PORK PRIZE: Washington watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named powerful appropriators Reps. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) its “April Porkers of the Month” for threatening to reverse a $35 billion U.S. Air Force refueling tanker contract award to Northrop Grumman and EADS. The losing bidder, Boeing, has large facilities in the two lawmakers’ states, CAGW points out in its April 22 declaration.
MALYSIAN AIR DEFENSE: ThalesRaytheonSystems said April 22 it received a Malaysian Defense Ministry contract to upgrade the Malaysian Air Defense Ground Environment system. Financial details were not disclosed. The deal will create a new air defense sector operations center and includes installation of a new long-range air defense radar, the company said. The center’s command-and-control software will be an adaptation of the California-based Sentry Air Defense Ground Environment System, although a unit in France will deliver the radar.
NO HELOS: French defense officials say there are currently no plans for additional helicopters to support the 700-man force that President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to send to shore up the NATO mission in Eastern Afghanistan. The two rotorcraft in the central Kabul region will be needed to back France’s assumption of the rotating regional command this summer.
Pressure is mounting on Capitol Hill over the fiscal 2008 off-budget supplemental spending measure, with Republicans pressing the Democratic majority to move the bill quickly. Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) have sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a letter, calling on her to work with the House Appropriations Committee to move the ostensibly defense measure to the House floor for a vote “without further delay.”
R.O.K. AIR DEFENSE: Raytheon announced April 21 a $241 million U.S. foreign military sale to provide South Korea with command, control, communications, maintenance support and training equipment for the Patriot air and missile defense system. The production and support award was expected and follows a $28.7 million engineering services contract the company announced several weeks ago (Aerospace DAILY, March 5).
TOKYO – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed the first actual flight model of the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) at Tsukuba Space Center April 17.
An Ariane 5 booster launched a pair of telecom satellites, Vinasat-1 and Star One C2, on April 18. The launch was the second of the year for Arianespace, after the Jules Vernes Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) space tug in February, and keeps the launch provider on track to reach its goal of performing seven Ariane 5 missions this year – a new record. Arianespace lofted six missions into space in 2007 and is in the process of boosting its launch rate. Eight missions are planned in 2009.
Human spaceflight will inspire the next generation of scientists for a civilization that is shaped by science, says physicist Stephen Hawking, citing the human-spaceflight strategy NASA is spearheading as the most “obvious” path to follow.
This week will see the last flight clearance review for Pratt & Whitney’s F135 short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) variant engine for the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. The review is expected to clear the engine for flight-testing in the conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL)-mode only. The first flight of the leading F-35B STOVL aircraft, known as BF-1, is scheduled to take place “as planned” on May 23, despite earlier problems with fracturing turbine blades on the F135 STOVL engine, said Bill Gostic, Pratt’s F135 program vice president.
ORS CHIEF: U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne has appointed Peter Wegner as director of the Operationally Responsive Space Office at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The service said Wegner will continue the group’s charge to develop low-cost, rapid-reaction payloads, buses, spacelift and launch-control capabilities for on-demand space support of joint military operational needs. Wegner succeeds Col. Kevin McLaughlin, the first director, who becomes vice commander of the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. Wegner’s appointment is effective May 1.
The U.S. Coast Guard’s first National Security Cutter has completed acceptance trials in the Gulf of Mexico, another step toward its expected commissioning in August. The 418-foot cutter Bertholf, the first of eight planned National Security Cutters under the Coast Guard’s Deepwater modernization program, was evaluated by more than 80 representatives of the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) over five days of testing at Pascagoula, Miss.
International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko are in good condition and readapting to normal gravity after 192 days in space and the second unplanned ballistic re-entry in a row for a Russian Soyuz crew carrier. South Korea’s So-Yeon Yi, the third passenger in the Soyuz that landed in Kazakhstan early on April 19, is also in good condition after becoming her nation’s first space traveler. She occupied the so-called “taxi seat” in the Soyuz that lifted off to the ISS with Expedition 17 on April 8.
ARMY Chugach Government Services Inc., Anchorage, Alaska, was awarded on April 11, 2008, a $14,085,673 firm-fixed price contract for construction of the F-22 jet inspection and maintenance facility. The work will be performed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, and is expected to be completed on Sept. 28, 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Web bids were solicited on Nov. 17, 2007, and three bids were received. U.S. Army Engineer District, Alaska, is the contracting activity (W911KB-08-C-0009).
Lockheed Martin is teaming up with Rice University in Houston on a new “center of excellence” that will fund joint research in nanotechnology. Known as the Lockheed Martin Advanced Nanotechnology Center of Excellence at Rice University (LANCER), the center will kick off its initial slate of projects in June of this year. Reviewing proposals
PARIS – The European Space Agency (ESA) has kicked off a new campaign to expand and renew the European Astronaut Corps. At a briefing for the press and prospective candidates April 18, EAC head Michel Tognini said the campaign, to kick off May 19, will seek to add four new astronauts and four backups to the corps, which was created in 1998.
The Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) – which the Defense Department uses as its road map for spending and planning – is not worth the pixels it uses on the computer screen, according to Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee. “That’s a complete waste of time,” Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said in an interview.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) does not know which services or agencies might be interested in the “infinite endurance” capability of its Vulture unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), but believes a UAV able to stay aloft for up to five years is a “compelling concept.” Operational concepts for the solar-powered, stratospheric UAV will be studied under 12-month Phase 1 contracts awarded to three teams led by Aurora Flight Sciences ($6.35 million), Boeing ($3.84 million) and Lockheed Martin ($4.28 million).
NO RESTRAINT: The U.S. Justice Department has racked up seven cases under an ongoing set of investigations into the military vehicle restraints industry. On April, 17, the department said Ransom Soper III, a former employee of Peck & Hale LLC, a Long Island, N.Y., defense contractor, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to rig bids on military contracts for U.S. Navy straps. The straps are tiedown equipment used to secure munitions and other supplies for transportation on ships and airplanes.
DOUR DOLLAR: The Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe’s Council has expressed “growing deep concern” over weakness in the U.S. dollar “threatening thousands” of European industry jobs. “Council members believe that the continuing weakness of the dollar will inevitably lead to a massive relocation of aerospace production capabilities, as well as technology centers to U.S.-dollar-priced locations, where labor costs are approximately 30 to 40 percent lower than in the Euro zone,” said an April 21 statement.
