COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Australia is a possible site for the first new Space Fence radar monitoring station, according to Gary Payton, the deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force for space. The Space Fence is a program to replace aging bistatic S-band radar sites designed during the Cold War to monitor the number and orbital behavior of satellites. The existing infrastructure is aging and requires upgrade to monitor more satellites and smaller objects in space. The first new site is expected to begin operating in 2015.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) has completed a ground test firing of a subscale attitude control motor thruster at its Elkton, Md., site for the launch abort system (LAS) of NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle.
NO AIR YET: The U.S. State Department says a decision has not been made yet on who will perform airborne protective security details in Iraq, although based on Iraq’s recent decision over dumping Xe — formerly Blackwater — State has had to notify the company in writing that it did not renew Xe’s task order for air operations. “I believe that we still require air assets. No decision has been made on who will do that job,” a department spokesman said April 1. Current services, including helicopters, run through May and are provided by Presidential Airways, a part of Xe.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The U.S. Air Force plans to issue a final request for proposals for the Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program April 24, says Craig Cooning, vice president of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. But Boeing and competitor Lockheed Martin don’t seem to be relying on TSAT to continue with their space businesses. The program is widely thought to be near the top on a list of likely kills expected in the wake of the financial downturn and cuts in Pentagon spending.
BEIJING — China is accelerating reform of its military aircraft sector by bringing forward the establishment of a company that will be its national defense champion. Government and industry leaders have dropped plans to initially restrict the new business — a maker of fighters, trainers, drones and missiles — to the status of a division of national aeronautics conglomerate Avic. Instead, the organization has now been set up as a company under the name Avic Defence.
As anxiety over the health of the Pentagon’s overhead nonimaging infrared (ONIR) constellation continues, yet another idea for an alternate system is emerging. U.S. Strategic Command is proposing a single satellite called the IR Augmentation System (IRAS), which would be a free flier.
UNMANNED NAVY: Oshkosh Defense is partnering with the U.S. Naval Warfare Center (NSWC) to develop and evaluate potential new uses of the company’s autonomous technology. The NSWC will sponsor these cooperative operations, which will involve Oshkosh’s unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) TerraMax, and take place at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The NSWC will investigate using the TerraMax, based on Oshkosh’s Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) 4x4, as a robotic MTVR in different mission-specific scenarios.
Contractors working on NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares I launcher will get more money this spring — about $1.8 billion for Lockheed Martin’s work on Orion alone — to account for schedule and design changes since the human-rated spacecraft developments started in 2006. “We’ve matured the design substantially, so there will be new costs because we made it harder to build,” Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley says, characterizing the Orion contract modification only as “substantial.”
NEW DELHI — On the eve of India’s elections, intelligence sources have warned that around 20 trained Pakistan-based militants, including seven or eight pilots, have entered India to carry out attacks and hijackings similar to the 9/11 attacks.
JIEDDO CONFERENCE: The U.S. Defense Department’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) will host a Technology Outreach Conference in Huntington Beach, Calif., in early May. The conference — restricted to those with secret-level clearances — comes as JIEDDO has been working on improving its reputation with Capitol Hill and industry after years of enigmatic relations with both, as well as reconsideration of the group’s role and mission.
Taking Pentagon and industry concerns into consideration, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) passed a revised defense acquisition reform bill April 2 that drops an absolute ban on separate entities of the same contractor both advising the Defense Department on weapons systems and providing those systems.
PARIS — Europe is moving to streamline defense acquisition management, with negotiations soon to begin between the European Defense Agency (EDA) and the European defense procurement organization Occar on how to cooperate.
The majority of the Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have asked President Barack Obama to authorize military commanders to employ the U.S. missile defense system if they perceive the United States or its allies are put at risk by an expected North Korean rocket launch. The April 1 letter comes after weekend comments by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that indicated the United States at least would not seek a military solution to stop the launch, expected April 4-8.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo — The U.S. Air Force is expecting to finally launch its first Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF satellite in November, according to Craig Cooning, vice president of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. The program has experienced problems in the past. Most recently, the first GPS IIF satellite was found to have a problem with a piece of onboard equipment designed to integrate four signals. Cooning says a repair is in the works.
PERSISTENT EYE: The U.S. Army recently conducted a continuous, 30-hour demonstration of persistent surveillance of a point target using AeroVironment’s (AV) RQ-11B Raven small unmanned aerial system (UAS). The demonstration at Camp Roberts, Calif., followed an inquiry from Pentagon officials regarding the potential for AV’s Raven to perform low-cost, tactically relevant, persistent surveillance. The test used one standard production Raven baseline system, which consists of three aircraft and two ground control stations.
Reports that the Pentagon may be considering drastic cutbacks to elements of the Army’s $160 billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) program are alarming some key members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) says he wants to hear “what the arguments are [for cutting back] before I reach any conclusion.”
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CARTER CONFIRMATION: A key Senate panel issued a favorable report April 1 on Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama’s choice to be the Pentagon’s next acquisition chief. Carter’s nomination now goes to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote by the entire body. If approved, Carter, a Harvard professor of international relations and former Clinton administration official, will succeed John Young, the current under secretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Critics, including Sen.
MAKING WAVES: ITT Corp. announced April 1 the qualification and release of the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) 1.0C waveform. According to the company, this is the first qualified waveform to reach Software Communications Architecture 2.2.2 compliance. Throughout 2009, ITT will perform numerous integration and test activities to finalize the porting of the waveform onto other JTRS radio platforms. A study to cooperatively define future SRW enhancements with all stakeholders has also begun.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) expects to issue a request for information (RFI) “any day now” to industry for a wide array of structures, systems and control technology that could be used as the basis for a hypersonic, responsive space launch demonstrator. The RFI is for the follow-on phase to the Future responsive Access to Space Technologies (FAST) program, which focused on several ground experiments aimed at developing baseline technology for the future demonstrator.
The Iraqi Air Force has a three-phase, 11-year improvement plan, including plans to buy T-6 trainers and eventually a few dozen multirole Lockheed Martin F-16s by the middle of next decade, while the navy there is looking for offshore patrol boats, military officials near Washington said April 1. But the war-torn Middle East country is increasingly facing a budget squeeze of its own, they also said.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies will provide the instrument unit assembly (IUA) for the Ares I shuttle-replacement launcher under a $50 million, four-year contract from Boeing.
