NORAD and the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command are working closely on the preliminary stages of a program to develop a stratospheric airship that could fly at 70,000 feet for a year with a two-ton payload. The technical challenges are significant and no funding has been allocated, but meetings over the last year have helped confirm the potential value of such a vehicle, according to Air Force Col. Charles Lambert, chief of requirements and programs at North American Aerospace Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Gen. John P. Jumper, the Bush Administration's choice to be chief of staff of the Air Force, said the Air Force needs the F-22 Raptor fighter to help stave off the aging of its fleet. "... In terms of recapitalization, we need your help," Jumper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee at his nomination hearing Aug. 1. Air Force aircraft now "have an average age of 22 years. If we are able to procure everything that's on the books now in full quantity, in 15 years the average age of our aircraft will be 30 years of age."
The Raytheon Co. announced July 31 it will be the prime contractor for an engineering team competing to design and develop a wireless tactical radio system for the U.S. military. The system will be compatible with the military's Joint Tactical Radio System, a mobile, wireless radio system capable of being modified according to the battlefield needs of multiple military units, depending on their mission.
NASA has named an independent task force to review the International Space Station program, the space agency announced July 31. The ISS Management and Cost Evaluation Task Force, which will help NASA address the ISS's cost growth, is chaired by Thomas Young, a former president at Martin Marietta Corp. Young recently led a team that reviewed NASA's Mars exploration program.
(Editor's note: This is an excerpt from a July 30 press conference at the American Embassy in Canberra, Australia, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, U.S. Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Australian Defense Minister Peter Reith, and Australian Navy Adm. Chris Barrie.)
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., has received an H model B-52 Stratofortress for use as an air launch aircraft for NASA flight research and advanced technology demonstrations. The U.S. Air Force's 23rd Bomb Squadron, 5th Bombardment Wing (Air Combat Command) of Minot Air Force Base, N.D., provided the B-52H. An Air Force crew flew the aircraft to Dryden.
During a July 31 confirmation hearing, the Bush Administration's nominee for assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) stopped short of advocating putting offensive weapons in space, although he didn't rule out the possibility of putting defensive systems on some satellites. If confirmed, John P. Stenbit will assume what has traditionally been the lead role in the Department of Defense for military space.
The Air Force should consider doubling the money it spends on science and technology (S&T), a report from a National Research Council military review panel says. "The Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Air Force should continue to increase the Air Force investment in [S&T] to reach one-and-a-half to two times its current (FY01) level," the report says.
President Bush intends to nominate Read Van de Water to be assistant secretary of transportation for aviation and international affairs, the White House announced July 30. Van de Water is the founder of Carson King Consulting, an employment consulting and placement service she has managed since 2000. From 1997 to 1999, she was legislative counsel for international trade and investment with the Business Roundtable, and from 1991 to 1997 served as legislative counsel and director of government affairs for Northwest Airlines.
The House Armed Services research and development subcommittee July 31 largely approved the Bush Administration's proposal for an expanded ballistic missile defense program in fiscal 2002 but trimmed $135 million from the requested $3 billion increase. The reductions, which subcommittee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) described as "programmatic scrubs" because they aren't significant policy changes, include a $10 million cut to the Airborne Laser, delaying the acquisition of optical equipment that isn't needed right away.
BOEING CO. subsidiary McDonnell Douglas received contracts worth $1.5 billion contracts to overhaul the cockpits of C-130H Hercules transports on July 30. The work is part of a $4.9 billion program first awarded to Boeing in June (DAILY, June 6).
An treaty compliance group completed an initial examination of whether proposed missile defense testing would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and found some planned activities that may be in conflict with it, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said at a press briefing on July 31.
The launch of NASA's Genesis spacecraft, which will collect samples of the solar wind, was delayed to Aug. 1 at the earliest, NASA announced July 31. Genesis was originally scheduled to launch on July 30, but NASA delayed it to allow time for checking power supply components on the spacecraft. The spacecraft has two power supply components, one in each of its startrackers. They are similar to components that recently failed during a simulated space radiation environment test that was unrelated to the Genesis program.
The Brazilian government will release a Request for Proposal (RFP) Aug. 1 for its estimated $700 million fighter procurement program, according to the Brazilian business newspaper, Gazeta Mercantil. Companies were required to submit their letters of interest by July 25. While there were up to nine companies that attended an initial meeting at the Aeronautics Ministry in early July, the strongest competitors are considered to be Dassault's Mirage, Lockheed Martin's F-16, and Saab-BAE Systems' Gripen.
