TREATY FIGHT: With memories of the political battle over the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty still fresh in their minds, Obama administration officials are trying to prepare better for the long-awaited Senate fight to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). “We do not expect it will be easy or happen quickly, but we will work hard to make it happen,” says Marcie Ries, deputy assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Sept. 8 — Women In Aerospace, Safety and Security: How 9-11 Changed Security, Reagan National Airport, Historic Terminal A, Arlington, Va. For more information call 202-547-0229, or go to http://www.womeninaerospace.org./events/current/83.html
House Committee Action On Fiscal 2012 Defense Budget:Agreement Between Appropriators & Authorizers ($ in thousands) House Committee Action On Fiscal 2012 Defense Budget: Agreement Between Appropriators & Authorizers ($ in thousands) Program Request Approved Percent change Account-Line Budget*
LOS ANGELES — Boeing has received a $1.09 billion U.S. Air Force contract for the third batch of Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellites, and is poised to start the final phase of pre-delivery tests for the first Block II variant.
Three companies have received a total of $12 million from the U.S. Energy Department to help commercialize technologies to produce drop-in biofuels, as the U.S. steps up efforts to reduce its reliance on imported oil as the source of transportation fuel. Roselle, Ill.-based LanzaTech has received a $4 million cost-sharing contract to develop a technology to convert biomass-derived ethanol into jet fuel using catalysts. The company is working with Boeing and biofuel producer Imperium Renewables.
NASA is working to persuade the U.S. Air Force to co-fund a flight demonstrator for an unconventional transport aircraft configuration, possibly a hybrid wing-body design for a commercial freighter or military airlifter.
Over the last couple of decades, groups of aerospace specialists – particularly those involved with stealth, radars and unmanned aircraft – have disappeared and reappeared. Northrop Grumman has such a group that dropped out of sight and now appears to be reassembling in the company’s special projects operations as the X-47 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) derivatives and next-generation bomber designs take shape.
Raytheon has completed the action items that emerged from the U.S. Air Force’s preliminary design review of the next-generation GPS control segment. The four-day review took place at the end of June, and the final action items were completed in late August, says Bob Canty, vice president to the so-called GPS OSX effort. “The design itself was assessed as architecturally and technically sound,” he says.
House Committee Action On Fiscal 2012 Defense Budget:Disagreement Between Appropriators & Authorizers on Select Programs ($ in thousands) House Committee Action On Fiscal 2012 Defense Budget: Disagreement Between Appropriators & Authorizers on Select Programs ($ in thousands) Program Request HASC HASC % change HAC
In observance of the U.S. Labor Day holiday, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not publish an issue dated Tuesday, Sept. 6. The next issue will be dated Wednesday, Sept. 7. For customers with access to the Aviation Week Intelligence Network, coverage will continue at aviationweek.com/awin.
SINGAPORE — Arianespace is confident that its first launch of a Russian-made Soyuz will occur in October as scheduled, despite the fact the Russians have grounded all Soyuz rockets. “We are not impacted by this,” Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said Aug. 27. “I assume [the Russians] will resume Soyuz flights quite soon.” Arianespace plans to launch a Soyuz from its French Guiana base on Oct. 20, the first time the European company will have used the venerable Russian launcher.
A&D WORKFORCE: Two major lobbying groups in Washington, the International Association of Machinists and the Aerospace Industries Association, are asking the Obama administration to consider helping the aerospace and defense industry in the administration’s upcoming jobs-creation initiative. “We are concerned that reductions in federal spending could have harmful, if not catastrophic, consequences to our current and future national security, economy and workforce,” they say in a Sept. 1 letter to President Barack Obama.
The U.S. Air Force has made progress in developing its Blue Devil 2 surveillance airship, though the project may cost more than expected and take longer to deploy to support troops in Afghanistan, according to service sources. The service has narrowed down Blue Devil 2’s payload. The airship is capable of carrying 2,500 lb. Air Force officials hope to fly the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or Argus-IS, a pod capable of supplying 65 “Predator class” video feeds.
COMPETITION BOOSTER: The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is pressing the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee to make sure the U.S. Air Force competitively bids the UH-1N replacement program known as the Common Vertical Lift Support Program. In an Aug. 25 letter to Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the nonprofit NTU, says sole-sourcing the contract to Sikorsky for the UH-60 would not necessarily save money.
The Phantom Ray and Phantom Eye represent two of Boeing’s approaches to unmanned flight that are designed to influence the development of future combat aircraft. In particular, they are expected to funnel new technology into both the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation, long-range-strike project and the U.S. Navy’s unmanned, carrier-based surveillance and strike (Uclass) programs.
WARTIME CONTRACTING: The congressionally chartered Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and some of its legislative sponsors have unveiled the results of a long-running report on U.S. security and aid spending in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Total spending on outsourced contracts and grants in the combat theaters has grown to more than $190 billion since fiscal 2012, and the contractor workforce has at times exceeded 260,000 personnel, outnumbering uniformed military deployed to the Asian countries, according to a statement by Sen.
U.S. Special Operations Command (Ussocom) is interested in seeing what industry has to offer in a “highly mobile, CH-47 transportable” ground vehicle, according to a solicitation posted on a government website. Publicly available details are few, and while the announcement is not a formal request for proposals (RFP), the document does say that Ussocom is planning to hold an industry day, and that the command anticipates holding a “full and open competition with the intent of awarding an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity type of contract.”
A fourth team is to join Boeing, Bell-Boeing and Sikorsky in competitively studying concepts for the Joint Multi Role (JMR) medium utility rotorcraft, which could replace U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters beginning late next decade. Boeing, Bell-Boeing and Sikorsky were awarded 18-month configuration trades and analysis contracts at the end of June. Each is worth around $4 million, with industry contributing a similar amount.
HOUSTON — Power surged through Robonaut 2 (R2) on the legless humanoid’s perch inside the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 1, but the astronauts and NASA’s Mission Control team stopped short of a hoped for “first motion” when they observed a need for further adjustments of the robot’s force sensors.
HOUSTON — The threat to the International Space Station (ISS) and global satellites from accumulating orbital debris has reached a destructive “tipping point,” according to a Sept. 1 report issued by the National Research Council (NRC).
A new class of unmanned air vehicle is to be fielded, with the award of a $4.9 million U.S. Army contract to AeroVironment to supply Switchblade loitering munitions for rapid fielding to deployed forces. The backpackable, battery-powered Switchblade is launched from a tube, unfolds its tandem wings and sends back video from an electro-optical sensor, while being controlled from AeroVironment’s standard small unmanned aircraft system ground station.
In the aftermath of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle’s (EFV) cancellation, the U.S. Marines are charged with coming up with an amphibious vehicle that is actually affordable and fast. Their answer to the challenge could put a crimp on the Pentagon’s intractable problem of requirements creep.
