The Air Force Research Laboratory is asking industry to help it develop technologies for "Sensorcraft," a projected unmanned airborne vehicle platform that would host a variety of active and passive sensors, or that would lead to integration of new technologies into existing or planned vehicles.
The U.S. Marine Corps still plans to buy 79 KC-130Js despite a congressionally approved cut in its fiscal 2002 budget request for the tanker aircraft, a USMC spokesman said Jan. 14.
BAE Systems Military Air Solutions&Support (MASS) has re-delivered 107 of 142 Royal Air Force ground-attack/reconnaissance Tornadoes after upgrading them from GR.1/1As to GR.4/4As. The work is being done under a 1.2 billion pound ($1.73 billion) Ministry of Defence contract awarded in 1994. The mid-life upgrade (MLU) program is scheduled to be complete by March 2003, and aircraft are being re-delivered every eight working days.
Raytheon Command, Control and Communication Systems has added European defense company Thales and ViaSat, a U.S. company specializing in wireless communication, to its team of contractors competing for the Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS) contract, Raytheon officials said Jan. 14.
Norway's Telenor has completed its acquisition of Lockheed Martin's COMSAT Mobile Communications operations, the company announced Jan. 14. Telenor has gathered all its mobile satellite activities under the new business name Telenor Satellite Services. COMSAT Mobile will be the U.S. subsidiary of Telenor, under the name Telenor Satellites Services Inc.
Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, is urging President Bush to increase procurement spending in the fiscal 2003 defense budget by at least $30 billion to overcome "serious" modernization shortfalls.
Jan. 15 - 17 -- Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association/U.S. Naval Institute - West 2002 Conference. For more information contact the registration center at [email protected] or the promotions coordinator - Tobey Jackson at (703) 631-6189 or email [email protected]. Jan. 16 -- National Defense Industrial Association's Attaché Luncheon, The Westin Fairfax Hotel, Washington, DC. For more information contact Jim Linden at [email protected]
QUIET UAV WORK: Industry criticism that NASA's support for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been "inconsistent" (DAILY, Jan. 7) may be attributable to the modest number of personnel involved, according to John Del Frate, project manager for the Helios solar-powered UAV at Dryden Flight Research Center. Helios is part of NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program, which is aimed at nurturing cutting-edge UAV concepts from industry. "Maybe we've been quiet," he says.
Industry criticism that NASA's support for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been "inconsistent" (DAILY, Jan. 7) may be attributable to the modest number of personnel involved, according to John Del Frate, project manager for the Helios solar-powered UAV at Dryden Flight Research Center. Helios is part of NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program, which is aimed at nurturing cutting-edge UAV concepts from industry. "Maybe we've been quiet," he says.
The General Accounting Office has recommended the State Department change its procedures for reviewing export license applications for defense-related items and services after finding it has "no guidelines on the length of time a review should take, no requirements to justify a lengthy review and no systematic checks on the progress of applications." Although the State Department has hired additional officers to review the applications, it still "lacks procedures to control the flow of license applications through the review process," the report says.
JAVELIN BUYS: The U.S. Army has executed Letters of Agreement for the sale of Javelin anti-tank missile systems to Lithuania and Jordan, the Raytheon-Lockheed Martin Javelin Joint Venture announced Jan. 11. The letters, signed in December, mark the first European and Middle East sales for Javelin, according to the companies.
GASL, an engineering services organization that is a division of Allied Aerospace Industries, has signed an agreement with the Space Alliance Outreach Program (SATOP) to provide small business owners with free technical engineering assistance for problems they face in the workplace. "Joining SATOP gives GASL the chance to help small businesses as well as assist with the spread of NASA technology," said Bob Bakos, the vice president for engineering at Allied Aerospace.
SPECTRUM ASTRO said construction has begun on its new satellite manufacturing facility, which it calls the "factory of the future." Completion of the new factory in Gilbert is slated for December 2002. The initial construction is of the company's phase one plan, which will provide the manufacturing and test capacity for the company's product base. It includes three buildings with a combined square footage of 270,000 square feet of engineering, manufacturing, test, office and support space.
