AGREEING TO AGREE: U.S. President Bush and Russian President Putin haven’t agreed on much in recent years, especially over missile defense, but the two outbound chief executives expect to meet in Sochi, Russia, this week on the heels of high-level administration officials on both sides trying to find common ground. “This is an opportunity for the two leaders to ... consolidate areas where we’re cooperating together, maybe resolve some outstanding issues such as missile defense, and provide a platform for the relationship of the two countries going forward,” says U.S.
C4I CORRECTION: After peaking in 2008, the worldwide C4I market is now in the beginning of the predicted “market correction” with several 9/11-inspired programs and efforts wrapping up, according to Forecast International (FI). Still, more than 200 leading programs and some 25 companies should produce at least $64.1 billion in market value over the next 10 years. The programs further are expected to be worth $11.645 billion in 2008, and then steadily decline in value to $3.384 billion in 2017.
BATTLE TANKS: Analysts at consultancy Forecast International expect the international market to produce over 6,900 main battle tanks, worth nearly $27.9 billion, through 2017. Last year, the Chinese Type 98 program maintained its position as the single largest new-production program, they said. But with a total value of $402.62 million (for 118 new-production tanks), Type 98 was worth less than 33 percent of what the U.S. Defense Department spent on the M1 Abrams in 2007.
UAV POPULARITY: Life is getting rougher for U.S. Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle (Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk) aircrews. A standard assignment has been increased to five years, tours are being increased involuntarily and those who thought they had escaped back to manned flight are being recalled to the UAV home base northwest of Las Vegas. And demand is only increasing. “If there is a growth industry inside the Air Force, it’s in unmanned aerial systems,” says Gen. John Corley, chief of Air Combat Command. “There’s been surge, upon surge, upon surge.
Forecast International (FI) projects that a total of 3,706 medium/heavy military rotorcraft will be produced from 2008 through 2017, worth $84 billion, driven largely in part by new models outside U.S. plans. The U.S. military has mostly preferred buying new versions of helicopters already in its fleet rather than pursuing often lengthy and costly development of new designs, according to FI, and U.S. manufacturers have in turn focused their development on providing related upgrades. But the consequence is that all-new models are mainly non-U.S. designs.
FUEL FOR LAWYERS: The U.S. Air Force isn’t taking Boeing’s protest of the tanker contract sitting down. The service’s lawyers have filed for “partial summary judgment dismissal” of some of the claims in Boeing’s protest of the $35 billion award to its rival, a Northrop Grumman/EADS North America team. The Government Accountability Office is reviewing Boeing’s claims – including two supplemental items filed after the March 11 protest – that the Air Force award was unfair.
Congressional auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are sounding an alarm that the Bush administration never issued a National Security Space Strategy and they are suggesting lawmakers consider forcing defense and intelligence leaders to work out differences and publish a plan.
JIEDDO CRITIQUED: The Pentagon’s special group tasked with finding and speeding billions of dollars worth of anti-improvised explosive device (IED) technologies and capabilities to combat theaters does not have good internal controls, including insight into personnel and spending, according to congressional auditors. In reviewing funding transactions totaling $795 million, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found 18 of 24 initiatives were not properly authorized in accordance with internal control standards.
Squabbling over budget cuts in the Mars program apparently led Alan Stern, NASA’s hard-charging associate administrator for science, to resign from the agency Mar. 25. Stern declined comment on his abrupt move, but it came right after Administrator Michael Griffin countermanded an order from Stern’s Science Mission Directorate to trim $4 million from the budget of the long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), Spirit and Opportunity.
