IRAQ AIR FORCE: VSE Corp. and a unit of Qinetiq North America have been awarded a three-year, $62 million U.S. Army task order for the Coalition Air Force Transition Team’s mission to establish a flight training school for the new Iraqi air force. VSE is the Army Communications Electronic Command’s task leader. Qinetiq’s Westar Aerospace & Defense Group is the primary subcontractor and will serve as the team’s lead performer, training selected members of the Iraqi armed forces on both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft.
NASA’s plan to put an outpost at the moon’s south pole may need re-evaluating after detailed mapping data comes in from the fleet of lunar orbiters in operation or on the way. Early radar-interferometer data collected with the Goldstone Solar System Radar in California shows the terrain around the Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole is much more rugged than previously understood, with peaks in the 6,000-meter range and slopes as steep as 25-35 degrees.
February 12 - 13, 2008 National Press Club Washington, DC The premier conference addressing the impact of combat doctrines, requirements, funding, and program “winners and losers”. Join us for DT&R 2008: Managing the Competing Challenges of the Immediate Fight. Participate as DOD Leaders Define Tech Priorities & the Resources to Develop Them!
President Bush’s newly stated differences with the recently enacted fiscal 2008 defense authorization law are drawing fire from political opponents, especially in defense of a commission to study and submit reports to Congress on wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and beefed-up protections for contractor employees who disclose malfeasance on defense contracts.
JOINT MISSIONS: The French space agency CNES has made a joint high-energy astrophysics mission with China one of its near-term program priorities. The SVOM probe, intended to study gamma ray bursts, is to be submitted for a green light in the autumn, along with the Simbol-X hard X-ray mission, to be carried out with Italy, and a spectrometer for Russia’s Phobos-Grunt probe. Italy approved its funding for Simbol-X, earmarked for a 2012-013 launch, late last year.
RAISING STAKES: SES has raised its ownership in its Scandinavian joint venture Sirius to 90 percent. The company exercised a put option for 15 percent, raising its shareholding from 75 percent. Swedish Space Corp. will retain a 10 percent share and continue to provide services to the venture. It recently agreed to take over operation of the new Sirius 4 spacecraft, which entered commercial service Jan. 29.
DAHLGREN, Va. – The U.S. Navy demonstrated its Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) at the Naval Surface Warfare Center here Jan. 31, in a 10 megajoule (MJ) test-fire that set the record for the highest electromagnetic muzzle energy launch of a projectile. The EMRG is still years away from becoming a functioning weapon, with current plans calling for its deployment onboard ship in the 2020-2025 time frame. The test-firing, recorded at 10.64 MJ, shot an aluminum projectile 72 feet in 10 milliseconds.
As it transitions from engineering work to production on the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), manufacturer Lockheed Martin expects to lay off 250 employees from the program in April, with another 400 layoffs likely before the end of the year.
STREAMING VIDEO: The U.S. Army on Jan. 31 demonstrated for the first time the ability of Apache helicopter pilots to receive live video from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Live footage from a Shadow UAV was streamed to the cockpit of an Apache through Video from UAS for Interoperability Teaming Level II (VUIT-2). “This is a big step for manned-unmanned teaming,” said Col. Derek Paquette, Apache project manager.
BEIJING – Controllers have adjusted the orbit of China’s Chang’e 1 lunar probe to minimize the time it will spend in darkness during a solar eclipse on Feb. 21. By raising the 200-kilometer (120-mile) orbit by 2 kilometers on Jan. 27, the Beijing Aerospace Control Center reduced the spacecraft’s expected period without sunlight to two hours from three or four.
The Defense Department has announced the selection of seven new Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) projects aimed at fielding and maturing new technologies in a joint environment. In addition to the seven projects for fiscal 2008, three other projects were announced, each of which started toward the end of FY ’07.
LOWER EXPECTATIONS: Technology contractors should not expect major spending shifts this year and should look to apolitical programs, like infrastructure or telecommunications, according to IT consultancy firm Input. In a briefing to clients called “State of the Union: Between Unfinished Business and Status Quo,” Input said that while President Bush is not content to be a spectator in his final year in office, he will face challenges convincing Congress of new initiatives, especially during a heated election contest.
International Space Station (ISS) astronauts apparently cleared the way for station assembly to continue through two more space shuttle visits Jan. 30, replacing a key piece of power-generating gear at one end of the main station truss.
MOBILE COMMS: Slovak defense officials will test prototypes of a mobile military communications system from BAE Systems during March, after which the company expects to be awarded an initial production contract, BAE said Jan. 30. Armored vehicles, including a Slovak TATRAPAN and a BAE RG-32M equipped with communications and information systems technologies, already have been handed over. The system is designed to provide secure data transfer of audio, text, and video at the tactical-command level.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey aircraft are helping thwart improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Iraq, as well as rescuing casualties in record time, the service reports. “While conducting an Aero Scout Mission, the MV-22 supported the largest interdiction of an enemy arms cache in Area of Operations Denver,” Marine Maj. Eric Dent said. “The interdiction eliminated several vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and a large depot of explosives.” The V-22 was vital to mission success, Dent said.
The U.S. Air Force does not plan to include funding for the wide-area surveillance version of its Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) sensor in its fiscal 2009 budget, according to Martha Evans, director of the Air Force’s information dominance acquisition office.
With both the White House and Congress focusing on reviving the U.S. economy this election year, there’s little chance any Pentagon program will suffer serious budget cuts in fiscal 2009, a panel of budget analysts said Jan. 30. Speakers at a pre-budget briefing at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) said many thorny problems – such as curbing the deficit and where to allocate shrinking defense dollars – will most likely be passed on to the next White House occupant.
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The House Oversight and Government Reform committee’s Democratic chairman and top Republican want the Pentagon to report how it will comply with a recently enacted law barring the government from purchasing alternative fuels for vehicles and planes. The so-called Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, enacted last month, bans such fuels derived from coal-to-liquid processes or tar sands if those fuels have higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels.
On the same day the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) held a pre-federal budget release press briefing, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on the budget effect of Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) funding, with both concluding that the weight of future GWOT funding commitments is growing too heavy for the government to bear.
The Pentagon plans to fund a new electro-optical intelligence system for the U.S. Air Force beginning in fiscal 2009, according to Defense Department sources. Dubbed “wide area surveillance,” the project stems from a prototype now operating in Iraq. The prototype system, built by the Air Force Research Laboratory and called Angel Fire, comprises multiple commercial cameras capable of collecting 1-2 frames per second. They are perched on a twin-engine, manned aircraft, which is being operated by contract personnel, the sources say.
The U.S. Army is depending on the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program to reduce its soldier death toll and thus bolster its reputation, Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson argues. “America’s Army is taking a beating in Iraq, not just in terms of the toll in men and materiel, but also in terms of its reputation for being the world’s pre-eminent practitioner of land warfare,” Thomson says in a Jan. 30 brief.
Space shuttle managers are giving a provisional “go” for the launch of space shuttle Atlantis at 2:45 p.m. EST Feb. 7, as long as tests over the next few days show that a bend discovered in a payload bay door Freon line poses no chance of leaking in flight. The two-week long STS-122 mission will carry the European Columbus module to the International Space Station. The mission has been delayed for two months since hydrogen tank engine cutoff (ECO) sensor problems forced countdowns to be scrubbed Dec. 6 and Dec. 9.
JDAM KITS: The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing a $116 million contract to deliver more than 4,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) tail kits, to be delivered in 2009 and 2010. The Lot 12 production contract also includes options for additional tail kits in Lots 13 though 17, with a potential value of $590 million with deliveries through 2015.
