DEPARTURE: Shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station on Dec. 2, in preparation for bringing the station's Expedition Five crew back home. During Endeavour's stay at the station, its crew conducted three spacewalks to activate and outfit the new P-1 truss segment. The shuttle also delivered the Expedition Six crew, who are beginning their four-month stay.
PRAGUE - The Czech government will adopt a fast-track approach once it decides to go ahead with a new tender for supersonic aircraft, deputy defense minister Stefan Fuele told The DAILY. Czech defense minister Jaroslav Tvrdik is expected soon to provide the cabinet with several options for replacing the country's aging MiG-21 fleet. These include leasing or buying supersonic aircraft in line with the government's declaration in the summer that it was committed to protecting airspace by "national means."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in January, has announced that Capitol Hill veteran Michael Bopp will become the panel's Republican staff director. Bopp currently is legislative director and general counsel in Collins' office. During earlier service on the Governmental Affairs Committee's investigations subcommittee, Bopp looked into such issues as the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
PRAGUE - Construction work on a $20 million repair plant capable of handling Boeing 747s began Nov. 27 at Ostrava-Mosnov airport in the Czech Republic. The plant, which is slated for completion by the end of August 2003, will include a hangar with sufficient space for two wide-bodied and two smaller aircraft.
LONDON - The British army's 32 Regiment of the Royal Artillery will become the army's first unmanned aerial vehicle regiment, part of an army plan to increase its use of UAVs. Based at the army's Larkhill training area in Wiltshire, 32 Regiment will exchange its current multiple launch rocket systems for Phoenix UAVs, according to the Ministry of Defence (MOD), which announced the Army's UAV plans on Nov. 29.
Reports that Germany is considering further cuts in defense spending are raising further questions about its commitment to buying 73 Airbus A400M military transports and its role as an international power. German Defense Minister Peter Struck reportedly will announce Dec. 5 that the government intends to reduce defense spending by nearly 6 billion euros ($6 billion) by 2006, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
NEW DELHI - India may buy satellite imagery from Belarus, an Indian defense official said. Belarus Prime Minister Gennady Novitski offered the imagery in a meeting last week with George Fernandes, India's defense minister, according to a senior official with the Indian Ministry of Defence. Novitski showed Indian officials images of cross-border terrorism in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, the official added. Belarus also has offered to sell spare parts for India's MiGs.
RESCHEDULED: Arianespace plans to announce a new launch date for its heavier-lift Ariane 5 this week, according to the company. The launch of flight 157, originally scheduled for Nov. 29, was aborted when the booster's main engine failed to ignite due to a computer glitch. The vehicle is slated to launch two satellites, Eutelsat's Hotbird 7 and the French space agency's Stentor.
MOSCOW - A Cosmos-3M launcher placed two small satellites into sun-synchronous orbit from Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Nov. 29, as part of a program to test the condition of older Cosmos-3M launchers that have been in storage. One satellite placed in orbit was the AlSat-1, built by Surrey Satellite Technology Laboratory for Algeria, under the international Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) program (DAILY, July 30).
Recent U.S. launch tests of actual Scud missiles have given the Missile Defense Agency a wealth of data that will aid the development of anti-missile systems, an MDA spokesman said Dec. 2. Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, the MDA spokesman, told The DAILY that the data will be "very useful" because it provided "great detail" on all stages of a Scud missile's flight.
HOWITZER: The U.S. Marine Corps has awarded BAE Systems a $135 million contract for low-rate initial production of the M777 lightweight 155mm howitzer, the company said Dec. 2. The M777 is 7,000 pounds lighter than the current M198 howitzer used by the Marine Corps and Army, the company said, and can be transported by the MV-22 Osprey. BAE Systems will build 94 howitzers over the next two years under the contract's initial phase.
One year after the establishment of the Information Exploitation Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the new unit is at the center of number of battlefield information trends, according to its acting director, Stephen P. Welby.
