With a decision to deploy missile defense not yet made, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) officials are making a fundamental shift in the program, focusing on an open architecture that incorporates more testing and alternative technology paths. National missile defense - previously conceived as a one-shot deployment that would protect the territorial United States - is now simply ballistic missile defense, and BMDO is being reorganized to reflect the new program divisions, officials said.
A lawsuit filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court by Raytheon Co. alleges that a series of bad judgments by senior officials of Washington Group International has more to do with WGI's financial troubles than do previous financial transactions with Raytheon.
The Indian Air Force plans to improve its aging electronic surveillance system by adding more Radar Warning Receivers. The existing network of electronic and other surveillance equipment in the air defense system of the air force are becoming obsolete, sources said. Air force documents indicate that the service is urgently looking for various electronic warfare equipment, including Radar Warning Receivers that help detect hostile radars over a wide frequency range. The proposal for purchase is pending approval at the Ministry of Defence.
AEROSPACE PANEL: It is nearly impossible to predict whether the newly appointed Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry (DAILY, Aug. 23) will have a significant effect on public policy, analysts say. That's because there are too many undetermined factors, including what the panel will recommend after it completes its work about a year from now and whether money will be available in the U.S. Treasury to carry out those suggestions. Another unknown is whether commissioners will be in a position to see their ideas carried out.
MISSION PLANNING: Datamat of Italy has awarded a $4.2 million contract to BAE Systems to upgrade mission planning systems for the Italian air force's Tornado, AM-X, and C-130 aircraft. BAE System's Information&Electronic Warfare Systems (IEWS) business unit in Nacho, N.H., will deliver new hardware and enhanced software originally delivered under a contract it received from Datamat in 1996. The equipment is similar to the Air Force Mission Support System (AFMSS) developed by IEWS for the U.S. Air Force.
JASSM DAB: The date of a Defense Acquisition Board meeting to determine whether Lockheed Martin should proceed to the low rate initial production phase in the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) program won't be determined until after a test of the weapon slated for next month. The meeting was to have taken place Aug. 21, but failure of the JASSM warhead's fuze in a July 27 test prompted a postponement. While the date of the DAB has not yet been nailed down, program officials are definite about one thing: they want a success before the meeting.
PEGASUS: Project engineers from Northrop Grumman Corp. say they are confident the newly-developed X-47A experimental vehicle will demonstrate the suitability of unmanned combat aerial vehicles for the U.S. Navy. The aircraft, which is currently on display at the Naval Air Museum at Patuxent River, Md., will be flown in test demonstrations later this year. "We're confident the Pegasus flight demonstrations will support future development of unmanned combat aircraft," says Scott Seymour, vice-president of Air Combat Systems for Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems Sector.
Aerospace and defense analysts with Standard&Poor's revised the ratings outlook for Moog Inc., from stable to positive. Credit ratings for the company remained the same. The revision follows an Aug. 16 announcement from Moog officials that the company will issue 2.25 million shares of common stock which is expected to generate about $90 million in gross proceeds. Analysts said the proceeds will reduce borrowing, resulting in a decline of the company's total debt-to-total capital from the 60 percent range to about 50 percent.
DIAGNOSE THYSELF: One of the advancements in the space shuttle's Cockpit Avionics Upgrade Program, or "smart cockpit" (DAILY, Aug. 24), will be an enhanced caution and warning system capable of performing a limited amount of self-diagnosis in the event of a failure. "Enhanced caution and warning is going to provide root cause analysis for failures," says Bruce Hilty, co-chair of the Space Shuttle Cockpit Council.
Asia's largest satellite service provider, the Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. (AsiaSat) of Hong Kong, reported on Aug. 24 a 4.2 percent decrease in net profits for the first half of 2001. Company officials cited reduced demand for satellite services as a result of the global economic downturn. Romain Bausch, chairman of AsiaSat's holding company, AsiaSat Telecommunications Holdings Limited, said the sluggish U.S. economy also was affecting demand for Asian satellite services.
