FT. WASHINGTON, Md. — Progress with flight-testing, or the lack thereof, was the major theme at an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) briefing given here at the Air Force Association show this morning by the Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin program deputies.
CHINA LAKE, Calif. — Anyone in the White House, Congress or Pentagon will agree that integration is the future, but virtually no one knows how to get the concept funded, and high-level budget planners don’t like to pay to solve complexity.
The Pentagon Inspector General (IG) is still investigating whether contracting procedures were followed in the now-canceled $15 billion U.S. Air Force program to replace its combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) fleet.
NASA has exercised the second of two options on its Kennedy Space Center (KSC) payload-processing contract with Boeing Space Operations Co. of Titusville, Fla., bringing the total value of the work to about $824.8 million. The latest Checkout Assembly and Payload Processing Services (CAPPS) contract option will be worth as much as $156.5 million to the Boeing subsidiary from Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2012. It covers management and technical service for all KSC payload processing activities.
HISTORIC AIRLIFT: The U.S. Air Force declared Sept. 14 that a Dover, Del., aircrew flying a C-5M Super Galaxy unofficially set 41 world records in a single flight Sept. 13. The results are pending certification and should be finalized in about a month. With a payload of about 178,000 pounds, “The Spirit of Normandy” climbed to 12,000 meters in less than 28 minutes, setting the altitude, payload and time-to-climb records during the one-and-a-half-hour flight. Because they were successful, the records “trickled down” to the lighter payloads and lower altitudes.
While the military may be able to get by without a dedicated combat, search and rescue (CSAR) aircraft specifically built for that mission, CSAR still requires its own special tools, according to a report prompted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ recent cancellation of the U.S. Air Force’s $15 billion CSAR replacement program.
A Pratt & Whitney F135 engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been damaged during qualification ground testing. The news comes as the Pentagon scrutinizes the F135’s costs and Congress prepares to decide the future of the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine (Aerospace DAILY, Sept. 14).
KEEP THE FAITH: The chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, Gen. Norton Schwartz, thinks it would be a “major mistake as a nation” to spend money on upgrading the existing Air Force inventory, and “prematurely walk away” from the F-35. According to a USAF statement, Schwartz believes the F-22 is “over-spec’d” for the Air Force’s air sovereignty alert mission, but he hopes to bring a combination of F-22, F-35, upgraded F-15 Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons, and unmanned aircraft to the domestic patrol fleet.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded a modified contract for $77,654.436 for procurement of Multi-Year F-22 Pilot Training Devices in four simulated cockpit configurations. At this time the entire amount has been obligated. 478 AESG/PK, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8611-06-C-2899). NAVY
A U.S. Air Force fighter downed a MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over Afghanistan Sept. 13. Operators lost control of the Reaper during its operation. With the UAV headed in a direction where it was about to depart Afghanistan’s air space, a U.S. Air Force aircraft brought down the Reaper in what the Air Force says was a remote part of Afghanistan.
FIRESTORM: The U.K. Ministry of Defense has ordered additional FireStorm targeting systems to help Forward Air Controllers and Forward Artillery Observers accurately direct aircraft and artillery to their targets. The order also includes spares to support overall system deployments in Afghanistan. This is the second contract awarded to Rockwell Collins by the defense ministry this year. FireStorm consist of a tablet PC, Laser Range Finder, real-time video receiver, a Rockwell Collins Azimuth Augmentation system, Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) and tactical radio.
DO HARM: China Lake’s Naval Air Warfare Center is applying medical imaging technology designed to keep track of a camera in the maze of a human’s airways to the problem of extracting targeting information from low-quality video supplied by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). “Researchers at Penn State University registered the image coming out of the camera with a location on the model to tell the physician exactly where he is,” says Scot Olson Merrit, a Penn State graduate who now supports target development efforts by the Navy. “Our goal also is precision information.
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. The Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) II competition between a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team and underdog Raytheon appears to be a pathfinder for a new embrace of fixed-price development programs by the Defense Department.
LANDING POSTPONED: Mission managers waved off shuttle Discovery from its first two landing attempts Sept. 10 due to bad weather at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That same day, Commander Rick Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford used the orbiter’s 870-pound-thrust primary thrusters to dodge a piece of debris that apparently floated free during the third spacewalk of mission STS-128 to the International Space Station. The mission was expected to end by Sept. 11 with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., since weather in Florida remained uncooperative.
Telescopes across the western U.S. and Hawaii will focus on the Cabeus A crater at the moon’s south pole early Oct. 9 to analyze debris kicked up by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) when it slams the Centaur Atlas V upper stage that sent it to the moon into a hydrogen-rich zone on the crater’s floor.
NUCLEAR WORRIES: Iran, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ staff, believes that having a nuclear capability will bring the current regime more security. Instead it is making neighboring Gulf States nervous enough to start beefing up their military forces. In fact, a new U.S. intelligence analysis contends that in a rush program, Iran could accumulate enough enriched uranium for a bomb within a year.
LONDON The British Defense Ministry faces several near-term hurdles if it is to adhere to the latest timetable for its long-running Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) vehicle program. Not only does it have to hit a contract date of March 2010 for the Block 1 element of its FRES Specialist Vehicle (SV) project, but it likely needs to follow up the acquisition process for Block 2 and Block 3 within 24 months to maintain target dates, industry executives suggest.
The fate of the F136 alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be the central issue of debate when House and Senate negotiators meet in conference late this month or early in October to finalize the fiscal 2010 U.S. defense budget. The Senate appropriations committee set the stage for the showdown on Sept. 10 when it approved the defense subcommittee’s mark-up of the bill, which omits money for the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 engine but fully funds F-35 procurement.
MANNED PREDATOR: U.S. Army and Marine Corps personnel preparing to work with Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Afghanistan and Iraq will train using a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Cessna 182 converted into a “Surrogate Predator” because no MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers can be spared to take part in pre-deployment exercises such as Green Flag. The surrogate Predator has the UAV’s electro-optical/infrared sensor ball mounted under the wing. Mission training for CAP pilots begins this month.
