Three and a half years into what is traditionally a two-year posting, Mark Lewis, chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force, continues to push for innovation and advancement in hypersonics, materials research and operationally responsive space.
China’s 2008 defense budget suggests the country’s military spending is roughly keeping pace with economic growth, but not growing any faster. The figures are superficial, however, because the total budget may be two or three times the figure declared at this time each year during the annual meeting of parliament. So the whole picture could be quite different. In the declared budget, the government has allocated 418 billion yuan ($58.8 billion) to the military for 2008, up 17.6 percent from last year.
Perhaps the biggest challenge information technology (IT) developers will face with the U.S. military is harnessing technology in such a way that people remain in control of the capability and not the other way around, says Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. And that technology still needs to be pushed down the human chain as far as possible, Magnus said March 5 in his kickoff speech at the 7th Annual Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) NOVA Naval IT Day Conference.
F6 AWARD: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has picked teams led by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Orbital Sciences for the first phase of the Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange (System F6) program. The effort is aimed at demonstrating that a “traditional, large, monolithic satellite” can be replaced by a group of smaller “fractionated” spacecraft working together, DARPA says. The agency hopes to launch a demonstration within four years.
UPGRADED MILANS: MBDA has delivered the first series production batch of its advanced Milan ADT firing post to South Africa, along with upgraded Milan 3 multirole antitank missiles and a training simulator. The post, which features improved optics, integrated thermal imager and digitized localizer, is currently in troop trials in South Africa. The new firing system and missiles were developed under a Franco-German cooperative program.
Australia’s new Labor-led government is terminating the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN) long-running, problematic SH-2G(A) Super Seasprite naval helicopter program, Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced March 5. Immediate focus will now be placed on upgrading and eventually replacing RAN’s Sikorsky S-70B Seahawks. A buy of naval NFH90s will likely be one of the key options to be considered, sources say.
The introduction of China’s new-generation Long March 5 rocket has slipped again, with an industry official saying it is now expected to go into use in 2014. As recently as October the oxygen-hydrogen launcher, which is in the class of the Delta IV and much larger than the current Long March series, was expected to go into service in 2013. Before that, the Long March 5 was seen as a candidate to launch the second Chinese lunar probe, Chang’e 2, which is now due to be launched “sometime around 2009.”
Key Senate staffers on the defense oversight committees are considering adding a proposal in the fiscal 2008 war spending supplemental to lift restrictions on selling the stealthy Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor abroad. This would clear the way for Japan to become the first foreign military sales customer for the fighter. Tokyo is willing to offer about $1 billion for an initial purchase, according to a Senate aide. Flyaway price for the F-22 is now $153 million.
The chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee suggests concerns about politics, jobs and international rivalries could derail the selection of the Northrop Grumman/EADS team in the U.S. Air Force tanker competition.
The A400M European military airlifter has finally received its four TP400-D6 engines to power the first flight aircraft. Rolls-Royce, one of the leaders in the Europrop International (EPI) engine consortium, says that the fourth engine for the first flight aircraft has now arrived in Seville, Spain, for installation. The TP400 has reached 1,000 hours of engine ground testing.
The Defense Science Board (DSB) in a recent report proposes innovative solutions to energy challenges facing DOD, including a blended wing body for fixed-wing, heavy-lift aircraft. Also among the proposals are a variable speed tilt rotor for vertical lift aircraft and a “blast-bucket” design concept for light armor ground vehicles.
ATHENA BID: Rockwell Collins announced March 3 that it is moving to buy Athena Technologies, a privately held company that develops and provides flight control and navigation products primarily for unmanned aircraft. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The companies said the deal should close in about 30 days and is subject to regulatory approvals. The acquisition is expected to be neutral to Rockwell Collins’ fiscal 2008 earnings.
Raytheon said March 3 it received an initial contract to provide engineering services related to a U.S. foreign military sale of the Patriot air and missile defense system to South Korea. The U.S. contractor said it expects “significant” follow-on awards to complete the system integration and to provide command and control, communications and maintenance support equipment, as well as the training of Korean operators and maintainers and technical assistance to the deployed systems.
China’s military has been known for generations as a force that relied on simplicity, mass and endurance, but the Pentagon’s newest report to Congress says there is a fast-paced transformation under way.
SUPPORT SERVICES: Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors of Mitchel Field, N.Y., has been awarded a $21.3 million contract modification to provide U.S. Trident II (D5) navigation subsystem engineering support services requirements, the DOD said March 4. The effort will focus on U.S. Strategic Weapon System shipboard integration support and U.S. trainer shipboard integration support. The work will be performed in Mitchel Field and is expected to be completed by April 2010.
U.S. defense officials continue to back off any launch date for Transformational Satellites (TSAT) and have told lawmakers they are essentially re-evaluating the program to shore it up. During a hearing on Capitol Hill March 4, Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary for the Air Force for space programs, called any launch prediction right now “premature.” He said an ongoing analysis through spring is looking at “rephasing ... re-architecting” TSAT to make sure it provides the most important strategic communications capabilities to the most important users first.
The U.S. Air Force has told Alabama Aircraft Industries – formerly Pemco Aviation Group – that the service intends to go ahead with its KC-135 maintenance contract award to Boeing, despite the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s sustainment of a Pemco protest over the deal, according to sources intimately familiar with the decision.
“Jumpstart,” a multipronged effort set to fly a so-called operationally responsive space (ORS) payload on the SpaceX Falcon 1 Flight 003 mission, is slated for a June launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. Air Force said March 3. “Jumpstart will demonstrate agility and flexibility in the rapid integration of three separate payloads on parallel manifest paths, with the downselect to the final payload prior to the flight readiness review no later than two weeks before launch,” the service said.
CHINOOK AWARD: Boeing said March 3 it was awarded a $280.5 million U.S. Army contract for 11 new CH-47F Chinook helicopters, increasing the number of new Chinooks on contract to 59. Aircraft deliveries under this award will begin in 2011. The CH-47F helicopter features a newly designed, modernized airframe, a Rockwell Collins Common Avionics Architecture System cockpit and a BAE Digital Advanced Flight Control System. The entire suite of improved cockpit capabilities will apply to other H-47 models, the company says.
The dire need for a better energy strategy should not preclude careful study and analysis of all the options being proposed, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (R-N.M.) told a packed house March 3 at the U.S. Air Force’s Energy Forum in Arlington, Va. “There is a growing consensus across the ideological spectrum that we need to move faster and go further to secure energy,” he said. Bingaman cited the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 as examples of steps taken by Congress, across parties, to address the need for clean energy.
Congressional reaction to the U.S. Air Force decision to pick the Northrop Grumman/EADS KC-330 for its tanker replacement fleet continues to snowball, with House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) adding a March 5 hearing on the issue to the panel’s schedule.
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley won’t confirm the news that Iran is the first big customer for the Russian-made, advanced SA-20 air defense missile, but he did detail what such a sale would mean operationally while speaking to reporters in Washington last week. He highlighted in particular the 100-mile range of the SA-10 and the 200-mile-plus range of the SA-20 surface-to-air missiles. “The SA-20 is a big deal,” he said. “Put it next to the Washington monument, and you can [target] airplanes all the way from Philadelphia to Richmond.”
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne has formally notified Congress that cost overruns on the Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite program have topped 15 percent of the program’s baseline, largely due to a Pentagon decision to restart the production line and add a fourth spacecraft (SV-4) to the planned total buy.
