Defense Secretary Robert Gates is establishing a Pentagon task force to find new and innovative ways to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) to combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates announced the new team during a speech at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., on April 21. During the speech, Gates said getting the military branches to field more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) quickly to support requirements for U.S. Central Command has been “like pulling teeth.”
MRAP ARMOR: Navistar Defense won a $261 million contract from the U.S. Marine Corps April 17 to upgrade the armor on the MaxxPro variant of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Under the new contract, armor protection on production MaxxPro MRAP vehicles will be increased to that of the MaxxPro Plus protection level. To date, the military has ordered 5,214 MaxxPro MRAP vehicles, according to the company.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been awarded contracts by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to study an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could stay aloft for up to five years. They join Aurora Flight Sciences, which announced on April 14 it had received a contract under Phase 1 of DARPA’s Vulture program (Aerospace DAILY, April 15).
RADAR WARNING: Raytheon continues to gather international customers for its ALR-67(v)3 digital radar warning receiver, which allows user aircraft to detect and identify more sophisticated threats across a wider swath of the electromagnetic spectrum. The most recent contract is a $85.5-million U.S. Navy agreement to upgrade Canada’s CF-18s and Switzerland’s F/A-18s. Other users include Royal Australian Air Force’s F/A-18s.
TOKYO - New data acquired by Japan’s Selene lunar orbiter show a clear difference between gravity-anomaly maps of craters situated on the near and far sides of the moon. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released two gravity anomaly maps of Mare Serenitatis (near side) and the Apollo crater (far side). In contrast to Mare Serenitatis’s even gravity distribution, the Apollo crater has almost a donut-like concentric circle gravity distribution.
SAO PAULO, Brazil - The Brazilian air force has asked Embraer not to take sides in the renewed F-X fighter competition. The service wants to pick the winning aircraft without having to worry about industrial issues. The Brazilian aircraft maker still will play an important role in the project, though. The winning contractor will have to work with Embraer to delivery the chosen aircraft to the Brazilian military, says Embraer CEO Frederico Curado.
The U.S. Army in August will award the first phase of its Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) contract, providing a prominent role in the service’s air and missile defense capability to the winning industry team.
BAMS ANNOUNCEMENT: The U.S. Navy is expected to announce the winner in its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial vehicle competition this week, after delaying the announcement from April 18 to allow final approval of the paperwork at the Pentagon, according to industry sources. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin/General Atomics and Boeing all are vying for the contract to develop and build a long-endurance maritime surveillance aircraft.
DEVELOPING RESEARCH: The Defense Department awarded Northrop Grumman a five-year contract to support research and development for the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, with a contract value potential of $100 million over a 10-year period. The Theoretical Studies and Engineering Services (TSER) contract has an option for five additional years. Aside from R&D, the contract will support hardware manufacturing, design and analysis, field data analysis, program planning, management and reporting, administration, quality assurance and other technical support.
TSAT TARGETED: The U.S. Air Force’s troubled Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program is the Pentagon acquisition chief’s “next target” for implementing acquisition policy reforms. John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters April 18 that he was disappointed that he was unable to better address it so far. TSAT’s newfound attention would come after restructuring the Space-Based Space Surveillance program, Young noted.
PARIS – Working teams entrusted with elaborating on a plan to modernize the French armed forces have come up with an outline for streamlining support services and resolving the thorny question of on-condition maintenance. Government figures show that 60 percent of the defense personnel budget goes for support activities and only 40 percent for operations – the opposite of the situation in other allied nations, notably the U.K. The objective of the reform plan, to be announced on June 19, will be to reverse these percentages.
SECURITY OVERHAUL: The Defense Department and three other executive branch agencies are reviewing the process for granting security clearances to the employees of defense contractors. The offices of Management and Budget, Director of National Intelligence and Personnel Management are working with the Pentagon “to develop a new, more effective and timely personnel security and investigative system,” says Troy Sullivan, DOD’s acting deputy under secretary for counterintelligence and security.
