Space insurers say that despite a Proton launch failure and several partial in-orbit failures – including the near total loss of Rascom QAF-1 – the outlook for the year remains positive. Clive Smith, executive vice president of ISB, told a Eurconsult gathering in Paris last week that loss claims to date totaled barely $300 million, against premiums of $550 million, and that “pricing pressure remains downwards.” The downward trend has continued pretty much unabated since the middle of the decade.
LIBERTY’S GUARDRAIL: The U.S. Air Force will establish a temporary mission qualification training detachment for the RC-12 Guardrail aircraft at Key Field in Meridian, Miss. The move – called Project Liberty, in cooperation with the Mississippi Air National Guard – is supposed to help provide more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability for Iraq and Afghanistan operations, a perceived sore point with Pentagon leadership earlier this year.
TALK THERAPY: U.S. Air Force Acting Secretary Michael Donley and Gen. Norton Schwartz, chief of staff, will host a so-called Nuclear Summit on Sept. 18 to discuss the embattled service’s perceived problems with its nuclear weapons mission. Discussions will focus on structure, process and cultural issues. Also up for discussion will be the Defense Department’s Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management report, unveiled Sept.
ROLL OUT: The U.S. Navy will roll out the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) mission module on Sept. 19 at Naval Base Point Loma, Calif. The ASW package, a suite of ASW platforms and systems, is the third and final interchangeable suite designed for the LCS. The package comprises vehicles and sensors that conduct multisensor ASW detection, classification, localization, tracking and engagement of submarines in the littorals.
Cobham is preparing to demonstrate what it believes will be the first in-flight docking of two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as it continues development of its autonomous aerial refueling system. Two specially designed UAVs – one a tanker, one a receiver – are being readied for flight-tests in restricted airspace at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., within the next month, Cobham says.
Kaman has begun marketing the Super Seasprite naval helicopters being returned by Australia following termination of the SH-2G(A) program in March. The U.S.-based test aircraft will be displayed at a Black Sea defense trade show in Bucharest, Romania, at the end of September, with Kaman eyeing new Eastern European NATO members as potential customers.
Images from high-resolution military spacecraft, combined with powerful change detection software at ground processing facilities, is enabling the space-based identification and tracking of specific Taliban and al Qaeda individuals in the isolated villages and rugged terrain of Afghanistan. This imagery is being passed to U.S. Army Special Forces and Navy Seal teams looking for individuals, even down to specific bomb-makers hiding out in mud huts in the region.
FAB PROTOTYPE: Boeing announced Sept. 16 it has delivered its next-generation Family of Advanced Beyond line-of-sight Terminals (FAB-T) prototype to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass. Lincoln Laboratory will use the prototype to continue developing the DVB-S2 based waveform for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance readout over Ka-band military satellite communications.
Russia’s Progress M-65/P30 resupply spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Sept. 17, five days later than planned because of Hurricane Ike.
Pentagon officials are beginning to discuss refocusing the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), or at least trying to better replicate its benefits for other asymmetric military needs – although some leaders caution against losing the group’s “laser-like” focus. “There is potential to open the aperture a little bit,” says JIEDDO’s director, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz. But, “I don’t think we’ll drift,” he further told House lawmakers Sept. 16. “We have achieved that success because of our laser focus.”
SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS: The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded Intelligent Software Solutions (ISS) a $49.9 million increase to their Secure Information Access Analysis and Dissemination (SIAAD) contract. ISS provides enterprise solutions and services to a wide range of government customers within the Defense Department and other agencies through the SIAAD contract. The initial award, made two years ago, provided for a projected $49 million budget to be executed over the five-year contract period.
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LOS ANGELES – The oft-cited claim that 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) should go toward defense spending is not a useful goal, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). The so-called “4 percent solution” has been endorsed several times in the past two years, most notably by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Michael Mullen, according to study author and CSBA defense budget analyst Steven Kosiak.
DEEPWATER KUDOS: Lockheed Martin gave itself a high rating on the work it’s done for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program. The internal Performance Assessment Review evaluated the program’s status and processes, and determined the program was an overall “green.” Eight Lockheed Martin directors, senior program managers and engineers from outside the Deepwater program comprised the assessment team. The two-day review focused on 14 different program areas and provided a review of the business model, offering recommendations for improvement where deemed necessary.
MASTER NAME: The U.S. Navy will launch and christen its newest T-AKE-class dry cargo/ammunition ship, the USNS Carl Brashear, on Sept. 18 at the General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard in San Diego. T-AKE 7 is being named for the late Master Chief Boatswain’s Mate (Master Diver) Carl Brashear, the first African-American to qualify and serve as a master diver while on active duty and the first Navy diver to be restored to full active duty as an amputee.
The U.S. Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) has awarded Boeing three Technology Investment Agreements valued at more than $19 million to cover applied research and development in advanced rotor concepts.
HEAVY TACTICAL: U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) has awarded Oshkosh Defense an $18 million contract to reset Palletized Load System (PLS) vehicles. The contract modification enables continued production of the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles (FHTV) and resets more than 50 PLS vehicles in the fleet. Additional vehicle parts and equipment are also included in the contract. The PLS truck and trailer form a self-contained system that reduces the need for forklifts or other material-handling equipment.
One of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighters has flown for the first time with weapons in its internal bays. Aircraft AA-1 was flown Sept. 16 with an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) and GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition precision-guided bomb in each of its two internal weapons bays.
The Joint Cargo Aircraft program is not delayed, according to Alenia North America, which issued a statement late last week to counter what it said were inaccuracies in statements made in recent news reports about the C-27J’s production status.
Under a contract with Lockheed Martin, the U.S. government would have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars if Pakistan defaults on bills for upgrading its 1980s fleet of F-16 fighter jets, a top Pentagon official told Congress Sept. 16.
NATO and Georgia have signed a framework document to strengthen their cooperation. The pact also establishes the NATO-Georgia Commission (NGC), and NATO says it will consider expanding its liaison office in Georgia. NATO also says it is exploring setting up a trust fund for projects within Georgia, using voluntary contributions from NATO members.
U.S. federal agencies don’t make full use of the Earth science tools available to them to gauge the effects of climate change on their activities, according to a new NASA-backed report. “Most of the agencies in this report have not yet made extensive use of climate change information, or used their decision tools to study the effect of a changing climate on the resources they manage,” said Molly Macauley, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and a lead author of the report. Uses and limitations
The U.S. Army ignored certain procurement procedures for its Army Airborne Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Minefield Detection System (ASTAMIDS), making it harder for program managers to work out requirements, a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report says. ASTAMIDS will provide sensor data to the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS).
Raytheon has submitted an unsolicited bid to the U.S. Air Force for an advanced common ground control system (CGCS) to address what it called mission capability needs for the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The proposed CGCS is also compatible with improved Predator operations centers currently being fielded to the U.S. Air National Guard. The company said in a Sept. 16 announcement that it can produce the first system in under 12 months with data support from platform primes and adequate funding support from DOD.
