At least one business consultant is adding his voice to the chorus calling for acquisition reform at the Pentagon, as he lays out his predictions for programs that may be affected by the Obama administration. According to Steven Grundman, director of aerospace and defense consulting for Boston-based CRA International, among the programs that could be "trending positive" are the Army and Marine Corps’ Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), both of which have "bust out into credibility.”
Comments made by Pentagon acquisition chief John Young in November doubting the need for a dedicated U.S. Air Force combat, search and rescue (CSAR) fleet have caused some alarm within the CSAR community, which has long questioned whether DOD acquisition officials understand the mission and its requirements
ARIANE PREP: Arianespace is in final preparations for the first Ariane 5 mission of 2009, a four-spacecraft launch set to go from Kourou, French Guiana, on Feb. 12. Two of the spacecraft — the SES New Skies NSS-9 and Eutelsat Hot Bird 10 telecommunications satellites — will be the primary payloads, while a matched pair of French Spirale space-based optical early warning satellites will ride as auxiliaries. The two Spirale birds are demonstrators for France’s defense ministry. Overall, Arianespace says it plans to launch “six to eight” Ariane 5 missions this year.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a exclusive series of investigative articles on the battle between the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Department over the service’s role in combat, search and rescue (CSAR) and its effort to buy a new CSAR aircraft.
Raytheon is continuing to conduct tests of the latest versions of the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), while also offering the U.S. Navy an alternative warhead for the system. Phyllis McEnroe, Raytheon’s JSOW program director, says this continues a tradition by the company of pursuing cost reductions for the platform.
Boeing has sold the 767-400ER airframe originally intended as the prototype for the cancelled E-10 Multi-Sensor Command and Control Aircraft (MC2A) to Bahrain as a VIP transport. Last year Boeing announced it was looking for a buyer for the stretched 767 following the U.S. Air Force’s decision to terminate the MC2A contract. The aircraft will replace the Bahrain government’s existing VIP aircraft, a 747SP, one of the shortened “Special Performance” 747 variants originally operated by Pan American Airways.
PARIS – Thales Alenia Space says it finished 2008 with 23 percent of the geostationary communications satellite market. The Thales-Finmeccanica joint venture says it landed five awards last year out of 26 worldwide orders, along with four commercial communication payloads and the Redsat payload for the Hispasat AG1 demonstration satellite, co-funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has issued a study that summarizes the end result for U.S. interests in Afghanistan as consisting of “two no’s” – no sanctuary for terrorists with global reach, and no broader regional meltdown. The authors state that in the long run, the end state the United States should be working toward “should be something more than merely fighting terrorists, but also something more realistic than a prosperous and modern representative democracy.
Despite Russia’s open hostility to U.S. plans for basing an interceptor missile system in Eastern Europe, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he’s still willing to talk to Moscow about mutual missile defense against rogue states like Iran.
While military-grade solid-state lasers are being tested in the laboratory, two companies are forging ahead will plans to field weapons earlier using commercially available high-power industrial lasers. Boeing has demonstrated that a laser mounted on its Avenger air-defense system can shoot down a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and Raytheon will shortly test its Laser Phalanx system against mortars in flight.
U.S. Joint Forces Command recently issued its Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO), part of an ongoing effort to map out the future of modern warfare. In the preface to the document, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, wrote that the concept is not a “how-to” manual and does not establish an authoritative document.
Oshkosh Defense has signed a three-year cooperative research and development agreement with the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center to collaborate on integrating a Convoy Active Safety Technology (CAST) system with Oshkosh’s 30,000-pound unmanned TerraMax vehicle. The goal is to create an unmanned lead vehicle that can communicate route information to another unmanned follower vehicle.
INTERNATIONAL NAVIGATION: Northrop Grumman has been selected by Sikorsky Aircraft to provide its NAVEX air navigation system for use on UH-60L Black Hawk utility helicopters for export. Northrop Grumman’s Italy-based subsidiary will supply the NAVEX systems and installation kits for an initial 15 helicopters with a follow-on contract for an additional 17 aircraft. Two NAVEX systems will be supplied for each aircraft. NAVEX is a family of attitude and heading reference systems for both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft.
The new White House Web site puts the administration of President Barack Obama on record as favoring a “worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.” But the wording on the site raises questions about exactly what it means.
Diversified industrial companies Moog and Eaton saw the strength of their aerospace segments lift their quarterly results, even as the weakening global economy took its toll on the other parts of their businesses.
Nation states, not terrorist groups, still pose the greatest nuclear threat to the U.S., a former top nuclear nonproliferation official in the Bush administration says. William Tobey, who was deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation until the change in administrations, said he thinks “the greatest danger at the moment is from nation states that would proliferate and might put those weapons to use – either directly or by passing them to a terrorist.
The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) believes that the Obama administration and the 111th Congress will ratify two groundbreaking export licensing reform treaties, repeal a 3 percent revenue withholding rule that looms over federal contractors and make permanent a long-sought research-and-development tax credit.
Eight Defense Department endeavors – from contract management and weapons system acquisition to protecting technologies critical to U.S. national security – pose a high risk for waste, fraud, or mismanagement, according to a biennial congressional study. NASA acquisition management and information sharing at the Homeland Security Department (DHS) also were faulted in the Government Accountability Office (GAO) High-Risk List for 2009.
The U.S. Marines investigated President Barack Obama before the election — and they say they are encouraged by what they found, according to the Marine commandant. “We asked our ‘visions group’ — bright Marines at Quantico — to examine the last 10 presidencies to give us a feel for what could arguably be the most liberal member of the Senate becoming our president,” Gen. James Conway told reporters late last week. “They said that invariably a president will rally his base to get elected, but almost equally invariably he rules from the center.
BAE Systems is proposing a new Hostile Fire Indicator (HFI) system aimed at filling a gap not covered by current missile warning and countermeasures systems on military helicopters. The HFI will measure acoustic data to detect incoming small arms fire. In a recent teleconference, Bill Ashe, BAE’s program manager for Survivability and Protection Systems, said the device is intended to work with existing sensors and systems. “Even though it has capability, it’s not meant to be a stand-alone system at this point,” he said.
