By funding the troubled V-22 program despite its many deficiencies and problems, the Pentagon is illustrating what's wrong with its acquisition process, a defense policy analyst said May 11. "The V-22 is a prime example of a failed acquisition system," said Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, a public policy think-tank in Washington, D.C. Eland described the defense industry as "socialist," with government-owned facilities and programs that continue to be driven by politics.
Britain's Tornado strike-reconnaissance aircraft SR(A) 417 mid-life upgrade program (MLU) has achieved full operational clearance after a prolonged test and development program. The program was carried out by the Ministry of Defence's Evaluation&Research Agency (DERA), the Royal Air Force Strike Attack Operational Evaluation Unit and contractor BAE Systems.
'IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE':The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle community is making progress in navigating its way through the channels of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) towards establishment of flight certification rules. The growing presence of UAVs has forced the FAA to figure out how the aircraft fit with Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs). At a May 7 meeting attended by representatives from interested parties from the UAV establishment, including the U.S. Air Force and U.S.
BOEING'S first C-17 Globemaster III for the United Kingdom Royal Air Force will depart for its U.K. base, Brize Norton, on May 23, the Boeing Co. announced. The U.K. is leasing four C-17s.
BMD DEBATE: President George W. Bush's May 1 speech on ballistic missile defense (BMD) seems to contain a serious contradiction, says Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Carl Levin (Mich.). In one part of his speech, Bush commits the U.S. to deploy missile defenses when ready. In another part, Bush promises not to present U.S. allies with unilateral decisions already made. "How can both statements be true?" Levin asks. The senator says he hopes Bush hasn't made and won't make a decision to deploy a national missile defense system before consulting with U.S.
STORING HYDROGEN: Nanotechnology will allow future aerospace and ground vehicles to take advantage of hydrogen energy, says Bob Walker, chairman and CEO of The Wexler Group and former chair of the House Science Committee. "I happen to believe that at some point in the relatively near future, we're going to decide that fossil fuels are not the best way to power the world, and we're going to move into a hydrogen economy." However, one of the major hurdles in moving to this economy will be hydrogen storage.
NASA has awarded its highest honor for quality and technical performance, the George M. Low Award, to three U.S. companies for outstanding commitment to innovative management, quality and customer service, the space agency announced May 10. Raytheon ITSS, of Lanham, Md., received the award for large business service, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin announced at the 16th NASA Continual Improvement and Reinvention Conference on Quality Management, held in Alexandria, Va.
(Editor's note: The following is excerpted testimony from the responses by Air Force Secretary-nominee James Roche to written questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee. He testified May 10.) Q: There has been an increasing dependence on standoff precision weaponry over the past decade. Operation Allied Force caused us to expend [a] sizeable portion of the inventories of some of these weapons. Do you think the Air Force has an executable, affordable plan to acquire the weaponry required to support the National Military Strategy?
In a report released May 10, the General Accounting Office (GAO) determined that the U.S. State Department is not fully tracking the outside activities of former Soviet Union weapons scientists doing U.S.-sponsored research. Through research centers in Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. sponsors peaceful research projects for scientists who previously worked on the Soviet Union's programs to create weapons of mass destruction.
Boeing's Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) X-32B landed at Patuxent River Naval Air Station May 11, where it will begin the final phase of test flights to validate its direct-lift short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) capability. The X-32B recently completed its first airborne transition from conventional to STOVL mode (DAILY, Apr. 5). Its predecessor, the X-32A, demonstrated both aircraft-carrier and conventional-takeoff-and-landing objectives before completing its test program Feb. 3.
NATO's European allies need to step up to the spending challenges posed by new demands for agile, technologically advanced military forces that can fight equally alongside U.S. forces while shouldering more of the burden, NATO chief George Robertson told European defense ministers.
Congress has completed work on a fiscal 2002 budget outline that increases defense spending by $14.5 billion over the previous year to $324.8 billion, the same as the Bush Administration requested. The resolution, which was the product of a House-Senate conference committee, received Senate approval by a 53-47 vote May 10 and passed the House by a 221-207 vote May 9.
PENDULUM SWING: While the Pentagon's new director of acquisition, logistics and technology acknowledges "There are some things we absolutely must protect," he says it's time to take a fresh look at export control regulations when it comes to commercial satellites. "I think we have swung the pendulum too far to the point we aren't going to do this at all," says Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge. But, the process warrants closer scrutiny, and Aldridge would like to separate things by "here's what we want to protect, everything else can go."