United Industrial Corp., announced Aug. 23 that its AAI Corp. subsidiary has been awarded a production contract by the U.S. Air Force for its Joint Service Electronic Combat Systems Tester. The contract, valued at an estimated $26.3 million, calls for the production of 96 JSECST Core Test set systems, including test program sets, training and spare parts. The Air Force may order more systems in 2002 and 2003. The systems are used to quickly and accurately test the electronic warfare and avionics systems in a variety of military aircraft.
The Boeing Company delivered its 200th AH-64D Apache Longbow multi-mission combat helicopter to the U.S. Army Aug. 23. Boeing is under contract to deliver 501 AH-64D Apache Longbows to the Army through 2006. The company also has delivered 21 AH-64Ds to the Royal Netherlands air force and 24 WAH-64s to AgustaWestland, for the United Kingdom. Also under contract, Boeing said, are 30 AH-64Ds for The Netherlands and 67 WAH-64s for the U.K.
Launch of a classified payload on an Atlas 2AS rocket, originally slated for Aug. 25 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., has been slipped to Sept. 8 because of a problem involving an adjustment in propellant use on the rocket's main liquid engines. The Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles AFB, Calif., said Aug. 24 in a written response to questions that the backup date for the launch of the payload, which is from the National Reconnaissance Office, is Sept. 9.
The General Accounting Office has begun reviewing billions of dollars of cost overruns in the International Space Station program in hopes of finding out what caused them and whether they will limit the station's usefulness. The agency also is expected to look at why NASA didn't discover and correct the station's problems earlier.
CANADA PASSES: The Canadian government has let pass a World Trade Organization deadline to continue contesting financial aid provided Embraer of Brazil at the expense of Bombardier of Canada. Both companies welcomed the decision, which follows years of often rancorous debate between the two nations over aircraft subsidies. The Canadians decided not to appeal a WTO decision that Brazil can use its ProEx to help financing Embraer sales.
MYERS HEARING: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is moving quickly to consider the nomination of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers to be chairman od the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace to be vice chairman. Shortly after President Bush formally announced the appointments Aug. 24, Levin said he would hold confirmation hearings in September, when Congress is due back from a month-long recess. Levin says Myers and Pace have distinguished records and are "well prepared" for the Joint Chiefs jobs.
TESTBEDS IN SPACE: "The program has made it perfectly clear that both the space shuttle and the space station are testbeds of the future for advanced spacecraft [technologies]," says Hilty. "I have every intention to have those teams use these vehicles as testbeds, because there's absolutely nothing like those environments." Technologies being developed for future platforms could probably also be applied to current operations, Hilty says.
The Department of Defense must move toward implementing network- centric warfare concepts, said John Stenbit, the new assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence. Stenbit, previously a vice president at TRW Inc., is an engineer with a background in military networks and in missile and space systems. "We need a different architecture, we need a different form of information exchange," Stenbit told reporters Aug. 24. "Network-centric is the right word and those are the right concepts."
ARMY IMPACT: President Bush's decision to pick an Air Force general instead of another Army general to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff could be bad news for Army aviation modernization programs, especially the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, according to Richard Aboulafia, aviation consultant for the Teal Group. Bush's Aug. 24 appointment of Air Force Gen. Richard Myers to be chairman "doesn't do the case for [starting] Comanche procurement any favors," Aboulafia says.
NASA's fourth Convection and Moisture Experiment (DAILY, Aug. 17) officially got underway August 21 when a NASA ER-2 and a DC-8 took off from Jacksonville, Fla. at 2:05 p.m. EDT on an eight-hour mission to collect high-altitude information on Tropical Storm Chantal. NASA scientists also hope to fly five Aerosonde UAVs at the boundary layer of an active hurricane before the experiment ends September 24.
Northrop Grumman is developing a multispectral sensor payload for a low-flying unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that will be capable of detecting mines, fortifications, or other obstacles in littoral areas prior to amphibious landings. The Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis (COBRA) system will image objects in six different wavelengths, then map those pictures on top of each other and perform algorithm manipulations of the data until mines "pop out," according to Senior Program Man-ager Dave Gilbert.
NASA has awarded 11 new contracts, totaling approximately $29 million over three years, for the development of innovative remote sensing technology under the space agency's Instrument Incubator Program (IIP). IIP's goal is to invest in new technologies that will lead to smaller, less expensive, more efficient flight instruments.