Daniel Burnham, Raytheon's chairman and CEO, faced a difficult challenge after being appointed to his position in July 1998. How do you integrate Raytheon's many legacy companies acquired in past years, some of which were bitter competitors, into a cohesive whole to create product value for the customer? For Burnham, the answer was implementing the Six Sigma style of management. "That's the way we approached it," said Don Ronchi, vice-president of Raytheon's Six Sigma program and the company's "chief learning officer."
Construction underway at Fort Greely, Alaska, doesn't violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treat, even though a defense official has referred to it as an "initial deployment facility," Department of Defense Comptroller Dov Zakheim told members of a Senate Appropriations Committee panel on July 31. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) complained that funds appropriated for the construction of military facilities are instead being used to construct an "initial deployment facility" at Fort Greely.
Following its successful deployment to Australia earlier this year, the Air Force is ramping up production of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) while developing plans to beef up its sensors and bring it closer to "parity" with manned platforms such as the U-2 spy plane. At a UAV demonstration July 30 (DAILY, July 31), Brig. Gen. Henry Obering said the Air Force plans to increase the production rate from the current two aircraft per year to six per year by 2004.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) agreed late July 30 to withdraw a proposal on the House floor to cut funding for the International Space Station's Crew Return Vehicle by $150 million. Tauscher wanted to move the money to a clean-water program at the Environmental Protection Agency (DAILY, July 31). But she withdrew her amendment to the fiscal 2002 VA-HUD-NASA appropriations bill because she received assurances that House appropriators would try to get more money for the clean-water program when the bill goes to a House-Senate conference committee.
Aerospace and defense contractor Elbit Systems Ltd. of Haifa, Israel, has acquired a controlling interest in the Brazilian electronics company Aeroelectronica-Industria de Componentes Avionicos S.A. (AEL), the company announced July 30. AEL will serve as a center for production and logistics support for advanced defense electronics, according to Elbit Systems. It will have an integral role in the modernization program of the Brazilian air force's F-5 aircraft, which was recently awarded to Embraer and Elbit Systems.
An international research satellite that will conduct studies of the sun-Earth relationship was launched July 31 by Russia's Space Troops from the Plesetsk launch center. The 5,300-pound Coronas-F is carrying about 900 pounds of international scientific instruments to conduct solar physics experiments and study sun-Earth interactions. Ukraine's Yuzhnoe design bureau built the satellite, which is based on the Automated Universal Orbital Station (AUOS) satellite bus that has been used on research missions since 1976.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Boeing Co., St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $6,661,000 modification to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive-fee contract (N00019-97-C-0136) for incorporation of five engineering change proposals into 20 F/A-18E/F LRIP II aircraft. A number of these five engineering change proposals will also be incorporated into the 30 F/A-18E/F LRIP III aircraft. Work will be performed in Lemoore, Calif. (80%); St. Louis, Mo. (15%); and Cecil Field, Fla. (5%), and is expected to be completed in June 2003.
The House Financial Services Committee has approved a three-year reauthorization of the Defense Production Act, which expires Sept. 30. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the domestic monetary policy subcommittee, said after the voice vote July 25 that he hopes for "swift consideration" of the bill on the House floor.
An upcoming decision to move the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) program to the low rate initial production phase may be delayed by a July 27 incident, when a warhead on one of the missiles failed to detonate during a test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The test, the fourth in a series of 10 developmental tests, was to have been the third demonstration of the stealthy cruise missile's warhead. The first two tests, also at White Sands, were successful.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Littleton, Colo., is being awarded a $21,000,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide for research and development for the XSS-11 Experimental Satellite System Microsatellite Program. This effort includes design, development, fabrication, integration, test, delivery and support for demonstration of a space-qualifiable 100 kilogram microsatellite that can perform autonomous on-orbit operations. At this time, $1,500,000 of the funds have been obligated. Solicitation was requested using the Electronic Posting System; five proposals were received.
A California congresswoman has introduced an amendment to a fiscal 2002 appropriations bill that would shift $150 million from NASA's human space flight account to a clean water program at the Environmental Protection Agency. Although the amendment doesn't specify which program would be cut, aides to the measure's sponsor, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), told The DAILY that the money is intended to come from the Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) for the International Space Station. The cut would leave the bill's CRV funding at $125 million.
