SPICY RELATIONSHIP: Washington continues to bristle in reaction to declarations by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that he might borrow billions of dollars from Moscow to buy Russian weaponry. Chavez said a $2.2 billion line of credit would lead to 92 Russian-made T-72 tanks and an unknown number of Smerch anti-aircraft missile launching systems. “We have concerns in general about Venezuela’s stated desire to increase its arms buildup, which we think poses a serious challenge to stability in the Western Hemisphere,” a U.S. State Department representative says.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Sept. 22 - 24 — AVIATION WEEK MRO Europe 2009 Conference & Exhibition, Hamburg Messe und Congress, Hamburg, Germany. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/conferences
Norm Augustine, the retired Lockheed Martin CEO who spent the summer reviewing NASA’s Constellation program of vehicles in development for a return to the moon, told the Senate Sept. 16 that the agency’s “program of record” isn’t viable at current funding levels, and the situation won’t improve much when the space shuttle fleet is retired.
CYBER PLANNING: U.S. Cyber Command is supposed to dominate the new digital battlefield, but how it will work is still a mystery as manpower, training and cross-agency coordination lags. “I’ve asked each of the service chiefs to consider as a first priority filling the billets in the cyber schools,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates says.
Wesley Bush will become CEO of Northrop Grumman at the beginning of 2010, ascending to a position he has long been groomed for. The second-largest U.S. defense contractor by revenue announced that Ronald Sugar will step down as chairman and CEO on Dec. 31. The 61-year-old Sugar, who has held the top job since 2003, will remain for six months as chairman emeritus of the 120,000-employee company before retiring on June 30, 2010.
Lockheed Martin is working with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to fly a version of the F-35’s stealthy electro-optical targeting system (EOTS) on the Avenger unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the latter part of 2010. Mounted behind faceted sapphire windows, the mid-wave infrared sensor would reduce the swept-wing, jet-powered UAV’s radar signature compared with the conventional external electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) turret on a Predator or Reaper.
PARIS — Astronomers have determined that a small extrasolar planet found by the French-led Corot planet-finding mission is a rocky planet like our own. The planet, Corot 7-b, was discovered last year but only confirmed in February. About 20 near Earth-sized planets, known as Super Earths, have been seen so far, but Corot 7-b was the first to be observed directly as it transited in front of its star, and not inferred from other measurements (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 4).
LONDON — The next British government — regardless of its political party — will face the challenge of carrying out a strategic defense review against the backdrop of uncertainty over its military alliances. At issue is whether Europe is willing and able to provide a credible collective defense, and the future of NATO’s credibility should the alliance fail in Afghanistan.
LAUNCH SUPPORT: Struggling Sea Launch says it has received letters of support from five satellite operators promising future launch business that it hopes will help convince the U.S. Bankruptcy Court handling its Chapter 11 proceedings that it has a viable recovery plan. The letters are from DirecTV, Eutelsat, Intelsat, SkyPerfect JSAT of Japan and Telesat.
KOREAN BUY: South Korea will buy Elta Systems Green Pine Block-B radars for its nascent ballistic missile defense system, planning to install them in central and northern parts of the country in 2012. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration says the Green Pine outperformed a rival system from Thales in a test in August. The French company offered the M3R radar derived from its Ground Master 400 system to South Korea. The administration has previously said it would buy ballistic-missile defense radars by the end of this year.
The U.S. Navy announced late Sept. 16 that it has canceled the solicitation for three Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) for fiscal 2010 “due to affordability,” and will instead issue a new solicitation, leading to a downselect to a single design.
NASA Presolicitations NASA Presolicitations Date of Posting Response Date Opportunity Segment Procurement Office Solicitation Code Contact E-Mail 15-Sep-09 30-Sep-09 Increase the maximum order amount of contract related to water treatment program Utili
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA is close to finalizing approval for the launch of its Ares I-X suborbital flight-test demonstrator with range officials at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., and currently expects to roll the 327-foot-tall vehicle to the pad on Oct. 29 for a planned launch two days later.
Japan’s unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) rendezvoused with the International Space Station Sept. 17, and NASA astronaut Nicole Stott used the Canadarm2 to grapple the 16.5-metric-ton cargo carrier in orbit 225 miles over Romania. The capture of the HTV to the nadir port of the station’s Harmony pressurized node capped an almost perfect inaugural mission for the Japanese spacecraft, which was launched Sept. 10 (Aerospace DAILY, Sept. 11).
Tantalizing early results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) indicate that hydrogen could exist in more areas of the south polar region of the moon than previously thought.
President Barack Obama is making major changes to plans started by his predecessor to establish ballistic missile defenses in Europe, and they will have major ramifications for interceptor makers Boeing and Raytheon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, say findings of a congressionally mandated review of missile defense — as well as adjustments in the intelligence assessment of the missile threat from Iran — underpin the changes.
The U.S. Navy would like to build on the success of the recent deployment of its new MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter, with requests coming in from the fleet ranging from expanded command-and-control using Link 16 to increased power for on-board radar.
CRITICAL DEFENSE: Key U.S. lawmakers are bemoaning a supposed lack of coordination between the Defense Department’s Northern Command (NORTHCOM) — the post-9/11 military command responsible for homeland defense — with state, local and tribal governments. Bipartisan leaders of both the House’s and Senate’s homeland security oversight committees released a joint statement Sept. 11 highlighting a recent report by nonpartisan congressional auditors and lamented a lack of standardized familiarity by NORTHCOM with nonfederal disaster plans and procedures.
The U.S. Air Force cannot begin to address the numerous challenges it faces until it attends to a so-called “institutional identity crisis,” claims Tom Ehrhard, deputy to the chief of staff of the Air Force, in a report written when he was still a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
While additional troop requests for Afghanistan in 2010 appear to be a near certainty, top U.S. Defense Department leaders worry about the effect that could have on the people there and want to consider innovative ways of dealing with security, according to a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.
BETTER ENABLED: Intelligent Software Solutions said it has been awarded a $300 million, five-year contract by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory for a Web-enabled temporal analysis system (WebTAS), a government off-the-shelf software suite providing visualization, integration and analysis of disparate data in a service-oriented architecture.
FORT WASHINGTON, Md. — U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz has asked his chief scientist, Dr. Werner Dahm, to conduct a massive “technology horizon” study to outline what technologies are needed to move the service forward. The study began in July and is due back to Schwartz next summer. He says he is looking for blue sky thinking with a practical edge, so Dahm is keeping in mind the fiscal constraints expected at the Pentagon, as well as current and emerging missions.
GEOEYE MILESTONE: Satellite imaging company GeoEye is celebrating the first anniversary of the launch of its GeoEye-1 satellite. The satellite launched on Sept. 6, 2009. Since its launch, the satellite has collected data over 54 million square kilometers and taken more than 200,000 images, the company said, including during the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January and North Korean missile launches. GeoEye-1 has been supplying imagery to Google for Google Earth and Google Maps since March.
FORT WASHINGTON, Md. — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has given the U.S. Air Force authority for oversight of the KC-X aerial refueler program, potentially worth more than $35 billion. Gates made the announcement early Sept. 16 during a speech at the annual Air Force Association conference outside Washington, D.C., and it was met with applause from the audience.
