COOPERATION: Lockheed Martin has signed a memorandum of understanding with Poland's Przemyslowy Instytut Telekomunikacji (PIT) defense electronics company to cooperate on missile defense projects. The companies will focus initially on radar technologies, Lockheed Martin said.
HYPERSONIC FUTURES: While NASA gears up for the next flight attempt of its X-43A demonstrator (DAILY, Jan. 30), doubt is being cast over the agency's future hypersonics programs. The X-43A was to have been followed by the larger X-43C and the X-43B, a reusable hypersonic vehicle that would have landed on a runway. However, both follow-ons are part of the Next Generation Launch Technology (NGLT) program, which now falls under the management of NASA's new exploration office (Code T). Rear Adm.
SHARING: Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Newport News sector and General Dynamics' Electric Boat division will share an $8.4 billion multi-year buy of five Virginia-class submarines for the U.S. Navy, the companies said. The contract replaces an earlier block-by agreement.
TRANSMISSION: The NRF and NATO's Allied Command Transformation also will help to serve as "a transmission belt for the latest technology, the latest doctrine, the latest thinking on defense," de Hoop Scheffer says. "We cannot let technology divide us. We cannot afford a world where the U.S. is forced to act alone simply for technical reasons. That would make U.S. unilateralism in military affairs inevitable, and I guarantee you that that is not healthy for this country, for NATO, or for international relations," he says.
The Bush Administration plans to seek a $1.2 billion increase in ballistic missile defense (BMD) spending in fiscal 2005, partly to buy additional interceptors and radars for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, according to officials and documents. The Administration's FY '05 budget request, which the White House sends to Congress Feb. 2, provides $10.2 billion for BMD, up from $9 billion in FY '04. The Missile Defense Agency, DOD's primary entity for BMD, would get $9.1 billion in FY '05, up from $7.6 billion the previous year.
RENEWED SPIRIT: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover "Spirit" is regaining functionality and NASA is confident it will be able to conduct scientific investigations even as NASA engineers continue nursing it back to health. "We know we still have some engineering work to do, but we think we understand the problem well enough to do science in parallel with that work," says Jennifer Trosper, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. On Jan. 28, Spirit took and transmitted its first picture since succumbing to a computer failure on Jan. 21 (DAILY, Jan.
F/A-22 SCHEDULE: A Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) meeting that will confirm whether the F/A-22 Raptor is ready for its initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) has been delayed from Feb. 29 to March 22 due to a scheduling conflict, according to the Air Force. The new DAB date is not expected to delay IOT&E, which is scheduled to start March 31, the Air Force says.
SMALL BUSINESS: Small businesses increasingly are becoming more involved in teaming with prime contractors on U.S. Defense Department acquisition programs, say industry executives. "With two procurements I was recently involved in, the Navy specified that contractors respond with a subcontractor development plan, and a percentage of that would go to small businesses," says Graham Alderson, EG&G Technical Services' submarine combat systems program manager.
Four space organizations have created the National Space and Satellite Alliance (NSSA) to coordinate their Washington operations and help unify their space policy advocacy. The National Space Society, Satellite Industry Association, Space Foundation and Washington Space Business Roundtable formed the NSSA.
The Navy's total budget request for fiscal 2005 is $119.4 billion, a $3.9 billion increase from fiscal 2004 if the 2004 supplemental isn't factored in, a senior Department of the Navy budget official said Jan. 30 in a Pentagon press briefing. Including $5.3 billion in supplemental funding, the fiscal 2004 budget is $120.8 billion. DoD doesn't plan to ask for more supplemental funding until 2005, said a senior DoD budget official.
