NAS PATUXENT RIVER, Md. – The key U.S. Navy and Marine Corps electronic jamming aircraft – the EA-6B Prowler and the EA-18G Growler – that may have to face advanced air defenses are saddled with 1970s-vintage jamming pods. The ALQ-99 jamming pods have been regularly upgraded over the decades but their limited processing, antenna arrays, electrical power and nonstealthy design have left them lacking in bandwidth coverage, range and airborne flexibility.
Force Protection has announced a modification to a contract “not to exceed” $158 million from the Marine Corps Systems Command to supply Force Protection’s Cougar MRAP vehicles with the Oshkosh Corp.’s TAK-4 Independent Suspension Kits for use in the harsh terrain in Afghanistan. The work is expected to be completed by December 2009.
Australian Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon last weekend visited with a few U.S. defense industry providers, including Northrop Grumman’s Long Island, N.Y., facility and Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Production Test Center in Philadelphia.
SEATTLE – Boeing plans to conduct a competition for an active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for intelligence gathering if it wins the EP-X competition with a 737/P-8A variant.
PARIS – The global financial crisis is prompting France to sell off its military communications satellite network to free up funding for new hardware purchases. However, it is also forcing a reconsideration of private financing initiatives that had been earmarked for aerial tankers and other programs, perhaps putting some procurements at risk.
Prime contractor Lockheed Martin and payload integrator Northrop Grumman have submitted their proposal to the U.S. Air Force for the follow-on production phase of the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS). SBIRS is DOD’s next-generation missile warning system, and will replace the aging Defense Support Program constellation. So far, the program has delivered two payloads for classified host satellites in highly elliptical orbit (HEO), and plans to deliver the first dedicated geostationary orbit (GEO) SBIRS satellite for a launch no earlier than summer 2010.
NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft will turn their attention away from Earth’s star as they pass through a pair of Lagrangian points this fall to look for asteroids that may hold clues to the origins of Earth’s moon. Orbiting the sun as solar-weather observatories since they were launched on Oct. 25, 2006, the two probes will pass through the L4 and L5 in September and October. Lagrangian points are gravity wells where the gravity of celestial bodies balance out, creating spaces where material can collect in space.
The Obama administration’s first off-book supplemental appropriations request includes $11.6 billion to refurbish or replace war-torn equipment, as well as $600 million to buy four F-22 Raptors to replace four legacy fighters lost due to combat operations.
CREATIVE FINANCING: Financial experts say the credit crunch is forcing more and more telecom satellite startups to resort to project financing — funding backed mainly by expected cashflow — supported by export credit agency guarantees. The export guarantees are being driven by growing aggressiveness from France’s Coface — as illustrated by a Globalstar deal inked last month — that experts say is causing the U.S. Export-Import Bank to begin to stir. One example is ABS-2, a C-/Ku-band spacecraft that Asia Broadcasting Satellite of Hong Kong wants to orbit to 75 deg. E.
IMPROVING ITAR: Lawyers say changes in management introduced at the U.S. State Dept.’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) are having a “modest positive impact” on International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). ITAR specialist John Ordway, a partner in the law firm Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, says the changes, backed by a presidential directive in early 2008 providing DDTC with more financial and intelligence support, are leading to faster processing of requests — the new target is 60 days — more transparency and more consistency in decision-making.
INCREMENTAL APPROACH: General Dynamics C4 Systems is promoting a recent Limited User Test (LUT) of the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) Increment 2, which is designed to provide on-the-move Internet-like broadband networking to military units spread across wide geographic areas. The Army’s Evaluation Center will determine if the LUT was successful, at which point the Army would approve low-production of the system, fielding new equipment to the first unit in late 2010.
CARRIER ACCEPTANCE: The USS H.W. Bush (CVN 77) is ready to begin fleet service following the formal conclusion of acceptance trials April 10. The U.S. Navy Board of Inspection and Survey tested and evaluated the ship’s systems and performance during acceptance trials off the Virginia Capes April 7 through 9. The Bush is the nation’s 10th and final Nimitz-class carrier, designed to carry all current and future aircraft in its embarked air wing until the completion of her service life in approximately 2059.
AUGMENTING GPS: The European Commission (EC) has taken over Europe’s Egnos GPS augmentation network from the European Space Agency, its developer, and contracted with ESSP, a consortium of air traffic management service providers, to supply the service. EC officials said the initial contract is for six months and will only cover open service to give the two sides time to nail down certain details, notably with respect to legal liability. A full 5-year contract covering commercial as well as open service is expected in the autumn.
BOND MARKET: Finmeccanica has again returned to the bond market to help seek more of a reduction of the bank loans obtained from a banking consortium to buy DRS Technologies, as well as increasing the average duration of the company’s financial debt holdings. The new 10-year bond has been issued for a total amount of £400 million and is granting 8 percent interest, a spread of 470 basis points on U.K. treasuries of the same duration. The bond was fully subscribed, confirming good market response for Finmeccanica’s position.
NO GUERILLA WARFARE: Irregular warfare may be the new buzz word for Pentagon planning, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates doesn’t want any it in his own house. Gates says he won’t tolerate what he calls “guerilla warfare” — uniformed service officials independently arguing for their parochial interests on Capitol Hill. The worst offender recently was the U.S. Air Force, which publicly argued last year for more F-22 Raptors than the number the president endorsed.
MARINE NAVY: Everything old was new again when a bill was proposed renaming the Department of the Navy the Department of the Navy and Marine Corps. Bill backer Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), whose territory includes Camp LeJeune, is on his seventh attempt to have the title of the department changed to include the Marines. H.R. 24 was introduced in the House on Jan. 6. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of implementing the bill would be under $500,000 per year over the next several years, using appropriated funds.
U.S. Defense Department networks are attacked thousands of times a day, according to leading combatant commanders in the field, and defending DOD’s Global Information Grid (GIG) from cyber attacks has cost the U.S. military more than $100 million over the past six months alone.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Apr. 14 - 15 — AVIATION WEEK Management Forums, Helicopter Safety & Operations Management Forum, Hilton San Diego Airport, Harbor Island, San Diego, Calif. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/conferences
GENOA, Italy Italy plans to send more troops, helicopters and aircraft to Afghanistan in response to NATO and U.S. calls for reinforcements ahead of the Afghan general election Aug. 20.
PUSHED BACK: European Space Agency officials say the Herschel-Planck twin telescope mission, expected to be launched atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket towards the end of April, may now be pushed back until mid-May. The mission already has suffered repeated delays, most recently from a scheduled April 16 launch date.
COMMON CONTROL: The next quarterly Interoperability Control Working Group meeting, a collaboration between industry and government on creating architecture and standards for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) common ground stations (CGS), will be held April 20-21. The meeting is part of a larger effort on the part of the Pentagon, and departing Pentagon acquisition chief John Young in particular, to adopt a common DOD architecture for UAS. The goal is to enable competition among more companies to provide visualization, data archiving and tagging and auto tracking.
NAS PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — The brand-new EA-18G Growler has additional advances for airborne electronic attack (AEA) already on the way. High on the list is the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ), which is to add even longer-range electronic attack, spoofing and advanced information and network attack options. With the new digital telecommunications used by opponents, U.S. planners have to be much more detailed about how electronic attack is conducted against networked, computer-controlled threats such as integrated air defenses.
