The focus of missile defense is moving away from a requirement-based system and toward an evolutionary capability-based development, according to U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Missile defense must be prepared for new threats that can circumvent the system, Kadish warned, and only a flexible development path will be able to match such threats.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) confirmed Aug. 22 that he won't sign off on the Bush Administration's request for $18.4 billion in additional defense spending for fiscal 2002, saying there isn't enough money to pay for it.
SPACEHAB, INC., of Washington, D.C., announced that its Johnson Engineering subsidiary sold its filter housing machining operations to Clear Lake Industries Holdings LLC, a company recently formed by a retired Spacehab senior vice president. "Organized to provide JE [Johnson Engineering] with rapid access to specialized machining capabilities, the operating unit has used its excess capacity to develop and market filter housings for the petrochemical and biotechnology industries," said Spacehab President and CEO Michael E. Kearney.
TECSTAR INC., of City of Industry, Calif., announced its TEC 3I solar cell has been selected to power the latest Martian spacecraft and rovers being developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Tecstar and JPL will design, build and test a family of solar panels to power a spacecraft carrying the Mars Exploration Rovers and then power the rovers themselves on the surface itself for up to 100 meters per Martian day.
The solar-powered, remotely piloted Pathfinder aircraft, a precursor to the sun-powered Helios flying wing that set an altitude record of 96,500 feet earlier this month, is slated to fly again next summer on an agricultural remote sensing mission over the Hawaiian islands.
SPECTRUM ASTRO of Gilbert, Ariz., has shipped the Coriolis spacecraft to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington for final testing and integration of the WindSat payload, which is a polar metric microwave radiometer experiment to passively measure ocean surface wind vector. The spacecraft will also carry a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Solar Mass Ejection Imager to monitor solar activity, with the goal of more accurately predicting geomagnetic disturbances to orbiting satellites.
MEMC ELECTRONIC MATERIALS, INC., of St. Peters, Mo., has provided several hundred silicon wafers for NASA's Genesis spacecraft, which was launched Aug. 8 on a mission to collect samples of the solar wind and bring them back to Earth. It will do this by unfurling collector arrays using MEMC wafers. The high-velocity ions given off by the sun will embed themselves into the wafers.
At the first meeting of NASA's International Space Station (ISS) Management and Cost Evaluation (IMCE) team, committee chairman Tom Young expressed bewilderment over the management philosophy governing the early days of station development, which he said created a "100 percent" probability of cost overruns.
THE SPACE FOUNDATION, of Colorado Springs, Colo., which promotes the commercial, defense and civil use of space, announced that Kaga Electronics and Space Age, America, have signed on as corporate partners. "Both Space Age, America and Kaga Electronics are committed to promoting awareness of space technology among consumers and on an international basis, so we welcome the opportunity to work closely with these companies," said Elliot G. Pulham, Space Foundation president and CEO.
Over the past seven years, BAE Systems North America has quietly grown into one of the top 10 defense electronics, information technology, and systems engineering firms in the United States serving U.S military needs. The company has done so by adding value to its product line through the acquisition of several smaller businesses, managing its manufacturing processes more efficiently, and divesting non-core functions.
Numbers of Weapons Delivered by Major Suppliers to Developing Nations The Congressional Research Service said in a recent report, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993-2000," that the United States again is the world's top arms exporter, followed by Russia and France (DAILY, Aug. 21). The table below shows the numbers of weapons delivered by major suppliers to developing nations.
Brahmos, an anti-ship missile jointly developed by Russia and India, was displayed at the recent Moscow air show. After the cruise missile's first flight test at Orissa, India, on June 12, some details were disclosed. Reportedly, parts for the rocket were made in Russia and assembled in India. The company has manufacturing lines both in Russia and India.
Boeing Satellite Systems is transferring work on 12 global positioning system satellites from its Seal Beach, Calif., plant to its 1 million sq. ft. factory at El Segundo, Calif., which will be expanded by nearly a third to accommodate the additional work. The satellite company, which is part of the Boeing Co., announced the actions Aug. 20.
The U.S. must be prepared to face enemies with increasingly sophisticated long-range ballistic missiles, according to government analysts. North Korea, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and China are all making important advances in their long-range missile capabilities, said the analysts, speaking here Aug. 21 at the Fourth Annual Space and Missile Defense Conference.
Sandra L. Pack is President Bush's choice to be Assistant Secretary of the Army for Finan-cial Management, the White House said Aug. 20. She is the treasurer of the Bush-Cheney Compliance Committee and served as director of the treasury for Bush-Cheney 2000. Earlier, she was a treasury official on the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole and Phil Gramm.
The U.S. Air Force announced Aug. 20 that the contract for the Advanced Targeting Pod competition has been awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Sniper XR system. The 7-year contract, potentially worth about $843 million, calls for production of up to 522 pods and associated equipment, spare parts and support for the Air Force and Air National Guard's F-16 aircraft. Aircraft to be fitted with Sniper XR under the ATP program include the Air Force's F-16CJ block 50 aircraft and the Air National Guard's F-16 block 30 aircraft.
Peter Rodman, the new assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, downplayed concerns Aug. 21 that the construction of a U.S. missile shield would spark a global arms buildup, saying that international reaction is "much more up in the air or uncertain or manageable" than some people assert. "What the Chinese do, what the Russians do, what the Indians do, I'm sure they don't know what they're going to do yet," since they are waiting to see what the U.S. does, Rodman said.
SPACE SYSTEMS/LORAL, a subsidiary of Loral Space&Communications, will design and build MBSAT for the Mobile Broadcasting Corp. of Japan. The satellite will deliver digital multimedia information services, such as CD-quality audio, MPEG-4 video and data to mobile users in Japan. On-orbit deliver of the spacecraft is scheduled for the fourth quarter 2003, with service expected to begin in early 2004. The satellite has a 12-year expected life.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has given armed services budgeters fiscal guidance on preparing program objective memoranda for their Five Year Defense Plan. The FY 2003 defense budget, which is due this fall, will be the first to reflect significantly the results of the controversial strategic reviews Rumsfeld ordered. Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, acknowledged that the Defense Policy Guidance is less detailed than previous guidances and that it is budget-driven.
August 15, 2001 Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $37,627,569 ceiling-priced modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-99-C-1014) to restructure the Joint Standoff Weapon, full rate production, Lot 2 delivery schedule. Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to be completed in August 2003. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.
NASA is exercising an option under a 1996 contract with the Boeing Co., Huntington Beach, CA, for a Delta II vehicle to launch the ESSP 3/CloudSat mission on April 30, 2004. NASA's total launch services budget for the ESSP 3/CloudSat mission is valued at approximately $60 million.
RAF C-17s DEPLOY-Two of the British Royal Air Force's four recently delivered Boeing C-17 heavy-lift transports, although not scheduled for full service entry until later this year, made their first operational flights on Saturday. They were tasked with carrying RAF helicopters, military equipment and personnel from their Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire, to Skopje, in Macedonia, in support of NATO's Operation Bessemer weapons collection mission. More than 200 British parachute troops were aboard the C-17s.
[Editor's note: This story appears today because, due to a technical problem, it was omitted from some editions of The Daily published Aug.20.] Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control of Orlando, Fla., delivered its first Hawkeye eXtended Range (XR) Target Sight System to Bell Helicopter, according to the company. The Hawkeye TSS will be installed on an AH-1Z Cobra helicopter in early 2002.
