JUST SAY NO: Some 200 NASA and contractor employees are getting drug tests after a bag containing a small amount of cocaine was found inside the Orbiter Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), a restricted area where the space shuttle Discovery is being readied for a mission to the International Space Station in March. Agency officials termed the find “a rare and isolated incident,” and said it should have no effect on shuttle safety.
JOINT C4I: The French Ministry of Defense has kicked off design of a joint C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) system intended to serve all services. The system, to be ready around 2016, will serve to combine existing systems operated by the different services while providing improved security and interoperability.
In its Jan. 13 edition, Aerospace DAILY quoted the Congressional Research Service (CRS) as reporting: “Given the higher costs, lower work force and financial imperatives of doing business today, it is unlikely that a firm would decide to absorb losses for as long as Rockwell did on the B-1B program. Rather, that experience might be a ‘lesson learned’ that would encourage companies to cut their losses quickly and dispose of costly assets that are not earning revenue.” The CRS report was quoting an observation from an Aerospace Industries Association study.
PARIS — The price the European Union will pay for five Soyuz launches to orbit the first ten Galileo Full Operating Capability (FOC) satellites — 397 million euros ($572 million) — has raised some eyebrows in an industry used to cheap Soyuz launches.
NEW CHARGES: Former NASA Chief of Staff and White House liaison Courtney Stadd, already on probation for an ethics law conviction, faces new charges. A federal grand jury in Mississippi returned a nine-count indictment against Stadd, alleging conspiracy, fraud and obstruction in connection with a $600,000 sole-source NASA contract to Mississippi State University, a Stadd client, for a remote sensing study. Stadd, who served at NASA in the administration of President George W. Bush, pleaded innocent. He is scheduled to go on trial Mar. 1.
NATO CROSSROADS: “NATO is more divided over fundamentals today than at any time in its history,” stresses former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker in the first of a series of issue briefs to be published by the Washington-based Atlantic Council. The first brief calls for a New Transatlantic Compact.
ATV TESTS: Europe’s second Automated Transfer Vehicle, designed to supply and reboost the International Space Station, is undergoing post-integration functional and flight readiness tests at Astrium’s Bremen, Germany plant. The vehicle, named Johannes Kepler, will be shipped to the launch site in Kouruo, French Guiana, in the second half of the year, following final tests, in preparation for a November launch to the station.
LONDON — European Partner governments and industry will meet within the next week or so to try to hammer out a deal on the Airbus Military A400M airlifter, following the governments reaching broad agreement on a collective position Jan. 14. Quentin Davies, the British minister for defense equipment and support, says that the London meeting “achieved a wide measure of agreement” among the partner states as to their negotiating position.
A Northrop Grumman/EADS team “wouldn’t have competed the first time around” for the U.S. Air Force KC-X refueling tanker contract if the duel then — which the Northrop team won — contained judgment criteria structured like the Pentagon’s current draft request for proposals (RFP) for a new competition, says Ralph Crosby, chairman of the board of EADS North America.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Jan. 20 - 21 — Strategic and Tactical Missile Systems Conference, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calf. For more information go to www.aiaa.org Jan. 20 - 22 — AHS International Specialists’ Meeting. Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems, Scottsdale, Ariz., Chaparral Suites Resort. For more information go to www.vtol.org
LONDON — The British Defense Ministry expects to save more than £260 million ($422 million) in Typhoon engine support costs following the conclusion of a deal with engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce.
An aerospace training center has wrapped up the first of what it hopes will be many courses to prepare scientists and teachers for the rigors of suborbital space flights. While dozens of wealthy space tourists have signed up for $200,000 commercial trips to the edge of the atmosphere to experience weightlessness, entrepreneurs believe there could be an even bigger market for scientific experiments and studies.
U.K. CUTS: British think-tank Royal United Services Institute suggests the U.K. military faces real-term budget cuts of 10-15 percent over the next six years. “Capability Cost Trends,” the institute’s latest paper on the pending defense review, argues that these cuts, coupled with annual cost growth of 1-2 percent, could result in an overall drop of 20 percent in personnel to 2016, along with further reductions in platform numbers.
SUBTRACTION, ADDITION: Lockheed Martin is bracing for a cut in numbers of F-35s to be produced from Fiscal 2011-15 as the Pentagon moves Joint Strike Fighter funds from procurement to development in a bid to get the delayed program back on track. But the company is hoping the Defense Dept. will push for a “buy to budget” approach so that, if the program meets its flight-test productivity and production cost-reduction targets, the services will be able to add back some of the aircraft deferred to later years.
ON FIRE: Despite the U.S. Army’s cancellation of its requirement for a Class IV UAV, the Fire Scout vertical takeoff UAV, manufacturer Northrop Grumman is not slowing down the pace on demonstrating its aircraft’s suitability for Army ground troops. The company is participating in the Army’s Expeditionary Warrior Experiment (EWE) at Ft. Benning, Ga., and will continue to fly the corporate-owned White Tail aircraft as part of the EWE through the end of February.
HELPING HAITI: The U.S. Air Force’s 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, 720th Special Tactics Group, is directing air traffic at Haiti’s Port au Prince airport, guiding in aircraft loaded with relief supplies for the devastated city. Lt. Col.
Heavy-lift launch vehicles of the type many believe will be a part of President Barack Obama’s long-awaited space policy — and in-space assembly techniques based on lessons from the Hubble Space Telescope — could enable NASA to deploy telescopes large enough to answer the eternal question “Are we alone?” in the coming decades.
A new poll by Morgan Stanley finds investors deeply divided about whether defense stocks will track, beat or lag the S&P 500 index in 2010. Respondents were bullish on General Dynamics Corp., bearish on Northrop Grumman Corp. and split down the middle on Lockheed Martin Corp. But a thoughtful new analysis by Boenning & Scattergood analyst Michael F. Ciarmoli suggests that investors’ best prospects for success lie down the industry’s food chain.
DETECTING DEFECTS: The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has fielded a system to image nuclear weapon components to find defects in the warhead stockpile. The Confined Large Optical Scintillator Screen and Imaging System is an X-ray computed tomography system and was developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and NNSA’s Pantex Plant. Use of the system should eliminate the need for some destructive tests. Lawrence Livermore is due to start using the system on U.S. Air Force B61 bombs.
EMALS PALS: London is continuing to keep abreast of Washington’s development of an electro-magnetic aircraft-launch system for carriers. The latest meeting according to Quentin Davies, the British minister for defense equipment and support, occurred in November 2009. The meeting took place between the U.K.’s Capital Ships project team and the Pentagon’s Program Executive Office Carrier Team. Meanwhile, the U.K. Defense Ministry continues to spend significantly on its next-generation aircraft carrier program.
I.T. UP: The Pentagon is expected to spend almost $34 billion in information technology (IT) spending this fiscal year, although even more growth will come under civilian federal agencies, possibly up to $42 billion, according to consultancy IDC Government Insights. The Pentagon’s figure is up roughly $1 billion from 2009, while civilian agency spending is up $2 billion.
An Su-27SM doing advanced aerobatic maneuvers at Dzengi air base in the Far Eastern Command crashed Jan. 14 with a senior pilot aboard. The base is home to the GAZ-126 Sukhoi plant and the 23rd Interceptor Aviation Regiment, which flies the Su-27. A search for the wreckage and pilot continued after dark with temperatures expected to reach minus 42 F. The Su-27SM is a Flanker-B Mod.1 upgraded to an advanced single-seat, multirole derivative of the Su-27S.
