ARMY Caterpillar Inc., Defense and Federal Products, Mossville, Ill., was awarded on March 31, 2009, a $24,579,261.00 firm fixed price contract for 105 Heavy Loader Type I and II, with attachments (105 sweepers and 53 forklifts). The work is to be performed at Montgomery, Ill., with an estimated completion date of Dec. 31, 2010. Bids were solicited on FedBizOpps with five bids received. The U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-05-D-L424).
POWER PLAYERS: Alliant Techsystems and Rolls-Royce Liberty Works will work on Phase 1 of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Vulcan program to demonstrate a combined turbine/constant volume combustion engine capable of accelerating a hypersonic vehicle from zero airspeed to Mach 4 and faster.
THAWING OUT: Efforts to seek formal reductions in nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States are getting predictably warm receptions around the world. But details are far from clear and the two countries are facing a December deadline while they feel each other out. Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met for the first time April 1 in London where, after acknowledging “drift” in bilateral relations, they said they want to replace the expiring Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
OPENING SALVO: Washington and industry everywhere are holding their breath until April 6, when it is believed U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will begin unveiling plans to restructure, cancel or otherwise affect numerous weapons programs and systems. Industry, government officials and watchdogs have been expecting as much for months, especially with the Pentagon’s budget now not expected to get detailed until next month.
SOYUZ CLUB: Two-time space tourist Charles Simonyi’s return to Earth with two members of the International Space Station (ISS) crew on April 7 won’t necessarily mark the end of Soyuz flights for well-heeled private passengers, even though all flights on the books now will be needed to support the six-person ISS crew that arrives by the end of May.
SWEET HOME LOUISIANA: The U.S. Air Force has selected Barksdale Air Force Base, La., as its preference to house the new Global Strike Command headquarters. This new command will oversee the service’s nuclear platforms, including ballistic missiles and bombers. Final approval of Barksdale is pending the completion of an environmental impact study.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — After many years of failed attempts to place high-end radar systems in orbit, Pentagon efforts for a “Tier 2,” or commercial-grade, Space Radar program are continuing to gain momentum. The Pentagon last year began buying synthetic aperture radar images from Canada’s C-band Radarsat. Now, it can add SAR Israeli products to its list of options.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) Apr. 6 - 9 — 2009 Gun and Missile Systems Conference & Exhibition, “Shaping the Future in Weapon Systems Development, Deployment, and Reset,” Hyatt Regency Crown Center, Kansas City, Mo. For more information go to http://exhibits.ndia.org
MOSCOW — Russian Space Agency Roscosmos has chosen a team consisting of Samara Space Center (TcSKB Progress), RSC Energia and the Makeev Rocket Design Bureau to develop a new medium-class booster. The rocket will launch from the yet-to-be-built Vostochny cosmodrome in the far east of Russia. It should be able to boost manned and cargo spacecraft, as well as space station modules, to low-Earth orbit.
MOON BUMP: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the piggyback Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite will launch on an Atlas V no earlier than June 2, to accommodate the delayed Atlas V launch of the second U.S. Air Force Wideband Global Satcom spacecraft. That launch, which was delayed by a liquid oxygen leak in its Centaur upper stage, was scheduled for 8:31 p.m. EDT April 3.
COST CONTROL: In a recent briefing, Teal Group Vice President Richard Aboulafia offers his explanation of why defense programs are in a bit of a fix. “Program problems aren’t just the result of requirements people working in a vacuum,” he says. “The requirements people respond to the broader environment, to the weapons acquisition philosophy created by each administration.” The Clinton era emphasized CAIV (Cost As an Independent Variable) as a response to limited budgets, establishing price as a key guideline for new systems development.
DOD is expected to announce the termination of the U.S. Navy’s Harpoon Block III anti-ship missile early this week, according to government and industry sources close to the effort. Harpoon Block III is said to be among 55 programs over which Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to announce significant changes as early as April 6.
DONE DEAL: Northrop Grumman Corp. and the U.S. Justice Dept. have agreed to settle a pair of procurement cases by essentially trading off $325 million in completing claims.
SHADY DEALINGS: The sun shield being developed to shade the upper-stage fuel tanks on the Atlas V rocket and prevent fuel burn-off should be ready for testing by April 2011, according to United Launch Alliance (ULA). The test deployment will take place after the primary payload separates, during a flight that doesn’t require the shield. Normally, the shield will inflate and deploy after the payload fairing is jettisoned.
ORGANIC FUEL: The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to turn lawn clippings and wood chips into jet fuel and is funding Logos Technologies to demonstrate the conversion of such cellulosic biomass into surrogate JP-8 as part of its BioFuels program. With a $19.6 million contract, Logos joins General Atomics and Science Application International, which have been funded to demonstrate cost-competitive production of JP-8 from algae.
The White House is expected to get its first official briefing on the way forward in buying secret intelligence-gathering satellites as soon as next week, industry and Pentagon officials say. The intelligence community (IC) is pushing for high-end technology and larger satellites for the electro-optical (EO) and infrared (IR) collection mission. The Pentagon, by contrast, advocates for medium-class satellites in a lower orbit.
COBB RESIGNS: Embattled NASA Inspector General Robert Cobb will be resigning from the agency effective April 11. He sent his resignation letter to the White House April 2. Cobb had been criticized for his performance by the Government Accountability Office (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 16), which prompted calls for his ouster by members of Congress.
COOL NAVY: Later this year, the USS Carl Vinson will return to the fleet post-overhaul, equipped with 10 air-conditioning plants and five refrigeration plants that have been converted from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants to non-ozone depleting hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants. CFC refrigerants are ozone-depleting substances and potent greenhouse gases. Although HFC refrigerants also are greenhouse gases, the Navy says they have lower global warming potential.
Because of budget constraints, the U.S. should invest in just a single boost-phase missile defense system, the former director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) says.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The chief designer of China’s manned space program, Zhou Jiaping, says more tests of the spacesuit used in his nation’s first spacewalk are upcoming, along with upgrades planned to meet long-term requirements for lunar exploration.