In the coming years, "I think you're going to see more [use of unmanned aerial vehicles] in law enforcement," says Daryl Davidson, executive director of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). "We've typically seen that the most natural migration beyond the military goes into law enforcement, or the paramilitary side.
UNDERFUNDED DEFENSE: Although President Bush signed the fiscal 2002 defense appropriations bill into law on Jan. 10 (DAILY, Jan. 11), he predicts it will not meet all of the military's budget needs. Since the measure provides about $2 billion less than his $319.4 billion request, it "does not adequately fund all my critical priorities, specifically the readiness of our forces," Bush says in a statement.
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center will be proposing a follow-on program to the Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program, the unmanned aerial vehicle development work that has resulted in the Helios and Pathfinder UAVs, among others. Currently, ERAST is "pretty much scheduled to end at the end of fiscal year 2003," John Del Frate, Helios project manager at Dryden, told The DAILY. "We're right now trying to see if it makes sense to do a follow-on program, but of course we'll propose it, and then the powers that be will decide."
TRW Inc. is continuing with the design and development of an AstroMesh reflector for Mobile Broadcasting Corp. of Japan's MBSAT geostationary satellite. The work is being done under a contract from Space Systems/Loral. Reflectors, a key antenna component, reflect radio frequency energy and focus it into a pattern on the ground. MBSAT is intended to provide digital multimedia services, including audio, video and data to mobile users throughout Japan and Korea.
Start-up satellite ventures like Astrolink International may have suffered from the fallout of dotcom and telecommunications companies in the late 1990s, but Astrolink's fate is not sealed, say some satellite industry observers. Astrolink was created in 1999 by Lockheed Martin Corp., TRW Inc., Telespazio SPA, and Liberty Media Group to provide global broadband satellite service, but has suffered a number of recent setbacks. Lockheed Martin announced in late October it would no longer fund Astrolink and was leaving the commercial satellite business altogether.
GASL, an engineering services organization that is a division of Allied Aerospace Industries, has signed an agreement with the Space Alliance Outreach Program (SATOP) to provide small business owners with free technical engineering assistance for problems they face in the workplace. "Joining SATOP gives GASL the chance to help small businesses as well as assist with the spread of NASA technology," said Bob Bakos, the vice president for engineering at Allied Aerospace.
Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, is urging President Bush to increase procurement spending in the fiscal 2003 defense budget by at least $30 billion to overcome "serious" modernization shortfalls.
The cancellation of the Defense Department's Joint Signals Avionics Family (JSAF) program has left TRW holding half of a signals intelligence (SIGINT) package, which was intended to provide advanced electronic intelligence capable of picking up some of the most advanced surface-to-air-missile threats. Designed to provide a single SIGINT payload to multiple aircraft, JSAF was cancelled Dec. 20 when Congress eliminated funding for the program, citing concerns about the Pentagon's approach to common sensors (DAILY, Jan. 8).
STINGER BUY-BACK: After supplying hundreds of shoulder-mounted Stinger surface-to-air missiles in the 1980s to Afghans fighting the Soviets, the U.S. is now involved in a "buy-back" scheme to reacquire the missiles. "With respect to Afghanistan, there have been two pieces to the arms buyback," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says.
The U.S. Air Force is getting $3.4 million to explore the possibility of creating an additional site in Hawaii for conducting space surveillance activities. The site would give the Air Force an alternate viewing point when clouds, wind or other weather conditions impede the work of the Maui Space Surveillance Site, a telescope complex on Haleakala mountain on Maui island, according to a spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate. The complex produces images of orbiting space objects.
An Air National Guard pilot says the most daunting part about flying over Afghanistan is the possibility of a mid-air collision with other U.S. aircraft operating in the area. "The possibility of mid-air collision is seen as greater [in Afghanistan] than in previous wars," says Lt. Col. Gerald Otterbein, an EC-130 pilot. "There's more of a concentration of aircraft in certain places, and you have to be more aware of what's going on," says Otterbein, a member of the 193d Special Operations Wing that operates the Commando Solo broadcasting mission.
