NASA's solar-powered flying wing, Helios, had a successful functional check flight over the weekend, an 18-hour marathon that took the aircraft to about 76,200 feet. The aircraft, which is being funded and managed under NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology project (ERAST), is slated to make a record-setting flight in August intended to take it to 100,000 feet.
GEN. JOHN P. JUMPER will be nominated as chief of staff for the U.S. Air Force, the White House announced July 16. Jumper is currently the commander of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va. He has served in the U.S. Air Force since 1966 and has commanded a fighter squadron, two fighter wings and a numbered air force.
Training and simulations company BVR Systems (1998) Ltd. has been awarded a $600,000 contract to upgrade the Israeli Air Force's AMOS flight simulator, the company announced July 16. The BVR-manufactured AMOS system, in use at the Israeli Flight Academy since 1992, includes a "Tzukit" aircraft flight simulator and flight simulation analysis using a computer-based statistical package.
The July 15 test of a missile defense kill vehicle over the Pacific Ocean could be the last test under the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization as it is currently structured. The next test, now being planned for fall, could come after a reorganization of BMDO to reflect the Bush Administration's new emphasis on the overall concept of missile defense, as opposed to the separate approaches of theater and national missile defense taken by the Clinton Administration.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $6,747,000 (not-to-exceed) firm-fixed-price contract modification to provide for Electronic Warfare Displays in support of the F-16D aircraft. This effort supports foreign military sales to Israel. At this time, $2,698,800 (FMS funds) have been obligated. This work is expected to be completed April 2004. Negotiations were completed June 2002. The Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F333657-99-C-2048-P00012).
Budget problems with the International Space Station will continue to dominate White House and congressional plans for NASA's future, officials said at a July 12 space policy discussion. NASA officials and White House and Capitol Hill aides said the station is taking longer to build - and costing more - than anybody in Washington would like. At the discussion, sponsored by Women in Aerospace, one Senate aide, who asked not to be named, said the station is "the 800-lb. gorilla" in NASA's future plans.
At least two members of the House Armed Services Committee are urging the Defense Department to consider coming up with a backup plan in case the V-22 Osprey doesn't work out.
SASC SEATS: Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who recently rejoined the Senate Armed Services Committee (DAILY, July 11), will sit on the strategic forces, readiness and emerging threats subcommittees. To give Democrats a majority on all subcommittees now that they control the Senate, the committee is also adding Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) to the airland forces panel, Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) to emerging threats, and Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) to seapower.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. has shipped the OrbView-4 high-resolution imaging satellite, which it developed and produced for its Orbital Imaging Corp. affiliate, to the mission launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The satellite will be launched in mid-August on a Taurus rocket, along with the QuikTOMS science satellite, which the company built for NASA. The QuikTOMS spacecraft was shipped to Vandenberg last week.
A long-range wide-body aircraft - similar to a modified Boeing 747, Airbus A380 or Boeing C-17 - could be armed with up to 40 cruise missiles to attack targets from outside the threat range of an adversary in a concept under study by the U.S. Air Force. Such a "long-range strike platform" (LRSP) has been added to a key planning document, the Toolbox, developed by the service's Future Concept Development office (XPXC), an Air Force official said in an interview July 12.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. has awarded EDO Corp. of New York City a $9.4 million contract for its AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) Vertical Ejection Launcher (AVEL), the company announced July 13. The work, which includes $1.4 million for advance material previously authorized by Lockheed, will be produced at EDO's Marine and Aircraft Systems facility in North Amityville, N.Y.
PLACING BLAME: If an intercontinental ballistic missile hits a large U.S. city causing a horrific loss of life, opponents of missile defense will have "blood on their hands," says Sven Kraemer, a member of the National Security Council during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations. Kraemer, who appeared at a Washington conference sponsored by the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, says, "the danger truly is that the [missile] defense system will come too late." If a missile should strike U.S.
DAB ON A DIET: Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics E.C. "Pete" Aldridge says the Defense Department is undertaking many efforts to streamline its weapons acquisition process. One such effort involves adding the service secretaries to the major acquisition decision review group, the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB), while reducing the board's overall membership. "This will help streamline [DOD's] internal decision process by focusing senior leadership attention at the top levels and reducing decision delay," Aldridge says.
