More U.S. defense program cuts and cancellations are expected under already enacted federal deficit reduction efforts, according to fresh comments Sept. 20 by the top civilian and military officials at the Pentagon. But if Congress or the White House seek or allow additional cuts to future defense budgets beyond those already expected, then the U.S. military will certainly hollow out, they say.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley acknowledges that the Air Force will “need to accept greater risk in some areas” of its missions as Washington debates how to rein in the national debt. Today, the U.S. spends about 4.7% of its gross domestic product on defense; this amounts to about 19% of the overall budget. Donley also adds that as the force shrinks, the U.S. must take care to avoid a “hollow force” of undertrained personnel or poor weapon systems. “We have to make some tough choices about the core tenets of our national security strategy.”
Efforts to develop self-protection devices for spacecraft are gaining steam, with at least one classified satellite slated to take on an Air Force-developed payload designed to alert of potential threats.
HOUSTON — The greatest challenge facing NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which marked its 50th anniversary on Sept. 19, is the retention of the installation’s human spaceflight expertise in the face of falling budgets and significant personnel losses, Director Mike Coats says.
NEW RIDE: Despite looming budget cuts, U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley says the service must still address its core requirements, including a replacement for Air Force One, as well as new tankers and trainers. Though the Air Force One replacement is not an immediate need, Donley says planners “need to be mindful” of what is outside the future-years defense plan. A plan for replacing the two Air Force VC-25s is likely to take shape in the “late teens,” he told reporters during a roundtable following his Sept.
The competition for the U.S. Navy’s Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) is zeroing in on the development of the transmit/receive (T/R) modules and related components. This work is key in making the active, electronically scanned array (AESA) AMDR work with the fidelity and effectiveness the Navy wants. Contractors are working now to develop the most powerful, long-lasting and rapidly operating modules possible to protect ships and perform ballistic missile defense (BMD) missions simultaneously.
The U.S. Air Force is putting the F-22 back to work as of Sept. 21 with a new plan for making sure pilots have enough oxygen, Capitol Hill was told early Sept. 19. The Raptor fleet has been grounded since May 3 because pilots were showing symptoms of hypoxia.
A potential rebalancing of the U.S. Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) spending plans could follow in the footsteps of the service’s earlier work to craft a “family of systems” concept for long-range strike, according to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley. “As the overall budget comes down, we will have to get a little bit more discriminating about how we set priorities for ISR development,” he tells Aviation Week.
The Pentagon’s decision to scrap the F-35 alternative engine program is based on out-of-date information, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) tells the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “An up-to-date, comprehensive analysis that takes into consideration both the total costs and benefits during the entire life-cycle of both engines would be an important tool for making investment decisions,” wrote Michael Sullivan, GAO’s director of acquisition and sourcing management.
ARMY The Boeing Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded a $60,000,000 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the modification of an existing contract to improve reliability, maintainability, and sustainability of the AH-64 aircraft. The work will be performed in Mesa, with an estimated completion date of March 15, 2012. The bid was solicited through the Internet, with one bid received. The Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, Fort Eustis, Va., is the contracting activity (W911W6-07-D-0002). NAVY
Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter program has achieved one of five major milestones linked to the company’s ability to earn financial reward in 2011 with the recent completion of static structural testing. The goal was achieved after completion of static testing on the F-35C; earlier work was done on the A and B versions, says Tom Burbage, executive vice president for F-35 integration. This is arguably the least complex of the five goals for 2011, but it is a step in the right direction after the program struggled in 2010.
NEW BLOOD: European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst of Germany will spend six months aboard the International Space Station, following a May 2014 liftoff aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The 35-year-old geophysicist will become the sixth European to carry out a long-duration spaceflight, Thomas Reiter, ESA’s director for human spaceflight and operations, announced Sept. 18. Gerst will be a flight engineer during Expeditions 40-41. He will launch with Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA’s Reid Wiseman from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The U.S. Air Force plans to anchor a forthcoming government-wide set of certification criteria for companies wishing to compete for launch work in NASA’s existing framework. But the service says that it, NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) each will retain the right to “tailor” the application of this framework depending on unique mission requirements.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Corp., King of Prussia, Pa., is being awarded a $791,000,000 maximum firm-price-incentive-fee, firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee, cost-reimbursable contract to provide a set of more than 70 reusable, common services to Air Force combat support automated information systems based on integration of commercial-off-the-shelf, free and open source software, and government-off-the-shelf software components. ESC/HIIK, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., is the contracting activity (FA8771-11-D-1006).
There is some “flexibility” in how long the U.S. Air Force can continue to operate its aging T-38C fast-jet trainers before introducing a replacement, says Gen. Edward Rice, who oversees the Air Education and Training Command. At issue as the service considers when to introduce a so-called T-X into the fleet is how much it can afford to pay for mounting maintenance costs.
HOUSTON — Hours before three International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers descended safely to Earth aboard their Soyuz 26 capsule early Sept. 16, the NASA-led Space Station Control board approved plans to resume launches of the Russian spacecraft on Nov. 14, a schedule that would prevent a temporary interruption in the staffing of the 15-nation orbiting science laboratory.
TRANSATLANTIC DIVIDE: Despite budget austerity biting both sides of the northern Atlantic, the U.S. and U.K. are taking markedly different approaches when it comes to managing inter-service combat operations. In an effort to save overhead, the U.S. has closed its Joint Forces Command (Jfcom) in Norfolk, Va. The move was codified last week when President Barack Obama signed the latest Unified Command Plan that redistributed Jfcom responsibilities to other U.S. combatant commands and the Joint Staff. By contrast, the U.K.
