Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
The Defense Department has asked Congress for the right to reprogram an additional $1.2 billion in fiscal 2007 funds to build 2,650 more Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new reprogramming, added to $443 million in U.S. Marine Corps procurement money that was already being shifted to MRAP, brings the total FY '07 reprogramming for the vehicles to nearly $1.6 billion.
The Defense Department is accepting risk in its attempt to maximize production of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle and ship more vehicles into theater as quickly as possible, according to John Young, director of defense research and engineering and head of the MRAP Task Force. "The program is not being handled in a business-as-usual fashion," Young said at the Pentagon July 18. The production acceleration means DOD will be eschewing some documentation and testing requirements for the sake of expediency, he said.
The Orbital Express mission began its end-of-life maneuver late in the evening of July 16 and both spacecraft should be fully decommissioned by the end of the week, according to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spokeswoman Jan Walker. The decommissioning will take place after one final maneuver in which Boeing's ASTRO will undock and travel much farther away from Ball Aerospace's NextSat than ever before (300 kilometers), then reapproach it to test the acuity of its visual sensors at long ranges (DAILY, July 11).
