NASA leadership is far from considering the closing of any of the agency's 10 nationwide centers as a means of cutting costs, according to NASA Chief of Staff and White House Liaison Courtney Stadd. Last fall, reports circulated that NASA was considering scaling back or closing some of its centers as part of a strategic resources review mandated by the White House.
DEFENSE BILL: Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) hopes to have the appropriations defense subcommittee and the full committee take up the fiscal 2003 defense appropriations bill by the end of July, a spokesman says. The full Senate would consider the legislation sometime after that. The House passed its version of the bill June 27 (DAILY, June 28). Both chambers have passed their versions of the FY '03 defense authorization bill, which will go to a conference to resolve differences sometime in the coming weeks.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS: The Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry is concerned that their final report not be shelved and forgotten by Capitol Hill lawmakers, according to Walker. He says he believes it's important that the commission establish "communications ties that ensures that the people to whom we are ultimately going to address our final report are indeed listening to what we're doing.
SUPPLEMENTAL PUSH: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he is disappointed that Congress did not pass the fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriations bill before leaving town for its week-long July 4th recess. He says the legislation, now before a House-Senate conference committee, should be finished "immediately" after the recess. "Those are funds that are needed for the global war on terrorism," Rumsfeld says.
SETTLING OUT: The Department of Defense wants to let its latest changes, including a merger of Space Command and Strategic Command (DAILY, June 27) "settle out" before it considers a merger of the new Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), says Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
NATIONAL TEAMS: The so-called "national teams" of the missile defense program will issue their first engineering products sometime in mid-July, Kadish says. In February, Boeing received a $24 million contract to begin system engineering and integration work for the national team, and Lockheed Martin received a $23 million contract for the development and integration of battle management, command and control, and communications capabilities.
OPEN OPTIONS: As part of its Deepwater modernization program, the Coast Guard could buy a version of the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship, according to Rear Adm. Patrick Stillman. The LCS is a smaller, faster variant of the Navy's DD(X) family of future surface combat ships. "We will keep our options open," he says. "As LCS matures, and we are playing a role in terms of defining the requirements for that concept, it is conceivable there could be an intersection between the Navy and the Coast Guard in the Littoral Combat Ship." Stillman says.
COOPERATION: Officials from Lockheed Martin Corp. and the Russian aerospace company Khrunichev Enterprises recently made the rounds in Washington to discuss possible Russian-U.S. cooperation on missile defense, according to House Armed Services procurement subcommittee chairman Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). In addition to meeting with Weldon, officials from the two companies met with Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the head of the Missile Defense Agency.
TOO DUSTY: The launch of NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) has been postponed to no earlier than July 3 as a result of "possible particulate contamination" found on the spacecraft's top solar array panel, NASA announced June 28. NASA is taking the time to determine the dust's composition and decide what further action may be necessary. CONTOUR will travel close to the nuclei of at least two comets (DAILY, June 13).
Lockheed Martin spokesman John Kent said Joint Strike Fighter team representatives are discussing possible work shares with nearly 25 Italian companies in the wake of Italy's decision to contribute slightly more than $1 billion to the JSF program as a Level 2 partner. That contribution makes it the second largest international contributor, second to the United Kingdom's roughly $2 billion contribution.
The amount of work awarded to the European Aeronautic Space and Defence Co. as part of the winning Integrated Coast Guard Systems team represents a major breakthrough for the company, according to a U.S. aircraft analyst. "This is strong endorsement of continued efforts in the U.S. market for EADS," senior aircraft analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said. "It's a huge boost for their marketing and sales as well as their entry into the U.S. market."
July 7 - 11 -- ATCA International Technical Conference & Exhibits. Hotel Inter-Continental, Berlin. Call (703) 522-5717, fax (703) 527-7251 or email [email protected]. July 9 - 11 -- Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International presents Unmanned Systems 2002. Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, Lake Buena Vista, Fla. For more information call (703) 920-2720 or email [email protected].
PILOTLESS PASSENGERS: As it prepares to make its final recommendations, the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry should consider possibilities that are too radical for current lawmakers to openly discuss, according to Chairman Robert Walker. "As an example, I would hope that in our vision we would talk about the idea of maybe flying passengers on [pilotless] aircraft in the future ... and having an air traffic management system which is so robust that it makes that possible," Walker says.
NEW DELHI - The Indian government has given the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) permission to begin development of a naval version of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). A senior LCA project scientist told The DAILY the naval version would be ready by 2006 and would be capable of landing on small aircraft carriers. Earlier this month, DRDO successfully tested the LCA's third technology demonstrator, moving the LCA program into the flight-testing stage.
In the absence of a formal operational requirements document, the ballistic missile defense system now has a technical guide in place that will be used to shape its development, according to the head of the Missile Defense Agency.
LONDON - The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MOD) and BAE Systems said they have successfully equipped 94 Tornado F.3 fighters to fire Raytheon's AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missiles, rebutting U.K. press reports which said attempts to integrate the missiles had been abandoned. Five more F.3s are due for similar modifications, the MOD said in a recent statement, which also said there are no plans to abandon this improvement.
EBERHART CONFIRMED: The Senate late June 27 confirmed Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart as head of the new U.S. Northern Command. The command, based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., will focus on homeland security. Eberhart also is commander of U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The Senate has approved legislation that could lead to increased research to improve the federal government's measurement and signatures intelligence (MASINT) capabilities.
TEAM SELECTION: NASA has selected its Glenn Research Center in Cleveland to lead the development of the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) system, which will use xenon gas and electrical power to drive future spacecraft. The first phase of the program will be a one-year effort to design, build and test initial versions of ion thrusters, propellant feed systems and power processing units. NASA also selected a team led by Boeing Electron Dynamic Devices to pursue development, fabrication and testing of ion optics, which are critical components of ion thrusters.
As the expected deadline nears for Austria to announce the winner of its fighter competition, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency complained June 27 about "misleading remarks" in the Austrian press about the suitability of its entry, Lockheed Martin's F-16.
The Air Force plans to lease four Boeing C-40 passenger transports to alleviate an airlift capability shortfall at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., the service has indicated in a new report to Congress. Negotiations for the lease were authorized by the fiscal 2002 defense appropriations act. The Air Force wrote in the report that it will not award the lease contract until Congress approves a reprogramming request of FY '02 funds needed to begin the lease. The reprogramming request is to be sent to Congress separately.
