Affordability as a Requirement Complimentary Webinar: Wednesday, March 30, 2011, 1:00 p.m. EDT Going forward, programs will be designed for affordability, not desire. Unaffordable technical requirements will be discarded at program inception. This webinar will familiarize attendees with DoD’s new processes, and focus on affordability as a requirement for doing business www.aviationweek.com/events
Future human explorers on the Moon can plan their routes in great detail, now that the final load of exploration data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been released. The data dump may wind up as the most enduring legacy of the Constellation program that sought to return humans to the Moon to practice for a trip to Mars, only to be terminated as “unsustainable” for lack of adequate funding.
U.S. Defense and Transportation Department leaders have expressed concerns about efforts to address the threat of GPS jamming caused by a planned nationwide broadband wireless network. The agencies also urge a comprehensive study of all potential interference to GPS in a March 25 letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman signed by Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn and Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari.
With a conflict under way in Libya that may last for months, U.S., French and British forces specializing in ground interdiction, strategic strike, information warfare and electronic attack are employing both kinetic and non-kinetic effects.
With 1,000 new officers about to hit the ground at the U.S.-Mexico border, and a new generation of commercial-off-the-shelf surveillance technologies on the way, a high-ranking Border Patrol official thinks illegal traffic will be forced to shift to the waters along the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific coasts.
EXTRA C-17: Australia’s fifth C-17 Globemaster will be an addition to Boeing’s order book, the U.S. manufacturer says, clarifying uncertainty arising from the possibility of Canberra taking an aircraft allocated to the U.S. Air Force. The deputy chief of the Royal Australian Air Force had said a C-17 already being built for the U.S. Air Force could be diverted to fill Australia’s requirement. While that seemed to leave open the possibility that Boeing would not get an extra order, a company official confirms that it will.
QUAKE COPING: No aerospace suppliers to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have reported production difficulties from either earthquake damage or a shortage of electricity, a spokesman for the company says. Mitsubishi, itself located far from the epicenter of Japan’s March 11 earthquake that knocked out power stations, has also had no trouble as a result of damage or electricity stoppages, the spokesman says.
Israel and Russia will work more closely in space activities under a framework agreement between the two nations’ civil space agencies that was signed March 27 in Tel Aviv.
HOUSTON — Not every element of NASA’s space shuttle fleet is headed for a museum or the trash bin, as the three-decade old program is retired following the scheduled missions of Endeavour in late April and Atlantis in late June.
LONDON — NATO’s protracted effort to field a ground-surveillance system has suffered another setback, with the program now reduced to fielding six unmanned aircraft rather than the planned eight.
NEW DELHI — The first test flight of the Indo-Israeli long-range, surface-to-air missile (LR-SAM), also called Barak-2, will be undertaken this year, says a senior official at India’s defense research agency.
While the U.S. government has made progress countering piracy in collaboration with industry, the nation’s leaders have failed to update the country’s overall plan to fight pirates despite the escalation in attacks, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a recent report. The U.S. has advised industry partners on self-protection measures, contributed leadership and assets to an international coalition patrolling pirate-infested waters, and concluded a prosecution arrangement with the Seychelles government, GAO notes in its March report.
BEIJING — Component supplies to Fuji Heavy Industries and deliveries from the company are assured until the end of April, as earthquake-hit suppliers progressively resume operations or dispatch parts from stocks. Fuji, one of Japan’s four big aerospace companies and a key partner in the Boeing 787 program, is improvising to mitigate the effects of power stoppages, which it said last week were a bigger problem than physical damage to suppliers’ factories.
HOUSTON — Japan’s HTV-2 cargo capsule departed the International Space Station on March 28, signaling a post-earthquake resumption of command and control over major ISS operations by flight controllers at the Tsukuba Space Center, northeast of Tokyo.
LONDON — In a bid to grow its services activities, EADS has completed the acquisition of Vector Aerospace. EADS confirmed last week it was in exclusive talks with the Canadian firm, which had put itself up for sale. The business is being made part of Eurocopter, which has a mandate to increase services activity.
ARMY Critical Solutions International Inc., Carrollton, Texas, was awarded on March 16 a $214,284,932 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the procurement of 118 vehicle mounted mine-detection MKK II Type II systems. The work will be performed in Gauteng, South Africa, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 16, 2012. One bid was solicited with one bid received. The U.S. Army TACOM LCMC, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-08-D-0001). NAVY
GULFPORT, Miss. — U.S. Navy and Marine Corps brass used the March 26 christening of the amphibious transport dock ship LPD-24 Arlington to tout the vessel’s attributes for military and humanitarian missions. The San Antonio ship-class is perfect for working in the coastal waters of littoral regions where the Navy and Marines are being tasked to fight or offer assistance in the aftermaths of natural disasters, officers say.
BENGALURU, India — A new Indian coast guard station (ICGS) was commissioned at Ratnagiri in the state of Maharashtra on March 26. According to a defense spokesperson, the station was established in response to the expansion of coast guard responsibilities that has taken place since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.
ARMY Navistar Defense, Warrenville, Ill., was awarded on March 23 a $40,832,977 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the acquisition of 829 rocket-propelled grenade net kits for the MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. The work will be performed in Warrenville, with an estimated completion date of July 28, 2011. One bid was solicited with one bid received. The U.S. Army TACOM LCMC, Contracting Center, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-10-D-0014).
BEIJING — Precision machine tool builder Mitsui Seiki Kogyo says it is now operating almost normally, having lost only about two days’ production from the March 11 earthquake. The company, a crucial supplier to the global aerospace industry, says it is largely coping with electricity stoppages. Perhaps most importantly, it says that its machine tools in service with Japanese customers rode out the earthquake and can work to specification.
Budget politics could threaten the safety of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and leave the nation vulnerable to nuclear terrorists, the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee says in a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan. Republicans pledged not to touch security spending in 2011, but the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was part of across-the-board spending cuts, says subcommittee chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio) in the March 23 letter to Ryan.
