The V-22 Osprey will not get another chance to prove itself if the current round of testing for the Bell-Boeing tilt-rotor aircraft is not successful, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Feb. 5. "In the event it proves not to be a successful test, obviously, it would be terminated," Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on the Bush Administration's fiscal 2004 budget request. "To the extent it proves successful and everyone is persuaded that it brings value, then we would intend to go forward."
The U.S. Coast Guard has requested a 10 percent increase in its budget for fiscal year 2004, from $6.17 billion in 2003 to $6.8 billion. Much of the increase would go to marine safety and security programs, some of which are part of the service's new homeland security mission. Overall, the Coast Guard has requested a 6 percent increase for capital acquisitions, from $746 million in FY '03 to $797 million. Funding for research, development, testing and evaluation, which totals $22 million, would be allocated from capital acquisitions account.
Officials with Moog Inc., which makes flight control actuators and the thrust vector control actuation system for the shuttle's main engine and solid rocket boosters, said delays in the shuttle program in the wake of the Columbia disaster could hurt the company's 2003 revenues.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said he has asked key lawmakers to add tens of millions of dollars for space shuttle upgrades to the pending fiscal 2003 NASA appropriations bill. Although Nelson, who flew on Columbia in 1986, did not specify which shuttle upgrades he would fund, he has argued for years that safety-related improvements have not received enough money. While Nelson has not blamed the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster on underfunding of shuttle upgrades, he believes the orbiter loss has underscored the urgency of those upgrades.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) fiscal year 2004 budget request would provide $81 million in additional funding for its current and next-generation environmental satellite programs.
LONDON - Hungary's newly elected government has renegotiated the 10-year lease/purchase of 12 single-seat and two twin-seat JAS 39 Gripen fighters, which was signed by the previous administration with Gripen International in November 2001.
MOSCOW - A backup module for the International Space Station's core block could be refitted to deliver as much as 11,000 pounds of fuel and supplies to the station if the shuttle fleet is grounded for a long period, according to Aleksandr Medvedev, the director of Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The FGB-2, built as a backup for the station's Zarya module, is 70 percent ready and has been completely ground tested, Medvedev told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Feb. 4 during his visit to the Khrunichev center.
The new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is calling for tens of billions of dollars in extra defense spending to build 50 more long-range stealth bombers and buy more C-17s and precision-guided munitions (PGMs).
PURCHASED: BAE Systems North America will buy Mevatec Corp. of Huntsville, Ala., for $82 million in cash, the company said Feb. 4. Mevatec provides technical services to the Department of Defense and other agencies for missile defense, interoperability and other programs. The acquisition will expand BAE Systems' professional services and engineering technology operations, the company said.
Cisco Systems, Inc., reported Feb. 4 that it had net sales of $4.7 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2003, a decrease of 2.1 percent compared with its $4.8 billion in net sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2002.
A worldwide build-up of electronic warfare systems - mostly aimed at the growing threat of shoulder-fired missiles - has an estimated market value of $27 billion over the next decade, according to a new analysis by Forecast International/DMS. Forecast International/DMS projects the market for countermeasures and jammers to total $12 billion by 2007 and another $15 billion from 2008 to 2012, spurred by several aircraft programs making the leap from development to production near the end of this decade.
NASA's fiscal year 2004 budget request, released Feb. 3, allocates $550 million for work on the Orbital Space Plane (OSP), intended to provide crew return capability for the International Space Station (ISS) by 2010. The funding supports technology demonstrators such as the X-37 (DAILY, Nov. 22, 2002), as well as advanced design studies. During 2004, NASA plans to drop test the X-37 from a carrier aircraft to demonstrate autonomous landing capability.
The Pentagon has awarded a $307 million contract to Northrop Grumman to build the second lot of six low-rate initial production Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The deal also includes the aircraft integrated sensor suites, electro-optical infrared sensors, mission control systems and launch recovery elements, according to a acquisition notice posted late Jan. 31.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Systems Development and Technology (SD&T) Division a $20 million contract to build and demonstrate an airborne synthetic aperture ladar sensor capable of generating high-resolution two- and three-dimensional imagery.
Northrop Grumman's Information Technology sector and BEA Systems of San Jose, Calif., and have formed a joint venture to pursue contracts in the rapidly growing federal information technology (IT) market. Under the agreement, the companies will establish cross-functional business and technology development teams to focus the core competencies of the companies on emerging opportunities, identifying process improvements and exchanging best practices, company officials said in a Feb. 3 statement.
Although the impact of the Columbia space shuttle disaster on the U.S. aerospace and defense industry won't be clear until NASA's investigation of the accident has concluded, renewed attention will be given to developing a replacement for the aging shuttle, analysts say. William McCurdy, a professor of political science at American University in Washington who has written on NASA's history, said the disaster at least will cause NASA to reassess its investment priorities.
The Bush Administration is analyzing the possibility of combining supplemental requests to cover war-related costs in the war on terrorism and a potential war against Iraq. The Pentagon has identified a growing $20 billion gap in its operations and maintenance accounts for fiscal 2003 - the result of actions against terrorist groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The shortfall is growing at a rate of up to $1.5 billion a month, Defense Department Comptroller Dov Zakheim said in a Pentagon news briefing Feb. 3.
NASA's fiscal year 2004 budget request emphasizes scientific research and enabling technologies, and would add $686 million to the agency's science, aeronautics, and exploration budgets while cutting space flight-related funding by $218 million. According to budget documents released Feb. 3, NASA's overall budget for space flight is down to $6.11 billion in FY'04, from $6.13 billion in FY'03. The total includes $1.7 billion for the International Space Station (ISS), $3.97 billion for the space shuttle, and $434 million for space and flight support.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Military satellites could help trace the field of debris left by the Space Shuttle Columbia as it broke up over Texas Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts, a spokesman for U.S. Northern Command said Feb. 3. There have been "cooperative efforts ... to assist in charting the debris field" among Northern Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command "using satellites" and other techniques, such as computer modeling and visual identification from aircraft, said Maj. Ed Thomas.
Information technology services company SRA International said it has completed the acquisition of Adroit Systems, which provides command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance services to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. The Fairfax, Va.-based SRA acquired Adroit for $40 million in cash, the company said.
