Pentagon acquisition chief John Young, whose replacement is going through the Senate confirmation process, is disputing the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s latest assessment of cost growth in DOD’s acquisition portfolio. GAO released its Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs report earlier this week (Aerospace DAILY, March 31). On March 31, Young fired off a memo accusing GAO of sensationalizing cost growth, which GAO auditors tallied at $296 billion on 96 programs.
A team consisting of Atlas V rocket prime United Launch Alliance, ILC Dover of Delaware and NASA has completed preliminary design of an inflatable sun shield for the Atlas intended to prevent supercooled fuel in the rocket’s upper stage from boiling off.
NASA is seeking information from potential industry partners interested in building a follow-on to the agency’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). Targeted for launch in 2014, ICESat-2 would continue the measurements taken by ICESat, which was orbited in 2003 to measure the Earth’s polar ice mass. Ball Aerospace built the original spacecraft.
Direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television broadcast service paced growth last year in the international space marketplace, which grew by $6 billion in revenues for a 2.5 percent overall increase over 2007, according to a report released this week at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Just before recently proposed legislation on acquisition reform is to be debated on Capitol Hill, the Acquisition Reform Working Group (ARWG) is questioning the methods by which that reform will be achieved. The ARWG, an umbrella organization of trade groups including the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), expressed its “concerns with respect to the broader impact of the changes” enumerated in “The Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009” (S. 454).
MINORITY REPORT: The Defense Department awarded 37 grants totaling $17.4 million to students studying scientific disciplines critical to national security and the DOD. The grants are part of the fiscal 2008 Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Institutions (HBCU/MI) program and will enhance education programs and research capabilities at 30 recipient institutions. A merit funding competition for HBCU/MI funding was conducted for the DOD Research Engineering directorate, the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Raytheon’s Visible Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is finally preparing for its entry into the thermal vacuum chamber for testing next month. Raytheon’s engineering and development unit for VIIRS was readied for its thermal vacuum testing nearly three years ago. VIIRS is one sensor that will fly on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), a next-generation weather satellite program managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and the U.S. Air Force.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the missile defense budget is “under review,” but he has not received any specific request for cuts from the White House. Appearing March 29 on the Fox News Sunday television program, Gates said missile defense needs to be studied with a “focus on where we need to sustain development, where we need to sustain a commitment to have a capability.”
PARIS — Astrium Services CEO Eric Beranger says his company is looking at various solutions, including Spain’s Ingenio, to ensure continuity of medium-resolution wide-swath imaging data currently provided by its Spot 5 satellite, which has exceeded its five-year design life. Contracted last autumn to sister company Astrium Satellites, Ingenio (formerly called Seosat) will supply 2.5-meter panchromatic and 10-meter multispectral land imagery for civil and government applications, similar to the specifications for Spot 5.
SOMEWHAT HEAVY LIFT: A House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Army aviation programs March 31 may have provided a clue as to what the U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program will look like after the Fiscal 2010 budget is finally rolled out. The Army-Air Force Joint Future Theater Lift (JFTL) was originally supposed to carry about 20 tons, which fit the profile of early, lightweight FCS vehicles. As the vehicles grew in weight, so did the JFTL requirement, until it ballooned to 30 tons. In a statement to the subcommittee, however, Gen.
LONDON — The fate of the U.K.’s role in the troubled Airbus A400M military airlifter program will be decided by July. Airbus CEO Tom Enders was quoted in the British Parliament on March 30 by Liam Fox, the Conservative shadow defense secretary, as saying, “It is better to put an end to the horror than have horror without end” — apparently a popular German phrase.
PARIS — E-GEOS, a geospatial information service venture founded by Telespazio and Italian space agency ASI to market imagery data and products from Italy’s Cosmo-SkyMed submetric radar constellation and other sources, has signed a contract with 4C Satellite Images & Technologies, an arm of U.S.-based 4C Controls.
COMMAND CHANGEOVER: The British military handed over command of Multi-National Division (South East) to the U.S. on March 31, marking the start of the final drawdown of U.K. forces in southern Iraq. Maj. Gen. Andy Salmon of the Royal Marines, the U.K. General Officer Commanding, handed over to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Oates. The British divisional staff will be the first to leave Basra, with all British combat troops due to leave by July 31.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The “big five” U.S. space companies could lose up to 10,000 jobs over the next few years unless the government accelerates procurement of the first elements of NASA’s Ares V heavy-lift rocket and Altair lunar lander programs, warns Boeing Space Exploration division head Brewster Shaw.
With the fiscal 2010 budget increasingly expected to get pushed out, the U.S. Army may find itself with extra time on its hands to come up with smarter and more efficient ways to upgrade its assets as the threat of major program cancellations looms.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin doesn’t buy industry’s claim that different parts of the same defense contracting company can develop a weapons program while also advising the government about it. The defense acquisition reform legislation that Levin (D-Mich.) has introduced with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would bar contractors from participating in the development or construction of weapons systems upon which another unit of the company is also advising the Defense Department.
Boeing has turned to Times Aerospace Korea (TAK) as a design and development partner for a wing kit for an extended range version of its 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM ER). The Boeing-funded development effort will increase the JDAM’s range from about 15 nautical miles to 50 nautical miles. The Korean air force is one of 22 international customers for JDAM, which is a low-cost guidance kit.
Nuclear weaponry advocates, critics and analysts ramped up their public outreach March 31, a day ahead of the first meeting between the current Russian and U.S. presidents, as well as a slew of major defense reviews and decisions to occur in the United States and internationally this year.
NOT A TEST: The U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation has unveiled its STOC (Simulation and Training Omnibus Contract) II, a multi-award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracting regime worth up to $17.5 billion over a 10-year period. Serco, one of the awardees, said STOC II is supposed to better leverage programs and technology in the Defense Department as well as the Army, train combat personnel for joint war-fighting, and push continued growth in “live, virtual testing.”
MOSCOW — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Kubinka air force base near Moscow March 28, where he was familiarized with practically all types of combat and transport aircraft and given a 30-minute ride on the Sukhoi Su-34 Fullback dual-seat fighter-bomber. The flight was broadcast by Russian television. Afterward the president met with air force pilots and stressed the importance of new aircraft deliveries instead of continuous overhaul and modernization of older models. He said this year the air force will receive another 24 new combat aircraft.
