An early preview of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) reveals major force and capability alterations and some interesting divisions of labor, with the U.S. Army being asked to focus more on special operations, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism while the Air Force and Navy will focus more on confronting and defeating high-end, anti-access threats.
FORECAST DIPS: Saft predicts that revenues will decline 7-10 percent this year, after posting sales of 287.4 million euros ($405 million) in the first half, down 6.2 percent from the year before. However, the military battery maker maintained its forecast of an 18 percent earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization margin, about the level reported in the first half. Net income was down 4 percent to 21.6 million euros.
The leadership of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has unveiled an expansive cost-cutting program aimed at saving around $8 billion (30 billion sheckel) in military spending. The IDF has now turned to international consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to help figure out where to save money. It is the first time the IDF has opted for this kind of assistance.
NEW DELHI — India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has offered to co-develop and co-produce an upgraded Kaveri engine in the 90-kN-thrust class with France’s Snecma. The partnership would be to meet the operational requirements of India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) within 48 months from the date of project inception, according to Defense Minister A.K. Antony, who disclosed the move while replying to a question in parliament.
The U.S. Defense Department’s budget is expected to increase for the 13th consecutive year in fiscal 2010. The last time it went up 14 years in a row, Martin Van Buren had just succeeded Andrew Jackson as president, Samuel Morse patented the telegraph, and Abraham Lincoln was a 28-year-old state legislator in Illinois (it was 1837).
Lockheed Martin has submitted its proposal under a fiscal 2010 contract for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) hull program. The bid comes amid renewed wrangling on Capitol Hill and within the U.S. Navy over expected and accepted costs. The shore-hugging ships were originally slated to be $220 million per hull, but the price for the first few ships may come in between $600-700 million, according to overseer Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.).
The first launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) is scheduled for Aug. 11 after a successful engine test last week. The agency that is developing the rocket, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, assembled the launcher on Aug. 1, uniting the South Korean solid-fuel second stage with the Russian-built liquid-fuel first stage. It will now undergo one week of checks before launch from the Naro Space Center 485 kilometers (301 miles) south of Seoul.
The Council on Foreign Relations’ Stephen Biddle describes an Afghanistan awash in corruption, and whose political and civil culture has been so compromised by graft and incompetence that it has become the “central underlying cause of the insurgency” in that country. Biddle had just returned from a month-long trip to Afghanistan where he was part of a team of civilians charged with advising Gen. Stanley McChrystal for his 60-day strategy review, which is scheduled to be submitted to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in mid-August.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) says the cost of the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor development program will increase due to the loss of some common work with the now terminated Multiple Kill Vehicle program. Cost for the U.S./Japanese joint development program is estimated now to be about $3.1 billion for the 21-inch diameter interceptor, says Rear Adm. Alan “Brad” Hicks, Aegis/SM-3 program manager for MDA.
MORE M-ATVs: Oshkosh Corp. has received a follow-on order to the tune of $1.06 billion for an additional 1,700 Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicles (M-ATVs), on top of 2,244 already ordered under a similarly sized contract awarded in June. Oshkosh also will produce “aftermarket parts packages to be supplied by April 2010, along with field service support,” according to a release from the company.
The National Research Council (NRC) says a replacement Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite could play an important — if limited — role in monitoring and verifying sources of carbon dioxide emissions to support greenhouse gas reduction treaties. In December, the NRC expects to release an ongoing study focusing on estimates of human-derived greenhouse gas emissions.
LANDING LUNAs: Germany’s EMT will provide more Lunar unmanned aircraft under a new contract from the German defense ministry. Existing systems are supporting German forces in Afghanistan. The latest deal provides for four systems, including 40 air vehicles, eight ground control stations, launchers and landing systems. The system will be integrated in mine-protected vehicles. Deliveries should conclude next summer.
PARIS — The Eurofighter countries have signed a €9.1 billion contract to build 112 Typhoon fighters under the Tranche 3A program, with a goal to get the second part of the last phase of the program on contract by the end of 2011.
MORE F-35s?: With Adm. Gary Roughead in Fort Worth last week for the rollout of the U.S. Navy’s first F-35C carrier variant, Lockheed Martin seized the opportunity to brief the Chief of Naval Operations on its capacity to solve the service’s much-debated fighter shortfall by accelerating deliveries of Joint Strike Fighters. F-35 program general manager Dan Crowley says the industrial team has capacity to build 20-30 more F-35s over the fiscal 2010-2014 defense plan. The number of F-35Cs the Navy wants remains a puzzle.
TARGETED RESEARCH: NASA is putting the final touches on plans for its new Environmentally Responsible Aircraft project to mature airframe and engine technologies offering dramatic reductions in commercial aircraft noise and emissions, and talking to defense research organizations, including the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), to benefit from and avoid duplicating work already under way.
SWEET HOME ALABAMA: The White House says it opposes language in the House Appropriations Committee’s version of the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill that demands that any non-developmental tanker aircraft have its final assembly in the United States. Under the previous KC-X procurement, four developmental aircraft would be built; Northrop Grumman/EADS said the sixth aircraft, the second production version, would roll off a new final assembly line on Mobile, Ala., with earlier airframes sent from Toulouse.
SOLAR ARMY: The U.S. Army will take on the Air Force to compete for which service has the largest solar array when the Army’s 500-megwatt solar power project gets up and running at Ft. Irwin, Calif. The goal is to eventually generate 1,000 megawatts of power using a combination of solar thermal technology and photovoltaic panels.
The President will serve as chief spokesperson of the organization. In this role, the President will provide leadership and direction in the development of the organization’s statement of vision, mission, and goals and the corresponding strategies to achieve them.
The space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Friday morning following a 16-day mission to service and continue assembly of the International Space Station (ISS). “You are a steely-eyed hero,” radioed STS-127 Commander Mark Polansky as fellow astronaut Alan Poindexter radioed the go for a deorbit burn from Mission Control Center-Houston.
Despite the success of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, DOD is mismanaging 10 particular programs to the tune of a $3.3 billion increase in cumulative development costs. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed eight aircraft and two payload programs in its July 30 report. The U.S. Air Force’s Global Hawk program was to blame for $2.7 billion of the cost growth overall — a stunning 284 percent increase between the program’s initial and current cost estimates. (See charts p. 7.)
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) successfully intercepted a subscale short-range ballistic missile target with an Aegis destroyer-launched SM-3 Block IA during a flight test July 30. The target missile was launched at 11:40 p.m. EDT at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. Two minutes later, the USS Hopper fired the interceptor, which collided with the target about 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean, according to MDA officials.
U.S. experts with insight into unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) programs unofficially confirm that a stealthy-looking, tailless, flying wing-type turbojet-powered UAV has at least been periodically operated from Kandahar, Afghanistan, during the last two years. The UAV was seen being rolled into a UAV facility at Kandahar not quite two years ago. “It was there in the fall of 2007,” said a UAV specialist. “I don’t know who produced it or owns it or what it does.”
