The Department of Defense's approach to building a family of systems to avoid "friendly fire" lacks a well-defined blueprint, according to a new report from the General Accounting Office. Without such a blueprint - called an enterprise architecture - the effort to equip military aircraft, surface vehicles, air traffic control stations and weapon systems with equipment to discern friend from foe could run into trouble, the GAO concluded.
AEROASTRO INC., of Herndon, Va., and Boston, and its partner, Astronautic Technology of Malaysia, have passed the first program milestone in the development of the Small Payload ORbit Transfer (SPORT) vehicle. The companies presented a SPORT program review to their executives and to Mazlan Othman, director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and were given authority to proceed to the program's next phase. A key goal of the SPORT program is to provide affordable low-earth orbit (LEO) space access for small satellites to new and emerging users of space.
LOCKHEED MARTIN SPACE SYSTEMS CO. of Denver, Colo., reports that every facility capable of launching a Lockheed Martin vehicle is currently occupied and preparing to do so, including sites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center, Fla.; Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; Kodiak Island, Alaska; and Kwajalein Island in the Pacific. "Lockheed Martin presently has 12 vehicles processing for launch in the coming months," company executive vice president Albert E. Smith said.
PACIFIC AEROSPACE&ELECTRONICS, INC., of Wenatchee, Wash., will provide miniaturized missile and radar interconnect components to BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin under contracts it announced June 25. The orders, worth a combined $2 million, are expected to ship this year and are intended for military radar and weapon systems programs, the company said.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION plans to ask Congress this week to fund the procurement of 13 F-22s in fiscal 2002, up from 10 Raptors in FY '01, a congressional aide told The DAILY June 26. Also for FY '02, the Administration will seek approval to buy 15 C-17s, up from 12 in FY '01, and 60 Apache Longbow helicopters, up from 52.
President Bush intends to nominate John H. Marburger III to be director of the Office of Science and Technology, the White House announced June 25. Marburger is currently director of the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is on a leave of absence from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he served as president and professor from 1980 to 1994, and as a professor of physics and electrical engineering from 1994 to 1997.
Titan Corp., of San Diego, will buy Datron Systems, a Vista, Calif.-based company that provides radio- and satellite-based communications systems and broadband communications products for government and commercial markets. The purchase is expected to close by the end of the third quarter, pending review, Titan announced June 25. Titan announced it will acquire Datron for $16 per share, or $51.2 million in Titan common stock.
Russian military forces plan to build new security satellites and extend their design lifetime up to 10 years, according to Col. Gen. Anatoly Perminov, commander-in-chief of the Space Troops. Perminov spoke to journalists during a visit to St. Petersburg. The visit to Russia's northern capital was seen as a sign of the special attention the country's new military leadership is paying to the development of a domestically built national security satellite constellation.
Earth's tropics are hotter than its polar regions, but that doesn't seem to be the case on Jupiter's moon Io, according to new data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. A new map of Io's nighttime surface temperatures from Galileo shows that aside from hot spots at volcanic sites, night temperatures on Io seem to be about the same near the equator as near the poles - even though, as on Earth, the equator gets more sunshine to heat the surface.
CACI International Inc., of Arlington, Va., has been awarded a $20 million subcontract by Anteon Corp., of Fairfax, Va., to provide logistics and engineering support to the Navy's fleet of combat ships. Under the contract, CACI will support Aegis-class cruisers, guided missile frigates and all surface combat destroyers from the time they are introduced into the fleet until they are retired.
NASA's Joint Airlock, six years in the making, is slated to be launched to the International Space Station next month, allowing the station crew to make spacewalks even when a shuttle isn't there. The 13,300 lb. airlock, to be launched July 12 on shuttle mission STS-104, is divided into two parts: an equipment lock, which will function as sort of a "locker room" where astronauts can put on space suits, and the crew lock, which they will use to get into space.
The U.S. Air Force this year will dispose of an aging Global Positioning System satellite that is no longer providing reliable navigation signals. The procedure, routinely followed in such cases, calls for boosting the satellite to an orbit some 200-300 nautical miles higher than its 11,000-n.m. orbit, according to Col. Jack Perroni, vice commander of Air Force Space Command's 50th Space Wing here.
