Now about half-compete, the U.S. Navy’s DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer is coming to grips with the various program and design changes required in the wake of last year’s Nunn-McCurdy cost-growth breach. The Navy believes that the suggested radar modifications ordered following the breach will meet ship requirements, and the service is working to award a contract for the work to Raytheon within weeks, Capt. James Downey tells Aviation Week.
ARLINGTON, Va. — Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens met questions about potential further production cuts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Lockheed Martin’s largest anticipated revenue earning program, with resistance during the company’s pre-Paris Air Show media day here May 24.
Controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will shift the agency’s Deep Space Network and other assets to the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover mission, after giving up on the Mars Spirit Exploration Rover on May 25. Spirit last communicated with Earth on March 22, 2010, and engineers say there is a low probability the hardy rover will revive after spending a Martian winter without adequate power for its survival heaters.
HOUSTON — Endeavour astronauts Drew Feustel and Mike Fincke sailed through a third mission spacewalk outside the International Space Station early May 25, installing an anchor for the Canadian robot arm and extending a backup power cable to the Russian segment. The two men also successfully demonstrated an abbreviated airlock protocol before the spacewalk for the prevention of decompression sickness. The 7-hr. spacewalk concluded at 8:37 a.m. EDT.
After enduring flat funding for fiscal 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates a 90% chance it will suffer a gap in polar-orbiting weather satellite coverage prior to the launch of its first Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) spacecraft later this decade, resulting in degraded weather forecasts.
U.S. Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli wants to use an upcoming communications exercise as a blueprint for how the Army acquires new communications gear. Set to kick off next month at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., the six-week, brigade-sized exercise is scheduled to test 29 developmental technologies and six programs of record.
Recent cutbacks in facilities and manpower at Lockheed Martin have been “painful,” but they were necessary steps for the company to address demands from the Pentagon for improved affordability from major contractors, CEO Robert Stevens says.
NASA plans to launch a probe to a primordial carbonaceous asteroid in 2016 for an $800 million New Frontiers mission to bring back a sample for study on Earth. Japan has returned tiny samples of the asteroid Itakowa, but the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (Osiris-Rex) program will be the first asteroid sample-return mission for the U.S.
SINGAPORE — Vietnam is planning to launch its first Earth-observation satellite in 2014 and also hopes to have a hyperspectral and a radar satellite at some point. Astrium has been contracted to build the satellite and France is providing financing through its overseas direct assistance program, according to Bui Trong Tuyen, satellite project management unit deputy director for the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.
BOOSTING SATELLITES: Industry boosters are cheering a proposed amendment to the House’s version of the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill that would authorize the president to remove commercial satellites and related components from the strictly monitored U.S. Munitions List.
A top lawmaker in the U.S. House of Representatives has asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate White House compliance with a law that bars Sino-American exchanges of science and technology know-how.
SINGAPORE — Malaysia is considering buying Lockheed P-3 aircraft, an initiative that comes at a time when many countries in Southeast Asia are looking to boost their maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. A study is now under way and a request has gone to the U.S. for information on the P-3, according to industry executives and officials inside and outside of Malaysia. If the decision to buy P-3s is made, the Malaysian air force will operate the aircraft, the sources say.
LOS ANGELES — The head of Boeing’s defense and space unit says robust growth in the company’s international business will help spearhead additional revenues in 2011, but warns that budget reductions and industrial base health issues are among longer-term concerns.
LET’S STRATEGIZE: Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called for a national aerospace strategy in a speech May 24 before the Senate Aerospace Caucus. The chair of the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee says companies large and small have told her “‘We need a comprehensive national strategy for aerospace.’ The U.S. government has to be a strong partner in that.” In addition to improving the aerospace workforce, beefing up research efforts and improving civil aviation, the U.S.
BEIJING — China plans to launch five or six satellites for its Compass navigation constellation in 2012, as it moves toward offering an initial service in some of its own territory this year. With eight Compass satellites already in orbit and two or three more to come this year, the system should have at least 15 spacecraft by the end of 2012. It is supposed to have 35 when complete. The ground system has been completely installed, tested and found to be fully functional, says the PLA Daily, the official Chinese military newspaper.
NASA will continue its contract with Lockheed Martin for development of the George W. Bush-era Orion crew exploration vehicle, rechristened the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) by Congress, but it will stretch out the contract while it figures out how to build a heavy-lift “Space Launch System” (SLS) to carry it beyond low Earth orbit.
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission apparently ducked a considerable delay when a crane operator accidentally lifted its composite backshell with a 2,000-lb. aluminum table attached to it. Richard Cook, deputy MSL project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said May 24 that the mishap does not appear to have placed excessive loads on the backshell structure, which is designed to help protect the car-sized rover as it enters the Martian atmosphere.
The Obama administration is threatening to veto the version of the defense authorization bill being debated by the U.S. House of Representatives over an issue involving the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The administration last year wielded the veto threat over any attempts to fund the alternate engine and successfully fended off efforts to add money for the F136.
SINGAPORE — The U.S. and U.K. defense establishments face governmental fiscal constraints, but will nonetheless be moving ahead with plans to develop satellite communications capabilities.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) continues to cast doubt on the U.S. Navy’s stated shipbuilding plan in a recent report, saying the service’s strategy will actually require a larger number of vessels than it has officially cited.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is retiring next month, delivered his last major policy address at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington May 24, hitting many of the same themes he has focused on since taking the helm of the Pentagon in 2006, including bureaucratic inertia and institutional rot in the Pentagon.