AVIATION SAFETY: Military aviation safety is slated to be the subject of a Feb. 11 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, sources say. The committee wants to learn more about the Defense Department's mishap rates and about what the military is doing to keep aging aircraft safe. Convinced that many accidents in aviation and other areas are preventable, DOD recently formed a Defense Safety Oversight Council (DSOC) to search for ways to reduce the number and rate of DOD mishaps.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Some of the American military systems being developed and used overseas in the war on terrorism should be adapted for use in the homeland, according to Gen. Ralph "Ed" Eberhart, commander of Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. The list, he said in response to a question at a conference here, would include "almost everything that we've used for the away game - how could we use it in the home game?" Future Imagery Architecture
The U.S. Department of Defense's fiscal 2005 budget request, released Feb. 2, focuses billions of dollars on military hardware integral to the DOD's transformation plan and includes funding for a new generation of Navy ships, tactical aircraft, communication systems and space-based radar. "We are under fire. We are still in a war on terrorism," a senior defense official said at an embargoed briefing Jan. 30. "Everything has to account for that situation."
IMPROVEMENTS: NATO must improve the capability and "usability" of its forces to make sure alliance forces aren't stretched too thin in the future, according to new Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who spoke in the U.S. last week for the first time in his post. U.S., European and Canadian forces are "heavily deployed," he says, and "this is already a real problem today." NATO's Response Force (NRF) is a good first step in improving forces, and is operating with an initial capability today, he says. "It will be fully operational no later than 2006.
AAM MARKET: Although Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) saw no major aerial engagements, this will not hinder sales of air-to-air missiles in the future, says Larry Dickerson, a missile systems analyst with Forecast International Inc. "Sales of air-to-air missiles (AAMs) over the next 10 years will total $12.2 billion. Some 49,379 missiles will be produced, the lion's share - nearly 50 percent - by American and European firms," he says. The value of annual production will increase steadily over a decade, reaching $1.5 billion by 2012, he says.
The U.S. Air Force says it is well on its way toward fixing various glitches that have afflicted the C-130J, the newest version of the C-130 Hercules. The service's problems with the Lockheed Martin-built aircraft prompted Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E), to label the C-130J "not operationally effective" and "not operationally suitable" in his recently released fiscal 2003 annual report on military acquisition programs. Christie said problem areas include software and aircrew workload.
The two teams competing to develop NATO's Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) system are offering options for unmanned aerial vehicles that seem to mirror their proposals for manned aircraft. The Transatlantic Industrial Proposed Solution (TIPS) team, led by Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS), is suggesting a UAV based on Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk. The Cooperative Transatlantic Alliance AGS (CTAS), led by Raytheon Co., Siemens and AMS, has recommended the General Atomics Predator B.
NATO CHIEF: Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee held a closed executive session meeting Jan. 29 with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, according to a committee spokesman. It was their first opportunity to meet him and they discussed "current issues facing NATO," the spokesman said.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Electronic versions of Aerospace Daily dated Feb. 2 will not be sent out until shortly after 9 a.m. on Feb. 2, so that we can include a special section detailing the U.S. Department of Defense's fiscal year 2005 budget request, which is embargoed until then. Print subscribers will receive the special section as part of the Feb. 3 issue.
PRAGUE - The Czech ministry of defense is looking for "serious offers" for 47 L-159 light combat aircraft it says the Czech military does not require. Ministry officials told The DAILY Jan. 29 that the aircraft would be heavily discounted because they have been used by the air force. The Czech state ordered 72 L-159s in the late 1990s but officials now say they believe only 24 are needed following cutbacks imposed on the military budget.
SEARCH AND RESCUE: General Dynamics C4 Systems will provide 650 AN/PRC-112G HOOK2TM combat search and rescue radios to Greece-based TEOTEC S.A. for use by Greece's air force. The value of the contract was not disclosed but it includes an option for 300 additional radios, the company said Jan. 28. The radios provide two-way messaging and Global Positioning System location capabilities.
At the request of NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, former Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) Chairman Hal Gehman will offer a "second opinion" on O'Keefe's decision to cancel the fourth and final scheduled space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During a press roundtable in Washington Jan. 29, O'Keefe said he expects an "expeditious" response from Gehman, although no deadline has been set.