CAE of Toronto has sold an ERJ-170 engineering development simulator valued at around $3.3 million to support development of Embraer's new regional jet, the ERJ-170.
KE-ASAT TRANSFER: Senate Armed Services Committee member Bob Smith (R-N.H.) says he may try to transfer the kinetic energy anti-satellite (KE-ASAT) program from the Army to the Air Force if the Army doesn't increase its support for the program. Smith says he won't take any action until Army Secretary-nominee Thomas White has had a chance to review the matter. Smith has been a longtime critic of the Army's management of KE-ASAT. Among his complaints is that supporters of KE-ASAT haven't been returned to the program after being shifted away from it by the Army.
'03 OR BUST!: As anyone in Washington, D.C. knows, it takes a while for policies to work their way into budgets. While the Pentagon plans a supplemental to the fiscal year 2001 budget - to the tune of anywhere from $10 billion to $15 billion - there will also be a markup to the '02 budget just passed. The '01 budget, which expires this October, requires extra dollars for such things as the military healthcare program and aircraft flying hours (DAILY, April 4).
FAIR FEES: The government will start to take a look at a fair way of modernizing its bi-coastal launch sites without balancing the cost on the back of commercial users, pledges the Pentagon's new acquisition chief, "Pete" Aldridge. Currently, users are charged a launch fee of $500 million to $1.5 million to use facilities at Cape Canaveral, Fla., or the Vandenburg site in California. Many in industry complain the fees are too high and the government is making commercial users pay for modernization of the launch sites.
BUSH'S COMMITMENT: Walker believes that President Bush's campaign promise to defend America's military and commercial space assets will prove to be an important one. "One of the reasons why some of us who worked on that campaign thought that that was an important thing for the new Administration to commit itself to [was] because we believed that in order to build the infrastructure necessary to carry out that commitment, you have to do a lot of things, and you have to do them very well," says Walker.
ITT Industries' Aerospace/Communications Division is helping to broaden the company's interests in space, according to an executive of the unit. Bruce A. Stach, director of business development for space systems, said that while ITT has been known for expertise in relatively narrow areas such as payloads - the company is a leader in the design and production of equipment for navigation and remote sensing satellites - the goal now is to be responsible "for everything from the photon to the information and product processing on the ground."
Despite ongoing Department of Defense efforts to alert industry to the danger, commercial satellite systems remain undefended from the effects of nuclear explosions in space, according to specialists in nuclear threat deterrence. The radiation effects from even a single low-yield detonation in orbit could produce major disruptions in communications capability that could last for months.
The cost of insuring a commercial satellite launch is expected to increase due to several launch and in-orbit satellite failures in recent years, FAA officials said May 10 during a meeting of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. Committee member John Vinter, president and CEO of International Space Brokers, Inc., said increased insurance rates are related to several factors.
FLIR Systems Inc. plans to buy the Optronics Division of SaabTech Electronics AB, the company announced May 10. SaabTech's Optronics Division supplies thermal imaging subsystems for missile and other weapon systems to defense electronic firms throughout Europe. FLIR Systems Inc. said SaabTech has signed a letter of intent to sell the division to FLIR, which builds and sells thermal imaging and broadcast camera systems for public safety, defense, navigation and search and rescue uses.
MERCURY COMPUTER SYSTEMS of Chelmsford, Mass., a provider of real-time digital signal processing systems, announced its RACE++ systems will be used by Boeing Satellite Systems to test the Spaceway high-speed communications satellite network, due to be in service in 2003. Boeing is building the network for Hughes Network Systems. Spaceway will enable businesses and homes to have access to two-way desktop video conferencing, interactive distance learning and Internet services at faster speeds than those provided by current land-based systems, according to Mercury.
PANAMSAT's PAS-10 is scheduled to be launched at 6:11 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on May 14 aboard an International Launch Services Proton rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. PAS-10 is a Boeing 601HP satellite built by Boeing Satellite Systems, the third of three satellites the company has delivered under an order placed in 1999. Overall, PAS-10 is the 17th satellite that BSS has built for the PanAmSat fleet.
THE BOEING CO. has been awarded a $251.9 million, two-year contract to provide full logistics support of about 850 components for the Navy F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet. The contract contains options that could be worth up to $770 million, the company said. The contract is part of a program aimed at improving readiness and lowering support costs for the Super Hornet fighter.
