NAVY BAE Systems Land & Armaments, LP, Ground Systems Division, York, Pa., is being awarded a $53,190,513 firm-fixed-priced delivery order #0008 under previously awarded contract (M67854-07-D-5025) for the purchase of 40 Category I U.S. Special Operations Command armored utility variant vehicles. The work will be performed in York, Pa., and is expected to be completed by February 2009. Contract funds will not expire by the end of the current fiscal year. The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Va., is the contracting activity.
NASA and its partners on the International Space Station (ISS) are in final preparations for the shift from a full-time crew of three to a crew of six on the orbiting laboratory, beginning with the STS-124 space shuttle mission upcoming in June. While the main objective of that flight of the space shuttle Discovery will be to deliver Japan’s big Kibo pressurized laboratory module, other work in the 13-day mission is directly targeted at sustaining a six-person crew to begin making full use of Kibo and the other laboratories.
COUNTERMEASURES: U.S. Army Boeing CH-47F Chinook cargo helicopters are to be equipped with BAE Systems’ Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (ATIRCM) laser-based missile jammer. The Chinook will be outfitted with two laser turrets, or “jam heads”, integrated with the Common Missile Warning System. “A-kit design is beginning in the summer of 2008,” says Ray Teller, Army deputy program manager for cargo helicopters. Chinooks are already being equipped with an engine exhaust infrared suppression system produced by Ottawa-based Davis Engineering.
BOOSTER TEST: Engineers at NASA and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will use acoustic data from the latest test of a four-segment space shuttle reusable solid rocket motor (RSRM) to design the five-segment first stage of the Ares I crew launch vehicle, after the seven-year-old RSRM apparently met all objectives in the May 1 static firing at ATK’s test site in Utah. Also included in the 32 objectives of the two-minute test was evaluation of how well aging boosters perform. At seven years, the test motor was the oldest ever fired.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) May 5 — The 20th Annual Greater Washington Aviation Open (GWAO), “The Largest Aviation Charity Event in Washington, D.C.,” Lansdowne Golf Resort, Leesburgh, Va. For more information go to www.gwao.org
The U.S. Defense Department has not identified, let alone assessed, all global strike-related capabilities and technologies and has not explained how potential weapons systems will result in a comprehensive, prioritized investment strategy, according to congressional investigators.
SCOUT CAMP: The U.S. Navy will integrate its MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial vehicle (VTUAV) onto an FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry-class ship before the Fire Scout reaches the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The Navy will conduct the Fire Scout Operational Evaluation aboard an FFG-7 in the summer of 2009. A Technical Evaluation will be performed in fall 2008, and the Fire Scout will reach Initial Operating Capability in summer 2009.
The Pentagon certified a critical need for the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) program May 2, following the program’s breach of Nunn-McCurdy acquisition law.
PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) says a reaction wheel glitch that marred the first phase of flight of the Giove B test bed satellite has been fixed, and the spacecraft is now performing nominally. Engineers are preparing to switch on the navigation payload on the spacecraft, which is intended to test a new passive hydrogen maser clock that has never before flown in space, and a MBOC standard signal generator representative of the operational signal.
The first V-22 Osprey squadron returned from Iraq last month, and squadron members were overwhelmingly positive about their experiences with the aircraft. Critics of the aircraft were wrong, said U.S. Marines with the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263. Four squadron members, along with Lt. Gen. George Trautman, aviation deputy, addressed reporters at the Pentagon May 2.
AFFORDABLE ENGINE: General Electric is developing an all-new 3,000 shp-class helicopter turboshaft, the GE3000, under the U.S. Army’s Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine (AATE) program. The GE3000 will compete with the Honeywell/Pratt & Whitney HPW3000 to power U.S. Army Boeing AH-64 Apaches and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks later next decade.
BAE DISAGREES: BAE Systems would like to meet with the DOD Inspector General (IG) to “resolve what appears to be a misunderstanding of underlying facts.” The company strongly disagrees with a recent IG report that uncovered oversight issues with foreign-owned BAE Systems’ work on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The DOD IG “explicitly found no instances of unauthorized access to classified or export control information on the JSF program,” a BAE statement countered May 1.
