TOKYO Japan’s geostationary Engineering Test Satellite (ETS) is having problems with two of its four ion engine thrusters. ETS-VIII, launched Dec. 18, 2006, has two tennis court-sized antenna reflectors to enable direct voice and data communications with handheld terminals on the ground. The satellite features two redundant sets of two ion engines – System A and System B – on the northern and southern sides of the spacecraft to perform orbital maneuvers.
SEOUL – South Korea’s KFX stealth fighter project has met opposition from a top government think tank, which says the country would get little economic benefit from the money that would be spent on the program. The think tank, the Korea Development Institute, has assessed the economic spin-off from the project at no more than 3 trillion won ($3.2 billion).
Boeing successfully handed over control of the first of six Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellites to the U.S. Air Force Jan. 28. The spacecraft will be controlled by the 3rd Space Operations Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., and its payload operated through four Army Wideband Satellite Operations Centers. WGS-1 is DOD’s highest capacity communication satellite. It can provide a 25 percent power margin in its downlink beams, which can be used to provide additional communications capacity.
The Pentagon failed to properly record about $30 billion worth of interim payments for contract financing, a recent DOD Inspector General (IG) report says. The Defense Department needs to revise its financial management policy to make sure it keeps its books straight for such accounts, according to the Jan. 18 report.
Careful choreography will be necessary Jan. 30 as the two U.S. members of the International Space Station crew venture outside to replace a critical mechanism on a power-producing solar array. Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Dan Tani are scheduled to spend about six hours in extravehicular activity (EVA) to replace a bearing motor roll ring module (BMRRM) on one of the starboard beta gimbal assemblies that rotates an attached solar array halfway along its long axis.
It’s time for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to start thinking about a post-Iraq transition to non-counterinsurgency (non-COIN) missions, a key member of the Senate Armed Services Committee says.
A Jan. 14 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report detailing the ongoing debate over the proposed sale of 900 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia found that Congress’s problems with the sale are manifold.
HIGH LOW: IBM won a $6.4 million contract from the U.S. Air Force for a Sub-threshold-slope Transistor program. The object of the research is to develop novel transistor technologies that can run high-performance logic circuits while consuming only minute amounts of electricity. To that end, research officials plan to design and build transistors based on extremely low-power, on-thermonic switching.
NETCENTRIC FUNDS: Funding for network centric warfighting should be taken away from the individual armed services and turned over to the Pentagon’s joint staff, or the U.S. risks losing dominance on the cyber-battlefield, says Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). A retired Navy three star admiral, Sestak tells the Precision Strike Association’s Winter Roundtable that “jointness should be the key in acquisition,” just as joint commands and operations were established in 1986 by the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act.
Japan has grounded its fleet of 75 Mitsubishi F-2s after the control stick of one of them broke off in air-to-air training on Jan. 21. The F-2 is an enlarged version of the Lockheed Martin F-16. The incident happened over the sea east of Misawa, where the fighter was based. When the pilot pulled on the stick - which in the F-2 is a sidestick controller - it broke away from its attachment point. The pilot grabbed a 5 cm (2-inch) long piece called the force sensor to recover control of the aircraft.
FIRM DATE: Space shuttle program managers are expected this week to announce Feb. 7 as a firm launch target for the STS-122 Atlantis mission that will carry the European Columbus Module to the International Space Station. The status of the engine cutoff (ECO) sensor pass-through connector replaced on Atlantis’ external tank was discussed at a program-level flight readiness review (FRR) Jan. 25.
WELDON OUT: Florida Republican Rep. Dave Weldon, a reliable appropriator for NASA’s interests, will retire from Congress at the end of the current session, according to several news reports Jan. 25. Last month, Weldon proposed legislation that would eliminate the coming gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability by keeping the space shuttle flying twice a year beyond its scheduled 2010 retirement, until replacement Constellation systems arrive (DAILY, Dec. 18, 2007).
PRESIDENTIAL AIRLIFT: The White House is calling for an “updated transport infrastructure to facilitate movement of [armed] forces, prepositioned equipment along transport routes, and lean command structures for deployable operations,” since U.S. military forces stationed abroad will be leaner but have to deploy further away and faster. “Our overseas force realignment must improve rapid response capabilities for distant contingencies, because our forces will not likely fight where they are stationed,” an official position statement said last week.
SMOOTH SAILING: Lockheed Martin officials are anticipating positive comments from the U.S. Coast Guard regarding Tempest certification of the National Security Cutter (NSC) in the lead-up to February’s builder’s trials and April acceptance of the ship. Based on analysis of the USCG Cutter Bertholf by the U.S. Navy Space and Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) conducted in early January 2008, only “minor and readily corrected discrepancies related to cabling” were identified, and Lockheed is moving quickly to remedy the problems.
Lockheed Martin and Boeing, two rivals in the manned fighter market, have established a partnership to go after the next big U.S. Air Force contract – the building of a manned, next-generation bomber.
MR. MANPADS: President Bush has made veteran official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. the State Department’s special envoy for MANPADS threat reduction, with the rank of ambassador. Bloomfield will head an interagency task force focused on keeping man portable air defense systems (MANPADS) out of the hands of terrorists and criminals. The task force includes representatives from the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments, with input from Justice, Treasury, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI’s National Counterterrorism Center.
Problems facing DOD with oversight of contractors deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq are long-standing issues in desperate need of resolution, William Solis of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told Capitol Hill lawmakers Jan. 24.
LONDON – The British Royal Navy is continuing to struggle to meet key aircrew numbers, with significant “shortfalls” for both fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Figures provided to the British Parliament Jan. 22 show that the navy is substantially below its target personnel figures in some key areas of naval aviation. There is a 57 percent shortfall in BAE Systems Harrier GR7 instructors, while in some ranks the navy is 51 percent short of its intended number of Harrier pilots.
NEXT FRONTIER: Space may not be the final frontier, at least for entrepreneur Richard Branson. Could harnessing sea power be next? The Spacecraft Company, a joint venture between Branson’s Virgin Galactic subsidiary and designer Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, envisions building a thriving personal spaceflight business in the next decades (DAILY, Jan. 25).
INDIAN NAVY: U.S. Navy shipbuilding officials are talking with Indian counterparts to try to expand cooperation between the two countries’ navies in torpedo testing and evaluation. U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) Naval Undersea Warfare Center Keyport Division hosted top scientists from India’s Defense Research and Development Organization and the U.S. Navy’s International Program Office on Jan. 11, according to NAVSEA. Indian officials in turn invited U.S. officials to India for a tour of their related facilities.
A panel of Afghanistan experts Jan. 23 called for increased U.S. commitments and awareness to nation-building and security operations in the war-torn country – and they told legislators that perceived problems with contributions from NATO allies can not be fixed with threats of withholding access to U.S. contracting.
The U.S. Army’s Grow the Force initiative, which aims to grow active and reserve forces by 74,200 personnel by fiscal 2013, may falter under the weight of funding demands unaccounted for in its initial report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told Congress in a Jan. 18 report. The Army’s planned expansion also includes building six additional active modular brigade combat teams and additional support units, which the service has estimated will require about $70 billion in increased funding through FY ‘13, with significant increases thereafter.
