NASA says that new data from the Phoenix Mars lander are making it look less conclusive that soil analyzed by the lander’s soil chemistry experiment is Earth-like and can support life. Aviation Week has reported that the new information involves the “potential for life” on Mars (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 4). That potential can either be positive or negative, and the new data indicate the new soil tests are at best inconclusive, according to the information being released on the soil chemistry experiment.
BOMBER TALK QUIETED: In justifying the need for a new bomber and quickly, the U.S. Air Force’s sales pitch went too far, surviving service officials say. But despite decapitation of the service’s leadership, the program is alive and well. It’s just that public discussion of a new subsonic, stealthy bomber for the U.S. Air Force has quieted and is expected to remain so as participants in the program realized that some secrecy rules had already been broken in revealing the 2018 aircraft’s capabilities.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) Aug. 7 - 9 — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s 25th Annual Systems and Technology Symposium. Anaheim, California Marriott Hotel. For more information call 703-526-6629 or go to www.darpa.mil
BRITISH RIVET?: There’s been talk the U.S. might sell RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft to the United Kingdom. But BAE Systems CEO Mike Turner thinks that’s unlikely. “I’d be very surprised if the U.K. would buy Rivet Joint,” he notes. Why? “I don’t think they have sufficient money,” Turner says. The U.K. government currently is undergoing a spending review owing to a lack of money to meet all of its modernization needs.
Too much may be being made about discussions on the quantities of Eurofighter aircraft that partner nations will buy under the Tranche 3 program now being negotiated. The focus for BAE Systems is to ensure continued upgrades of the fighter, departing BAE Systems CEO Mike Turner says.
RETHINK GWOT?: A new Rand study says the U.S. should rethink its war-on-terror strategy to deal with a resurgent Al Qaida. Rand found that most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process or because local police and intelligence agencies arrest or kill key members. Police and intelligence agencies should lead the effort rather than the military, and the United States should abandon the use of the phrase “war on terrorism,” researchers concluded. “The U.S.
Most major defense programs are being funded at the level requested by the Pentagon in the fiscal 2009 spending bill approved by House appropriators. But lawmakers are giving more detailed direction on how the money is to be distributed within programs. Additionally, the fiscal ’09 bill may spell the end of emergency supplemental requests for war funding. It requires the Defense Department to submit a formal budget request for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the annual Pentagon budget request.
The U.S. Senate has confirmed Gen. Norton Schwartz to be Air Force chief of staff and Gen. Duncan McNabb, currently USAF vice chief, to replace Schwartz as head of U.S. Transportation Command. The action came shortly before the chamber adjourned midday Aug. 1 for its monthlong, annual summer break. The night before, the Senate Armed Services Committee had approved the four-stars’ nominations by overwhelming, although not unanimous, votes. Schwartz was approved by 19-2, while McNabb was 19-1.
IEDS HIGH PRIORITY: The U.S. Homeland Security Department continues to put a high priority on deterrence, prevention and protection from improvised explosive devices in Western nations, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said July 25. This doesn’t mean the focus is on the type of sophisticated roadside bombs seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, noting that almost every single terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001 has involved a homemade bomb (IED). This includes attempts to put liquid bombs on aircraft, backpack bombs on subways, etc.
B-52 UPGRADES?: The mission for toe-to-toe nuclear combat lives on. As part of the recovery from a series of nuclear embarrassments, advisors to the U.S. Air Force are pushing Boeing to propose an upgrade package for the B-52’s nuclear capabilities. Now that a Pentagon task force has rejustified nuclear deterrence and defense, service officials want to improve both aircraft systems and weapons for greater reliability with such upgrades as advanced neutron generators and capacitors.
COUNTERTERRORISM WORK: A University of Maryland-based academic research consortium funded by the U.S. Homeland Security Department will extend its work on counterterrorism strategies for three more years with $12 million in Homeland Security Department funding. The three-year-old consortium consists of 30 research institutions. It will now examine how individuals who become terrorists are radicalized and how they might form homegrown terrorist groups in the U.S. and other nations.
FREED FUNDS: The DOD has released $1 billion in funding to acquire six Lockheed Martin F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft as part of the second Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) contract for the F-35. The LRIP 2 contract, worth $2.2 billion for a total of 12 aircraft, was awarded in May. At that time the government authorized six conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) F-35As, with release of $933 million, and gave provisional approval for the STOVL jets pending certain requirements.
MRAP SUPPORT: Navistar Defense LLC of Warrenville, Ill., has been awarded a $29,355,367 contract modification for sustainment items to support Category I Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, the Defense Department said Aug. 1. The contract will also support several engineering change proposals to improve the vehicles’ capabilities. The work will be performed in West Point, Miss., and is expected to be completed by April 2009.
NASA is planning a major announcement this month on discoveries by the Phoenix Mars lander and based on results still being analyzed from the spacecraft’s organic oven and soil chemistry laboratories. Data from a second soil test by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) wet chemistry instrument are highly “provocative,” and White House officials have been informed about what the data show, Phoenix sources tell Aviation Week.
BELGIAN BUILDUP: Belgium will deploy four F-16 fighters and 100 additional combat soldiers to Kandahar in an effort to help reinforce the embattled southern zone of Afghanistan. A Belgian force of roughly 350 men is already in place in the capital of Kabul and in Kunduz in the north, which has been less prey to violence. The move follows a recent decision by France, which is also present in Kabul and Kandahar, to deploy additional forces to the eastern part of the country where Western forces are seeing increased hostile activity.
A Raytheon Cobra unmanned aircraft system (UAS) was destroyed July 28 when it crashed into an athletic field light tower at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Spring, Colo. during a demonstration flight for academy officials.
Combining for about $8.7 billion in contracts and modifications through the end of June, fixed wing and rotary aircraft costs accounted for about 31 percent of the top 10 Pentagon expenses at the half-year mark, according to an Aerospace Daily analysis of government contracting data provided by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.
BRITISH SPACE LAB: The European Space Agency has agreed in principle to set up an engineering facility in Britain. The nature of the facility, which will be located near the Harwell business campus in Oxfordshire, has not been determined. But it will specialize in robotic exploration, climate change, telecommunications or other applications activities in which Britain’s science and engineering communities are among Europe’s leaders.
ASIAN-PACIFIC ISR: Airborne early warning and maritime patrol aircraft will be some of the main beneficiaries of the Asian-Pacific realm’s military modernization, and airborne sensors that aid in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) will also get a leg up, consultancy Frost and Sullivan said in a new forecast. That market earned revenue of $86 million in 2007, and analysts there estimate it to reach $99.5 million in 2014.
POWERFUL SETTLEMENT: The U.S. Justice Department said Pratt & Whitney, a United Technologies company, and subcontractor PCC Airfoils will pay the government more than $52.3 million to resolve allegations that they knowingly sold defective replacement turbine blades for U.S. Air Force F-15s and F-16s. Related defects led to an F-16’s crash in 2003, in which the pilot safely ejected, as well as a temporary grounding in part of that fleet (Aerospace DAILY, July 7, 2003). Pratt will pay more than $50.3 million while PCC, a unit of Precision Castparts, will pay $2 million.
A brief misstated the schedule of the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile program (DAILY, June 30, p.1). The Pentagon plans to award two contractors 28-month technology demonstration contracts by the end of 2008. However, the Defense Department plans to review the program in August 2009 prior to proceeding with a 44-month system development and demonstration phase.
