OSPREY PROCUREMENT: The first multiyear procurement contract for the V-22 Osprey, worth $10.4 billion, was awarded to the Bell Boeing Joint Program Office on March 28. The five-year contract, awarded by the Naval Air Systems Command, covers manufacture and delivery of 167 Osprey aircraft – 141 MV-22 Ospreys for the Marine Corps and 26 CV-22 Ospreys for the Air Force – to be purchased between fiscal 2008-2012.
The U.S. Army has updated its Army Readiness Assessment Program, called ARAP, to reflect recommendations from users in the field in the hopes of better addressing accidental troop losses.
BOEING GOES: Boeing announced March 31 that it submitted its proposal to NASA for production of two next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Boeing received a GOES-R risk-reduction contract in 2005, and built the current GOES N, O and P series satellites. GOES-N consists of three imaging spacecraft and ground command control elements; GOES-N, or GOES-13, was launched in May 2006 and GOES-O is scheduled for launch later this year.
LUNAR MOCKUP: NASA’s Johnson Space Center plans to issue a request for proposals (RFP) for a Lunar Habitat Mockup that would be used to evaluate RF wireless and RFID technology for use on the International Space Station or other Constellation modules. The habitat must be man-rated and electrically conductive, according to NASA.
Army Burtek Inc. was awarded on March 17, 2008, a $27,336,975 firm fixed price contract for ambulance shelters to be manufactured and installed on high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle M1152 chassis. The work will be performed in Chesterfield, Mich., and is expected to be completed by March 31, 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Web bids were solicited on Sept. 10, 2007, and eight bids were received. TACOM, Warren Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-08-D-0090).
Bolstered in no small part by the expected production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), global combat jet sales should soar to some of their greatest numbers ever recorded during the coming decade, according to the annual market preview released recently by Teal Group. While U.S. companies will be the biggest winners for fighter fortunes, European manufacturers should also expect to gain in market share, Teal says. It promises to be an expansive market, according to the report.
April 15-16, 2008 Broward County Convention Center Fort Lauderdale, FL Don’t miss this launch event featuring cutting-edge sessions that address the key issues affecting airline interiors executives, vendors, OEMs and even MRO professionals. Including: -- How new all-business class airlines are pushing the envelope in cabin design and materials!
The first Northrop Grumman/EADS North America A330 for the U.S. Air Force has been sent to Germany in preparation for a cargo modification, though work stopped on the project before it got under way. The first developmental KC-45, called D-1, was sent to Airbus’s passenger-to-cargo conversion facility in Dresden on March 4. Work on the cargo modification was to begin March 12.
The opposing sides of the recent U.S. Air Force tanker award are heating up their rhetoric and ramping up outreach efforts in Washington as they jockey for possible legislative language while Congress works up its initial fiscal 2008 defense authorization bills.
AIR FORCE McDonnell Douglas Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Boeing Co., of Long Beach, Calif., is being awarded a modified contract for $13,769,216. This contract is for the procurement of 27 Aeromedical Litter Stations Augmentation System Kits. Each kit consists of nine Aeromedical Stations, one set of included replacement components and one container for storage and transport. At this time $6,196,147 has been obligated. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8614-04-C-2004, P00236).
Northrop Grumman said March 31 it has awarded a contract to General Dynamics Bath Iron Works for construction of parts for a San Antonio LPD 17-class amphibious transport dock ship. Northrop said the deal was struck “to further stabilize the shipbuilding industrial base and meet shipbuilding schedule commitments.” Bath Iron Works will build units for Northrop’s eighth LPD 17 ship, the to-be Arlington (LPD 24). The units will be barged to the Northrop’s Pascagoula, Miss., facility for integration and the completed ship will be delivered by Northrop.
The Defense Department has tweaked and instituted a new rule for its policy regarding contractor personnel authorized to accompany U.S. armed forces deployed outside the United States, according to a March 31 notice in the Federal Register. The Pentagon published an interim rule on June 16, 2006, as concern grew nationally and in Washington over burgeoning contractor support of U.S. operations in Iraq and in national security in general.
Dozens of U.S. Defense Department weapons programs – from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) – cost more and are taking longer to produce and deliver less than was promised, a new congressional report says. The problems often stem from inadequate estimates of costs, development and production time and an over reliance on contractors, according to the broad study released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) March 31.
The U.S. received a resounding endorsement of its placement of a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic from that country’s ambassador, Petr Kolar, at a missile defense conference in Washington March 31.
The Special Air Mission Wing of Germany’s ministry of defense will be modernizing its long-haul and medium-haul aircraft fleets in 2011 and 2012 through contracts awarded to Lufthansa Technik.
RESEARCH EQUIPMENT: DOD will award $49.3 million to academic institutions to support the purchase of research instrumentation. The 210 awards to 98 academic institutions are being made under the Defense University Instrumentation Program (DURIP), and are expected to range from $50,000 to $1 million. DURIP supports the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment that augments current university capabilities or develops new capabilities to perform cutting-edge defense research.
Saturn’s bizarre moon Enceladus is a little more mysterious after the recent Cassini flyby found it to be remarkably like a comet in its internal chemistry. “A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what’s coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet,” says Hunter Waite of the Southwest Research Institute, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer. “To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system.”
CYBER HOME: U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne has invited the governors and communities of 18 states interested in hosting the new Air Force Cyber Command to join in the basing process, the Air Force said March 27. Assistant Air Force Secretary for Installations and Logistics Bill Anderson sent a letter to select state governors outlining the basing process and notifying them of an upcoming call for each to showcase their own state. The request for information will be sent out before May 15, with responses due from communities by July 1.
BOEING ACQUIRES: Following the successful navigation of regulatory hurdles, Boeing will acquire Vought Aircraft Industries’ interest in Global Aeronautica, a South Carolina-based fuselage sub-assembly facility for the Boeing 787. Once the approvals go through, Global Aeronautica will become a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Alenia North America, a subsidiary of Italy’s Alenia Aernautica. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Astronomers are analyzing a brilliant gamma ray burst that took place an estimated 7.5 billion years ago, yet was still so bright it could be seen with the naked eye if you happened to be looking in its direction when it blew. “This burst was a whopper,” says Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, principal investigator on the Swift satellite that first spotted it. “It blows away every gamma ray burst we’ve seen so far.”
MDA TESTING: Raytheon said March 27 that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency awarded it a $22.9 million contract modification to develop an initial Concurrent Test, Training and Operations (CTTO) capability and integrate it with the Missile Defense System Exerciser.
Crew performance is the limiting factor in a worrisome thrust oscillation linkage between the solid-fueled first stage of NASA’s planned Ares I launch vehicle and its upper stages, according to the former shuttle commander who conceived of using a single space shuttle solid-rocket boost to launch humans toward the moon.