SLOWING I.T.: With the Bush administration’s last budget forecasting declining discretionary spending through fiscal 2013, under compound annual growth rate data, federal information technology (IT) consultancy Input is telling customers to prepare for slowing government IT work. According to Input’s analysis, federal IT spending rises and falls with discretionary spending, despite a “conventional wisdom” that IT spending is insulated from overall budget fluctuations because it is increasingly embedded in agency missions.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) April 1 - 3 — Ground System Architectures Workshop, Crown Plaza Hotel, Redondo Beach, Calif. For more information call 310-336-6805 or go to www.aero.org April 3 - 4 — 2nd Pacific Workshop, “Consolidated overview of Galileo’s Public Regulated Service (PRS) market,” Nice, France. For more information go to www.prs-pacific.eu
The space shuttle Endeavour returned home to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) March 26 after 16 days in space, 12 of them docked to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA’s newest orbiter touched down at 8:39 p.m. EDT after missing its first chance about an hour and a half earlier. Controllers waved off the initial landing attempt because of unacceptable cloud cover at the shuttle landing strip.
With its most-important summit in recent memory less than a week away, NATO appears to be split on whether Georgia and Ukraine should be allowed to take a big step towards full NATO membership. Germany, France and six other nations are reportedly opposing a proposal - promoted basically by the United States, United Kingdom and Poland - that Georgia and Ukraine will be granted access to NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP). That sets out concrete steps to assist aspiring members in their preparations for possible future NATO membership.
U.K. TANKER: The British Defense Ministry and an EADS-led consortium on March 27 finally managed to sign the deal for 14 Airbus A330-200 tanker aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF). The 13 billion pound ($26 billion) Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) private finance initiative contract covers a 27-year period. The aircraft will replace the VC10 and Tristar tanker aircraft presently operated by the RAF. The first A330-200 is due to enter service in 2011 (Aerospace DAILY, March 27).
The F-22 Raptor could be going to war this year - or at least operate around its fringes, according to the four-star general directing the U.S. fighters. “There’s no reason why you would not, could not or should not use the F-22,” says Gen. John Corley, commander of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command. The Raptor was declared combat-ready in December 2007.
Responding to Congressional concerns about its ability to track and defend key performance parameter (KPP) requirement changes during crucial moments of important program acquisitions, the Air Force is changing the way it documents and accounts for those changes to address “shortfalls.” Lawmakers’ questions about Air Force KPP alteration tracking started when the service testified in December about requirement changes made with the service’s $15 billion combat, search and rescue replacement (CSAR-X) helicopter program.
The only B-2 bomber to have crashed did so after it “rotated early, rotated excessively, stalled and then dragged the left wing tip,” says Gen. John Corley, chief of Air Combat Command. At that point the pilots ejected and the aircraft ran off the left side of the runway and burned still largely intact. Air Force officials almost never discuss crashes until an accident investigation is complete, but Corley responded to a question from Aviation Week & Space Technology following a breakfast in Washington March 27.
Federal acquisition regulators are considering whether to beef up their rules regarding contractor conflict-of-interests as critics and watchdogs warn over alleged shortfalls in oversight and compliance, especially over so-called inherently governmental functions, as government outsourcing has burgeoned this decade.
A European plan to ensure the longevity of the Jason altimetry satellite system could endanger future cooperation with the U.S., program, officials fear. The Jason system, conceived 15 years ago with Topex-Poseidon, has become a cornerstone of long-term weather and climate forecasting, and with Jason-2, to be launched on June 15, is set to transition from scientific to operational use.
April 15-17, 2008 Broward County Convention Center Fort Lauderdale, FL Military and industry leaders assemble in a unique Working Group Seminar designed to develop a realistic plan of action to improve readiness, availability, cost, and cycle time for U.S. fighters, airlift/tanker, rotor wing and complex electronic aircraft.
With Endeavour’s landing the way is clear for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to begin a series of maneuvers to demonstrate it can safely rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station (ISS).
With pressure on the U.S. Air Force to produce a technologically advanced, next-generation bomber by 2018, the likelihood is that the first iteration of the aircraft will not be unmanned, although successive iterations may be, U.S. Air Force Gen. John Corley said March 27. “I’m a realist,” said Corley, chief of Air Combat Command. The requirement to furnish the fleet with a next-generation bomber that meets all technology, integration and manufacturing readiness levels by 2018, “tells me that I probably cannot make Increment 1 unmanned.”
