Senate Commerce space subcommittee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says NASA should set a goal of landing a person on Mars, but NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe believes his agency must overcome two "showstoppers" before it can talk about a human space flight to the red planet. At a subcommittee hearing May 8, Wyden urged NASA to commit to putting a person on Mars, saying NASA should work with Congress to "set a date" for meeting that goal.
AUTOROTATION: An inability to perform an autorotative landing is not the "fatal flaw" of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, according to Chief Test Pilot Tom MacDonald. In an autorotative descent, a helicopter that has lost engine power uses the natural pinwheel-like spinning of its rotor to provide a cushion for landing. "The autorotation is a big issue with people that don't understand the V-22 ... and consider that to be a fatal flaw, and it really is not," MacDonald says.
NO WORKAROUND: The Navy had no role in the House Armed Services Committee's recent decision to allocate additional money for a third DDG-51 destroyer and does not "work around the president's budget," Navy Secretary Gordon England says. "I repeat, we do not work around the president's budget," England says of the HASC's decision to allocate $800 million for a third DDG-51 destroyer in the proposed fiscal 2003 defense budget. The allocation is contingent on the Navy, the Boeing Co.
Competition over funds from the Defense Department's 2002 supplementary funding requests is holding up money for the Air Force's High-Band signals intelligence (SIGINT) system, according to sources familiar with the program. Congress directed the Air Force in March to use funding from the 2002 emergency supplemental to fund its High-Band SIGINT system, which is expected eventually to go on the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. The Air Force never saw that money, according to sources.
The Department of Defense ordered all development work on the DD(X) family of ships to cease until the General Accounting Office weighs in on a dispute over the selection process, according to a Navy spokesman. Navy officials awarded a $2.9 billion contract to the "Gold Team" of Northrop Grumman's Ingalls Shipbuilding and Raytheon on April 29 to develop and test 13 DD(X) engineering prototypes by 2005.
The Navy is funding the development of a narrowband optical filter that would permit visible and near-infrared lidar (light detection and ranging) systems to operate during the daytime. When deployed on surveillance aircraft such as the P-3 Orion, the system would equalize daytime and nighttime performance, according to Richard Billmers, vice president of research and development for RL Associates. The company has been developing the system under a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the Navy.
NEW POSITION: A new organization is being created within the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program, says Sue Payton, the deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts. Funding for ACTD programs is intended to "fast track" maturing technologies onto the acquisition path. Many ACTDs have become full-scale acquisition programs, like the Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles. Other programs, however, have not been able to make the transition successfully.
NASA is exploring bartering arrangements with the international space community to provide a launch opportunity for the mothballed Triana remote sensing spacecraft, according to the agency's head of Earth science. Triana, which originally was to be deployed from the space shuttle's payload bay as part of the STS-107 mission, has not been able to find another launch opportunity because NASA has scaled back shuttle launches from six a year to four. In the meantime, the spacecraft is in a storage container at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
APPOINTMENT: NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe appointed Charles T. Horner III to be NASA's liaison to Capitol Hill on May 10. Horner's appointment to be assistant administrator for legislative affairs is effective immediately, according to NASA.
The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill late May 9 that cuts the Bush Administration's missile defense request by $812 million but adds $240 million for the Navy to buy 48 Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets instead of 44. The missile defense reduction led eight of 12 SASC Republicans to vote against the bill. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the panel's ranking Republican, said the cut "undermines" President Bush's "fundamental priorities."
May 13 -- National Defense Industrial Association presents U.S.-India Defense Industry Seminar - U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1615 H Street, NW, Washington, DC. For more information contact Jim Linden at (703) 247-9464 or email [email protected]. May 13 -- Aviation Week presents Fast-Track Growth Conference, Hyatt Regency, New York, NY. For more information go to www.AviationNow.com/conferences
ITT Industries' Avionics Division is working under a $45 million contract to equip Army Special Operations aircraft with its AN/ALQ-211 electronic protection set, the Suite of Integrated RF Countermeasures (SIRFC) system.
SUPPLEMENTAL ACTION: The House Appropriations Committee hopes to finish consideration of its fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriations bill May 14 after marking up the legislation most of the day May 9. The bill includes $15.8 billion for defense, including $377 million to speed up production of Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munitions (DAILY, March 25). The Senate Appropriations Committee has not announced when it will consider its version of the bill.
Lockheed Martin has delivered the first of 14 new Block 50 single-seat F-16s to the U.S. Air Force, the company announced May 9. The aircraft will be used for suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) and to sustain the Air Force's multirole fighter force structure. Ten of the aircraft were procured in fiscal year 2000 and four in FY '01. They will be delivered at a rate of one or two a month through December 2002.
The House was expected late May 9 to add $135 million to the Bush Administration's fiscal 2003 defense budget request for the Arrow and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile defense systems. The increase, in the form of an amendment to the FY '03 defense authorization bill, would add $65 million for PAC-3 to increase missile procurement from 72 to 96. It also would add $70 million to help establish U.S. co-production of the Israeli missile used in the Arrow system.
Congress should not seek to overturn Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's cancellation of the Army's Crusader artillery system, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said May 9. "The president agrees with the findings that have been made by the secretary of defense and the Department of Defense, and the president urges the Congress to adhere to Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld's well thought-out recommendation," Fleischer said at a press briefing.
Two more Defense Department programs are likely to get fiscal year 2002 funding as Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations, according to the head of the program. Fifteen ACTD candidates were provided funding this year. An additional three were approved, but no funding was available in March, when the ACTD was announced.
NAVIGATION SYSTEMS: Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Navigation Systems Division will supply inertial navigation systems (INS) for U.S. Navy aircraft under a $12 million contract. The division will supply 78 LN-192 INS units for F/A-18E/F, E-2C, AV-8B aircraft and for the approaching landing system of aircraft carriers. The contract also will provide foreign governments with LN-92 units for installation in aircraft such as the E-2C. The contract has options for 100 additional systems, according to the company.
Rocket motor and munition maker Alliant Techsystems (ATK) reported a 34 percent increase in net profits for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2002. The acquisitions of ATK Thiokol Propulsion and the Federal and CCI/Speer ammunition businesses, as well as higher sales of small-caliber and medium-caliber ammunition, were the principal factors behind the boom, company officials said May 9.
(Editor's note: The following is excerpted from written testimony NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe submitted to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation's subcommittee on science, technology and space. He testified May 8).
A proposed integration of Marine Corps and Navy aviation will reduce the number of Joint Strike Fighters procured in future years, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England said May 9, adding that the JSF is partly a victim of its own success. The integration would be made possible by the technologies that emerged with the development of the JSF, he told defense reporters in Washington.
PRAGUE - BAE Systems welcomed a May 9 decision by the Czech parliament to finance the purchase of 24 Jas-39 Gripen fighters. The government-sponsored bill, which allows the state to buy the Gripen fighters through a combination of loans and industry privatization proceeds, passed with a majority of nine votes. The Czech senate must take up the bill within 30 days.
As the Department of Defense looks at the lessons learned from Afghanistan, the advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) program, which provides funding to "fast track" maturing technologies, is trying to field systems that fit the military's vision of future wars.
