that program officials say are defective."
Lockheed Martin expects to build more than 500 Sniper XR targeting pods for the Air Force, even though the service recently awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to supply its Litening ER pod for the F-15E Strike Eagle, a Lockheed Martin official said. The Sniper was chosen over the Litening, and Raytheon's Terminator, in August 2001 as the winner of the Air Force's Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP) competition. Lockheed Martin said at the time that it had received a seven-year contract to build up to 522 pods for as much as $843 million.
An acquisition plan to install dark fiber cables at military sites across the world may involve up to nine contracts awarded by the end of the year, according to new procurement documents. A Request for Proposal (RFP) launching the first phase of the $862 million Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (GIGBE) program was posted late on March 7. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is managing the project.
The leaders of the panel that reviewed the Air Force's $17 billion plan to lease 100 Boeing 767-200 tankers briefed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the plan March 10. E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition technology, and logistics, and Comptroller Dov Zakheim conducted the briefing.
After retreating from its decision to terminate its rotorcraft work altogether, NASA is working out details with the Army of what role the agency will play in rotorcraft research and development (R&D).
As the United States prepares for a possible war with Iraq, the Air Force has a large inventory of bombs and other air-deliverable munitions, according to a service official. "We've been building at high rates for several years now, so we're actually way beyond [the] expected inventories that we thought we would have at this time," said Dr. Steve Butler, director of engineering at the Air Force Air Materiel Command's Air Armament Center at Eglin AFB, Fla.
The Bush Administration's fiscal 2004 budget request for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) "may not be enough" to meet all of the program's needs, according to the House Science Committee. In its "Views and Estimates" report on the Administration's FY '04 budget for science-related programs, the committee said the $544 million request for NPOESS is $50 million short of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has called for in planning documents.
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. posted a net loss of 299 million euros ($330 million) for 2002 due to slower commercial aircraft orders and depreciating assets in its space division. The 299 million euro loss for 2002 compares with a 1.37 billion euro ($1.51 billion) net gain for 2001.
March 5, 2003 Army DynCorp International L.L.C., Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded a $26,503,000 increment as part of a $280,191,008 firm-fixed-price contract for C12 and UC35 aircraft life cycle support on Feb. 27, 2003. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and is completed by Jan. 31, 2004. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole-source contract initiated on March 8, 2000. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (DAAH23-00-C-0226).
JASSM TESTING: The schedule for recertification of the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) for flight tests has slipped by a month due to scheduling conflicts at the missile range in White Sands, N.M., sources close to the program say. A month ago, development test 12, or DT-12, was set for late February, and operational testing was to begin in early March. But program officials have pushed back the schedule four weeks, the sources say. JASSM was decertified for flight-testing in November after two test failures in October.
Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee's Coast Guard panel, has asserted that Congress should add at least $78 million to President Bush's fiscal 2004 budget request of $500 million for the Coast Guard's Deepwater program. LoBiondo said March 6 that the $500 million figure is based on a 1998 estimate and does not account for inflation over the past five years.
SPACE REVIEW: More than two years after it was published, the U.S. Air Force is making plans to review the implementation of the Space Commission report chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, who currently is the Secretary of Defense. "It's probably time to circle back and make sure we've implemented the things that we said we wanted to do," Gen. Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, said March 6 during a Pentagon town hall meeting, which included Rumsfeld.
