The Air Force is forming a new office to develop and manage the military's communications architecture, according to Peter Teets, the dual-hatted undersecretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Speaking Sept. 3 at the Pentagon, Teets told reporters that the new office, called the Transformational Communications Office, will "coordinate, synchronize and direct the implementation of the transformational communications architecture."
Top Indian officials assured a visiting trade delegation from the Czech Republic that no decision has been made on the purchase of subsonic aircraft for the Indian air force, Aero Vodochody said Sept. 3. The company is pitching its L-159 to meet India's need for advanced jet trainers (DAILY, Feb. 14). The Aero statement contrasts with recent comments attributed to India's defense minister that the BAE Systems-produced Hawk 100 is the only aircraft under consideration for an initial tender for 66 combat trainers.
VECTORING UCAV-N: The Navy is considering installing thrust vectoring into future versions of the Naval unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV-N), according to VECTOR Program Manager Jennifer Young. Using thrust vectoring to perform extremely short takeoff and landings (ESTOL), future naval aircraft could land on carriers at slower speeds and wouldn't have to dump as many unexpended munitions before landing, according to the Navy. "Some of the UCAV-N people ...
Most space analysts see no clear frontrunner in the competition between Lockheed Martin and TRW to build NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), although some say they think Lockheed Martin may have more to lose. The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, NGST is scheduled to begin fabrication in early 2005 and launch in 2010, at an estimated cost of half a billion dollars. The near-infrared telescope is designed to detect the first bright astronomical objects to appear after the Big Bang (DAILY, Aug. 20).
PAYLOAD CONTRACT: NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., has awarded Boeing Space Operations Co. of Titusville, Fla., its Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services (CAPPS) contract, a follow-on to payload work Boeing has performed since 1987. The contract has a four-year basic period of performance worth $332 million, and includes two three-year options that could boost its total value to $810 million, according to NASA.
NOT BUYING ENOUGH: E.C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, says the rising cost of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle will be offset by increasing the production rate. "It's expensive because we're not buying very many of them," he says. The Pentagon needs to increase the production rate to get the cost down, he says, echoing the argument made by Northrop Grumman, which produces the high-flying reconnaissance UAV for the Air Force.
Raytheon Co. has realigned its government and defense business structure to form seven new businesses, the company announced Aug. 30. The businesses were formed by combining units of the former Electronic Systems and Command, Control, Communication and Information Systems, Raytheon said. The new businesses are: * Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), which will provide air and missile defense and naval and maritime warfighting systems; * Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS);
AGREEMENT: Honeywell has signed a strategic supplier agreement with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. to establish a long-term business relationship that will be more efficient and reduce costs, Honeywell said. The companies will coordinate technology and best business practices on Lockheed Martin aircraft programs such as the C-130, F-16, F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, according to Honeywell.
Funding decisions for missile defense, Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transports are among the issues Congress will face when it returns from its August recess. Lawmakers have several aerospace-related bills to finish, including the fiscal 2003 defense authorization and appropriations bills, the FY '03 intelligence authorization bill and the FY '03 VA-HUD-NASA appropriations bill.
DELIVERY: The Boeing Co. delivered the 90th C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, the company said Aug. 30. The aircraft was delivered at a ceremony near the C-17 assembly plant in Long Beach, Calif. The Air Force recently signed a $9.7 billion contract with Boeing to produce 60 additional C-17s (DAILY, Aug. 16), extending Long Beach production through 2008.
Three months after its return to flight, one V-22 aircraft is undergoing extensive line clearance testing in preparation for September flight testing, while a second aircraft is set to join the test program. "To date the MV-22 aircraft has logged nearly 35 hours and 15 flights since returning to flight at Patuxent River, Md., on May 29," Gidge Dady, a spokeswoman for the program, wrote in response to written questions.
FAA HEAD: The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing Sept. 3 on President Bush's nomination of Marion Blakey to be FAA administrator. Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who chairs the panel's aviation subcommittee, will conduct the hearing.
MIXED MISSIONS: Financially troubled Spacehab Inc. could see a sharp upturn in business if NASA decides to pursue more missions to the International Space Station that include research along with station logistical support, says Shelley Harrison, company chairman and CEO. "In recent meetings that we've had with NASA, we're getting more and more confident that we're becoming part of the main line of commitment for missions to the station," he says.