The market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) generated $2.4 billion in 2000 and could reach $5.6 billion by 2007, according to an analysis by Frost&Sullivan, a marketing consulting firm. "UAVs are set to explode in the commercial market once airspace regulations are defined and published," said Frost&Sullivan industry analyst Quinton Long. "Currently, the complexity of controlling airspace shared by both manned and unmanned systems presents a thorny barrier to the civilian UAV market segment."
When a helicopter's rotor stops in mid-flight, it often is a prelude to disaster. But an experimental aircraft being developed jointly by Boeing and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is scheduled to do exactly that next year. The Dragonfly will be a unique hybrid aircraft - a helicopter capable of stopping its blades in midair to allow fixed-wing flight.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said June 26 he is considering proposing an amendment to the fiscal 2001 supplemental appropriations bill to provide a "significant" amount of additional defense spending. McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The DAILY that his staff is working on the details of a potential amendment, which would be added to a bill that has $6.5 billion in supplemental spending, including $5.5 billion for defense.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Missiles&Fire Control of Dallas and Diehl GmbH of Germany have added MBDA of France to their Euro Rocket System GmbH joint venture. The joint venture sells Multiple Launch Rocket Systems to European markets.
A ruling last week by a World Trade Organization panel in Geneva against U.S. tax provisions giving U.S. exporters a tax break will undoubtedly be appealed and ultimately resolved after another protracted round of EU/U.S. trade talks, according to several analysts and observers. As it stands, the ruling could hurt U.S. companies' foreign military and commercial aircraft sales. The WTO ruled late last week that provisions in the U.S. tax code that exempt a company's overseas revenues from federal income taxes amount to a federal subsidy.
Members of the House Science Committee's subcommittee on space and aeronautics heard testimony June 26 praising "space tourist" Dennis Tito for his actions in furthering the cause of space tourism and chided NASA for showing reluctance to consider the idea seriously.
Defense secretary Geoff Hoon said the United Kingdom government remains committed to buying two new British aircraft carriers, which are widely seen as the core of future U.K. defense policies. Recent reports of Royal Navy operational deficiencies resulting from defense cutbacks (DAILY, June 12) indicated the planned procurement of the carriers and their associated combat aircraft could be threatened, but Hoon dismissed those concerns in a Parliamentary statement last week.
Three U.S. Navy Trident II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missiles were successfully launched in a test operation from the submarine U.S.S. Louisiana, missile builder Lockheed Martin announced June 26. The missiles represented the 92nd, 93rd and 94th consecutive tests of the Trident II D5 submarine-launched missile, according to Lockheed Martin. They are built by its Missiles and Space Operations division.
The U.S. Air Force plans to start buying a "silver bullet" force next year of 100 to 150 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD) units, defense officials said June 26. Production will take place over three years, starting in March, said MALD program manager Mark Levin, who is based at the Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Each unit will cost roughly $200,000. Northrop Grumman Ryan Aeronautical Center is expected to be the sole supplier of the decoys.
The Navy is on a "glide path" to a 240-ship fleet - and that won't be enough, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England told members of the American Shipbuilding Association on June 26. England said the Quadrennial Defense Review and ongoing Pentagon strategy reviews haven't concluded how many ships the Navy will need, he said at seapower conference in Washington. "I don't know what the right number is, but I'm quite confident it's not 240 ships," England said.
Alcatel Space has selected Arianespace to launch France's new Syracuse III military communications satellite, Arianespace announced. Alcatel Space is the program's prime contractor and signed the deal on behalf of the French defense procurement agency. The Syracuse III will be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket in the fourth quarter of 2003 from the Guiana Space Center, Europe's spaceport, located in Kourou, French Guiana.
Raytheon Electronic Systems, El Segundo, Calif., is being awarded a $5,809,196 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to perform a demonstration of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) System in a dedicated pod on an F-14 aircraft. Work will be performed in Indianapolis, Ind., and is expected to be completed by December 2002. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under a broad agency announcement with four proposals solicited and four offers received.
While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld examines an alternative to the traditional two major-theater-war (MTW) scenario as the guiding principle for U.S. defense strategy (DAILY, Jun. 22), defense analysts are left pondering what that alternative could and should be. Michelle Flournoy, senior advisor for International Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was reluctant to speculate on exactly what Rumsfeld might have in mind, although she said "it's clear that they're going to keep some sort of multi-theater capability.