November 25, 2002 AIR FORCE Raytheon Aircraft Co., Wichita, Kan., is being awarded a $169,987,608 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for Lot X option exercise; Joint Primary Aircraft Trainer System T-6A Production Aircraft Lot X - FY2003; technical manuals and updates (one); instrument flight trainer (four); unit training device (one). The total funds have been obligated. Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-01-C-0022). NAVY
DRS Technologies announced Dec. 2 it has completed its $92 million acquisition of Paravant Inc., a move that Standard & Poor's said will significantly strengthen the company's market position in digital battlefield systems. Paravant, based in Morristown, N.J., builds rugged computer systems and communications interfaces for military command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems.
The debate over government shutter control of U.S. commercial satellite imagery will heat up in the next few years as international imagery companies bring more competitive technology online and the U.S. loses its technological edge, according to Space Imaging CEO John Copple.
THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY has negotiated a new contract with NASA to extend its operation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena beyond the current expiration date of Sept. 30, 2003. The contract is worth about $8 billion over five years, NASA said, and includes an award-term provision that could extend it another five. The contract includes performance incentives and returns full management of the Deep Space Network, which communicates with interplanetary spacecraft, to JPL.
Northrop Grumman Corp. and TRW Inc. have notified the Department of Justice they plan to merge on Dec. 11 unless regulatory objections are raised within the next 10 days.
NEW DELHI - France's Snecma Aerospace is negotiating a cooperative venture with India's state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) to build engines in India. A senior executive with Snecma's Indian subsidiary, Snecma Aerospace India Pvt. Ltd. (SAI), told The DAILY that the two companies could agree to split work equally on engine programs for India's defense forces. Snecma already supplies engines for India's Advanced Light Helicopter, the intermediate jet trainer HJT-36 and the Cheetah and Chetak helicopters.
The early warning radar systems Ukraine may have sold to Iraq probably will not have a significant impact on U.S. air operations over that country if military action is undertaken, according to defense analysts. Although the radars would improve Iraq's air defense capabilities, the technical capabilities of such passive radar systems have been highly exaggerated, according to Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
An article in the Nov. 25 issue of The DAILY misstated the amount of research grants NASA has awarded related to long-duration space flight. The grants are worth up to $8.8 million total.
TANKER DEAL: If the White House signs off on an Air Force proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767 air refuelers, the Bush Administration may wait to ask lawmakers to approve the deal until Congress reconvenes in early January, Capitol Hill sources say. It would be considered bad form for the Administration to send such a big-ticket item to the Hill when lawmakers are absent, the sources say. Under terms presented to the White House, leasing the aircraft and buying them at the end of the lease would cost a total of about $21 billion.
DATA DELIVERY: NASA plans to brief contractors Dec. 18 on the agency's upcoming Space Mission Communications and Data Services (SMCDS) procurement, the agency says. The SMCDS will succeed the aerospace agency's current Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC), which will expire in December 2003. The $3.4 billion CSOC contract, awarded to Lockheed Martin in 1998, includes managing data collection, telemetry and communications across NASA, but agency Administrator Sean O'Keefe said it hasn't led to the savings NASA expected (DAILY, Sept. 19).
In December, NASA will launch a satellite that the agency hopes will help reduce uncertainty about future ocean levels by taking highly precise measurements of the planet's massive ice sheets over a period of years. ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) is scheduled to launch Dec. 19 on a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., at 7:45 p.m. EST.
RAPTOR DELIVERY: The Lockheed Martin-led F/A-22 Raptor team has delivered Raptor 4011, the last of five dedicated initial operational test & evaluation (DIOT&E) aircraft, the company said Nov. 27. Government officials signed formal acceptance documents for the aircraft on Nov. 26 in Marietta, Ga. The aircraft will be delivered to California, where DIOT&E pilot training is scheduled to begin at Edwards in February, the company said.
LOOKING GOOD: Programs involving United Technologies subsidiaries should do well in Defense Department budget plans for fiscal years 2004-2009, according to senior aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan. "We generally believe that UT [United Technologies] programs should do okay," Callan says. "The Comanche program will go ahead and [F/A-22] and F-35 fighters ... look good too." UT subsidiary Pratt & Whitney provides engines for those programs. One question is what would happen if the V-22 program is canceled, he says.