FCS CONCERNS: Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces subcommittee, thinks the U.S. Army needs to take a step back and do some hard thinking about its mammoth Future Combat Systems (FCS) modernization program, weighing its value against pressing readiness requirements. “With FCS, they’ve thrown themselves on that barbed wire and they’re stuck to it,” he notes. He is skeptical of large DOD modernization efforts, likening them to the blue screen technology used for visual effects in movies.
AFTER SHUTTLE: Congress will take a look this week at how NASA plans to use the International Space Station (ISS) once the space shuttle stops flying, and six-member international crews are pursuing sometimes-differing research paths in the orbiting facility. William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations, will represent the U.S.
DEFENSE MANEUVERS: Russia and Brazil have signed a wide-ranging defense aerospace cooperation agreement covering potential collaboration in combat aircraft and space launch vehicles, according to local press reports in both countries. The deal was signed by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Brazil’s minister for strategic affairs, and Valentin Sobolev, the vice president of the Russian Security Council. Russia remains keen to secure a fighter export sale to Brazil.
The U.S. Air Force does not plan to include funding in its fiscal 2010 budget request to procure new engines for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) intelligence aircraft, according to a service official. The JSTARS re-engining program has begun with some development work to integrate Pratt & Whitney’s JT8D-219 propulsion system onto the E-8C fleet. The Air Force and JSTARS prime contractor Northrop Grumman selected the engine last year after years of lobbying by Northrop Grumman to get the program on track.
TANKER PROTEST: In a new filing with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S. Air Force is proposing that Boeing’s charges of unfairness in the selection of a European platform for the KC-45 tanker be denied. The request is in a document delivered to GAO that Air Force officials describe as thousands of pages long. It is the service’s formal response to Boeing’s claim that the Air Force unfairly changed its assumptions in judging the $35 billion refueling tanker competition mid-stream, and misunderstood the company’s 767-200LRF bid.
SHADOW ACQUISITION: After a good experience with a team of external defense officials tracking the U.S. Air Force’s recent tanker award decision, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief will expand use of so-called shadow acquisition teams to other major defense competitions. John J.
EUROPEAN SPACE: The European Space Agency has named heads of four all-new or rescoped directorates created to meet the agency’s expanding priorities in space exploration, navigation and telecommunications. The agency has appointed a new director of Human Spaceflight (D/HSF), a director of Science and Robotic Exploration (D/SRE), a director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications (D/TIA), and a director of the Galileo Program and navigation related activities (D/GAL).
The U.S. Defense Department acquisition chief expects to squeeze out some programs through the fiscal 2010 budget-building process as he tries to provide a more dependable and disciplined DOD budget plan. John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition technology and logistics, told reporters at a small Pentagon roundtable April 18 that he agrees with complaints that the roughly half-trillion-dollar annual DOD budget is “over-programmed.” Young, in a free-flowing exchange, said he had no target in mind for how many programs to cut.
ATHENS OFFICE: Following in the footsteps of the Rafale fighter team, French naval systems specialist DCNS has set up a representative office in Athens, and reinforced its partnership with Greek shipyard Elefsis. Greece has expressed an interest in acquiring six new frigates, and the Franco-Italian Fremm, in which DCNS is a partner, is a prime candidate. Elefsis would be given a major role in the program, perhaps in a proposed derivative that could meet a Greek air defense requirement.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) April 21 - 22 — GNSS Signal 2008, “Third CNES-ESA workshop on GNSS signals and signal processing at Institute Aero Spatial (ISA),” Toulouse, France. For more information go to www.toulousespaceshow.eu/download/cct_signal_080219.pdf
PARIS – Thales has reshuffled its management structure to reinforce international sales and promote the growth of services and homeland security. The company appointed former international chief Jean-Paul Perrier vice chairman in charge of key customer accounts, and named three executive vice presidents to manage its three major regions of activity.