Space Systems/Loral, the satellite manufacturing unit of Loral Space&Communications, will build two new satellites to provide leased transponder and network communications to the Spanish Ministry of Defense and other government users in Spain, the United States and elsewhere. Space Systems/Loral will build SpainSat for HISDESAT, S.A., a new company formed to provide leased satellite services, the company announced July 13. SpainSat will primarily provide dedicated communications for the Spanish Ministry of Defense.
CARRIED AWAY: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark thinks that the transformational potential of aircraft carriers has to do not so much with the carriers themselves, but with the transformed systems they will carry, which "will allow us to take a fight to the enemy. When I see the future, whether it's 20 years out there [or further], I see unmanned aviation operating from our decks, and what will transform is what we put into these platforms." Clark also believes that larger deck carriers are here to stay.
GOING IT ALONE: The Bush Administration is opting for potentially dangerous unilateral action on international issues like missile defense and nuclear non-proliferation, says the Council for a Livable World, an arms control organization. "The Administration's list of unilateral steps gets longer: They have backed out of the Kyoto Global Warming agreement, refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, cut nuclear non-proliferation funding, opposed the U.N.
Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Marie Luton said the company will create an independent inquiry board to investigate the July 12 Ariane 5 launch that left two satellites in a low orbit. A list of board members is to be announced July 16 and the board's first report is expected August 1, Luton said July 13 at press conference at the Kourou launch site in French Guiana.
The Bush Administration's proposed multi-layered approach to missile defense is the most effective means of countering countermeasures, according to Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish. The multi-layered approach will use land-, sea-, air-, and eventually, space-based systems to target ballistic missiles in the boost, midcourse, or terminal phase of their flight.
The U.S. Air Force has formed a "tiger team" to recommend what the service's future role should be in NASA's experimental reusable launch vehicle (RLV) programs, according to an Air Force official. The study is looking at whether any of NASA's RLV X-programs "should be included as part of a long range Air Force roadmap for a responsive launch capability," the official wrote in response to written questions from The DAILY.
PRECISE GYROS: By manipulating ultra-cold liquid helium-3 in a hollow container shaped like a doughnut, NASA-funded scientists at the University of California at Berkeley produced a whistling sound that got louder or quieter depending on the orientation relative to the North Pole and Earth's rotation. "The successful demonstration of this effect may enable scientists to measure extremely slight increases or decreases in the rotation of objects, including Earth," says Richard Packard, the U.C. Berkeley professor who led the research team.
President Bush intends to nominate Michael P. Socarras to be general counsel of the Department of the Air Force, the White House announced July 12. Socarras is currently an attorney with Greenberg Traurig, LLP, and was previously a partner with Shook, Hardy and Bacon in Kansas City, Mo., from 1996-2000. He was an associate with Covington and Burling from 1989 to 1996. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and has a J.D. from Yale Law School.
FUTURE THREATS: Future threats to U.S. national security won't come just from conventional weapons, says Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "Rogue nations" realized after the Gulf War they could not defeat Western forces in a conventional war, Rumsfeld says. As a result, their plans now involve obtaining less-costly weapons like cruise and ballistic missiles as well as developing terrorism and cyber attack capabilities rather than purchasing ships, planes, tanks and guns.
Although it recently put the Space Shuttle Columbia through a lengthy upgrade regimen, NASA is now considering parking the oldest member of the shuttle fleet to save money. "What we're looking at is not really mothballing, we're looking more at standing down Colubmia," NASA spokesperson Kirsten Larson said. "It's questionable whether it would be cost effective to keep Columbia fully operational." NASA is considering "parking it, putting it in a condition where it would easily and quickly be returned to flight," she said.
WHAT ABOUT THEM?: Even if the U.S. completely revises the Export Administration Act to prevent dual-use technologies from falling into the wrong hands, it won't help unless European and Asian do the same, according to Rep. Henry Hyde, (R-Ill.). Hyde made his comments last week during a hearing before the House International Relations Committee. "The current multilateral control arrangements have been unable to prevent dangerous technologies from falling into the hands of rogue states and others who would threaten international peace and stability," according to Hyde.
A former missile defense program director says the Bush Administration is not implementing important missile defense technologies fast enough out of fear they will violate provisions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