The Army has picked two companies for initial work on Objective Force Warrior (OFW), a program to make the individual soldier overwhelmingly effective on future battlefields. General Dynamics' Eagle Enterprise Inc. of Westminster, Md., and Exponent Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., were chosen for the concept development phase of OFW, intended to give the soldier of 2010 dramatic improvements in lethality, survivability and agility. The two companies were chosen over Raytheon Co.'s Tactical Systems business unit.
Sept. 5 -- U.S. Naval Institute presents the Marine Corps Association and Naval Institute Forum 2002 - Transformation: Time to Walk the Talk? For more information contact Carolyn Schwenk at (410) 295-1058. Sept. 5 - 6 -- Euroconsult presents World Summit for Satellite Financing. Hotel Inter-Continental, Paris. For more information visit www.euroconsult.com or call +33 1 49 23 75 30.
IRAQ HEARINGS: The Senate Armed Services Committee may hold hearings on possible U.S. military action against Iraq. Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) says he is considering scheduling such hearings and will decide whether to hold them when Congress reconvenes after Labor Day. Committee ranking Republican John Warner (Va.) wants Levin to invite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to testify before the panel about Iraq (DAILY, Aug. 30).
EXPORTS TO CHINA: Beijing's Aug. 25 announcement of new, and allegedly tougher, regulations on missile exports came as welcome news in Washington, but U.S. officials say there are no plans to renew licensing of satellite exports to China. "This is potentially an important step," Richard Boucher, the chief spokesman for the State Department, says about China's announcement.
GEN AFTER NEXT: The space-based observatory to be launched after the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) could be similar in configuration but pushed more into the far-infrared wavelengths, according to NGST Project Manager Bernard Seery. Although no decisions have been made, "there definitely is a small group talking about what comes next," Seery says. "There are a couple of concepts floating around - one is called SAFIR [Single Aperture Far Infrared], and the other is called FAIR [Filled Aperture Infrared].
BREAKING NEW GROUND: The Defense Department's new Biological Defense Homeland Security Initiative, announced last week, marks a new direction for the department, says senior DOD analyst Paul Bergeron. "A lot of [research in defending civilian populations from chemical and biological attack] is not the kind of work we've been doing in the Defense Department," says Bergeron, who works in the Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Aug. 29 were awarded more money as part of their ongoing work leading ballistic missile defense "national teams." Boeing received an additional $125 million for systems engineering and integration work, and Lockheed Martin got another $108 million for battle management, according to the Department of Defense. The national teams provide the Missile Defense Agency with independent analysis and technical assistance with the architecture of the ballistic missile defense system.
The Navy wants to more than double its annual spending on aircraft purchases by fiscal 2009 but cut its planned buys of F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft for the next few years, according to a document obtained by The DAILY. An Aug. 22 draft of the Navy's FY '04 budget proposal calls for spending $17.2 billion in FY '09 to buy new and remanufactured aircraft, up from $8.2 billion in the FY '03 budget request, which Congress is now considering. The number of aircraft procured would rise from 83 in FY '03 to 273 in FY '09.
NEW DELHI - Indian officials are disputing statements from Rosoboronexport, the Russian arms export agency, that they have bought substandard spares for the Indian air force's fleet of MiG-21 aircraft, which could be a factor in the aircraft's high accident rate in India. Rosoboronexport Director General Andrei Belyaninov said in Moscow Aug. 27 that India has been buying numerous secondhand MiG spares and equipment from the former Soviet republics, parts he said are passed off as new.
The Sikorsky MH-60S Knighthawk, the first of the U.S. Navy's two future combat helicopters, was approved for full-rate production Aug. 28, authorizing the Navy to buy up to 237 through 2010. The Navy's proposed fiscal 2003 budget includes a request for the procurement of the first 15 full-rate production models of the MH-60S, slated to replace Boeing's H-46, Bell Helicopter Textron's H-1 and Sikorsky's H-3 and HH-60H. About 30 Block I MH-60S models are now flying in the Navy fleet.