APACHE AIRFRAMES: The U.S. Army has decided its upgraded Block III AH-64D Apaches will have new airframes. The original plan was to remanufacture the helicopters a second time, the first being when they were modernized from AH-64As to Ds, but the wear and tear on Apaches in Irag forced the Army to take another look. “The DA [Department of the Army] has directed us to do new airframes based on the high op tempo of the current aircraft,” says Lt. Col. Robert Johnston, Apache Longbow product manager.
RETAINING TALENT: Lockheed Martin will get an additional $39.5 million to set up an employee-retention program at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, where the company builds the big space shuttle external tanks that carry cryogenic propellants during the ascent to space. Under the modification, which brings the total value of Lockheed Martin’s external tank contract to $2.967 billion since October 2000, the company will provide incentives to eligible personnel to ensure they continue on the job until the final 10 tanks needed are built and flown.
The U.S. Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command (AETC) suspended all T-38C Talon jet trainer flights on May 1 after a second fatal crash in as many weeks. Two pilots were killed on the morning of May 1 when their aircraft assigned to the 80th Flying Training Wing at Sheppard Air Force Base crashed. Names of the victims of the latest accident have not been released. The other crash occurred during takeoff of a T-38 at Columbus Air Force Base, Miss., on April 23.
ETHICS REPORT: The Woolf Committee report into BAE Systems ethical business practices is due for publication May 6 – the day before the company’s annual general meeting in the U.K. The aerospace and defense company set up the committee in response to a slew of allegations surrounding arms sales, centered on the Al Yamamah program with Saudi Arabia. The fallout from the allegations continues, with the Serious Fraud Office to appeal a court ruling that it acted unlawfully in ending an investigation into the claims.
PREDATOR PLANS: Michael Kostelnik, a former NASA official and retired Air Force general who now heads the Homeland Security Department’s air and marine unit, says his agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has a long-range plan to acquire a fleet of 20 General Atomics Predator B UAVs. In addition to patrolling the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, CBP Air and Marine plans to patrol the waters of the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific for drug runners, according to Kostelnik.
The tri-agency committee that oversees the civil/military National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) has agreed to restore the Total Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS) to the first NPOESS spacecraft.
MORE HELOS: Two aircraft are being added to the U.S. Army’s Bell ARH-70 Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) system development and demonstration program, which has been restructured after delays and cost increases. The fifth and sixth test aircraft will be delivered in May and September, respectively, says Col Keith Robinson, armed scout helicopters program manager. A Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) meeting scheduled for July 2 to approve ARH low-rate initial production has been pushed back to June 2009.
AMPHIBIOUS CLASS: The first of the U.S. Navy’s LPD 17-class amphibious transport dock ships, the USS San Antonio, will deploy with the USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) Expeditionary Strike Group later this year. The LPD 17 class, of which three ships have been commissioned, achieved Initial Operating Capability May 2. At least six more ships of this class will be joining the fleet over the next several years. LPD 18 and 19 already have been commissioned and are undergoing unit level training.
BLACK HAWK: Sikorsky’s first UH-60M Upgrade helicopter is complete and is expected to fly by July. Two M Upgrade aircraft are being built for flight testing of this latest version of the Black Hawk, which features the Rockwell Collins CAAS integrated cockpit, Hamilton Sundstrand fly-by-wire system, digitally controlled General Electric T700-701D engines, and a lightweight composite tailcone built by GKN Aerospace. Planned production of 1,227 UH-60Ms for the US Army will switch to the Upgrade version after around 300 baseline models have been produced, says Col.
The White House is unveiling more details of its $70 billion fiscal 2009 supplemental spending request, designed to hold over combat and other foreign operations until a new administration is in place.
Citing recent Russian claims of Arctic seabed sovereignty, the U.S. Coast Guard commandant is urging Congress to ratify the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty. Adm. Thad Allen believes successful management of the waters and resources in the Arctic would best be achieved by adhering to the international agreement, which was hammered out around the early 1980s. The treaty also would help manage ship traffic in the Bering Strait, which the four-star admiral says “could be the next big choke point.”
