APACHE SENSORS: The U.S. Army’s Aviation and Missile Command has awarded Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control of Orlando, Fla., a $171.8 million firm-fixed price contract for modernized target acquisition designation night vision sensors for the Boeing-built Apache helicopter. Work will be performed in Orlando and is expected to be complete by Sep. 30, 2011.
CHAIRMAN TO CHIEF: Peter Pace, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been hired to lead management consulting firm SM&A. Pace, a retired Marine Corps four-star general and the first to rise to JCS chairman, will become chief executive of SM&A Strategic Advisors and join the company’s board of directors. SM&A said it has worked on more than 1,200 proposals and 150 programs in its 26 years, claiming an 85 percent win rate.
Thales is looking to become a supplier to the Russian armed forces as part of an effort to expand the aerospace and defense contractor’s “multidomestic” defense network. The company already has a growing industrial and commercial footprint in developed markets such as the U.K., Australia and South Korea, and has been moving to do the same in Germany and in particular the U.S. It is now looking at establishing a foothold in domestic defense sectors in emerging markets. It recently acquired a company in Brazil, and is eying India and China as well as Russia.
SECURED WHEELS: Textron Marine & Land Systems said Jan. 24 it received a $228 million contract modification to build 329 more M1117 Armored Security Vehicles (ASVs) for the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. Including this add-on, the total number of ASVs produced for the Army, or remaining to be delivered under contract, will be 2,058 vehicles, the company said. Production and deliveries of the ASVs continue at the normal production rate of 48 vehicles a month with “firm” contracts through May 2009.
SEOUL - Boeing is offering an extra F-15K Eagle free of charge as part of a deal in which South Korea will pay for 20 of the aircraft. South Korea’s defense procurement office held a supposedly open competition for 20 new “F-15K class” strike fighters twice in 2007, but failed to attract rival bids to Boeing’s. All the other potential contractors apparently took “F-15K class” to mean “F-15K.”
The Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a Boeing 747 modified to accommodate a 19-ton infrared telescope peering through an open door in its fuselage, has completed the first phase of flight-testing. SOFIA is on track to begin limited observations early next year, when it will fly above most of the infrared-obscuring atmospheric water vapor (DAILY, Oct. 15, 2007).
U.S. Marine Corps Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 – the service’s first V-22 Osprey squadron – has been successful in its air operations of Al Anbar province since arriving in October, the service reports. The Marines took some heat when they gambled on Osprey development as an aviation linchpin, and some industry experts wondered if the aircraft would be able to survive combat operations. 2,000 missions
EARNINGS: General Dynamics’ net income was up 42 percent in the fourth quarter and 12 percent for the full year. The company’s revenue increases also were in the double digits: 15 percent for the quarter, 13 percent for the full year. Northrop Grumman’s profits were flat in the fourth quarter amid a 10 percent sales gain. But the company had a good full year: net income was up 16 percent amid a 6 percent sales increase. Due to report next week are Boeing, Alliant Techsystems, L-3 Communications and Raytheon.
Continuing problems with its Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) will delay launch of the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) from 2009 until mid-2010, but NASA hopes to use the delay to restore the Cloud and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument to the mission, top NASA officials said Jan. 24.
Richard Branson and Burt Rutan have unveiled the design of The Spacecraft Company’s space launch system: the WhiteKnightTwo mothership and SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial passenger suborbital vehicle, designed to carry six space tourists and two pilots.
Lockheed Martin leaders told Wall Street analysts Jan. 24 that they expect additional orders for F-22 Raptors to become more institutionalized within the Pentagon’s budget requests as aging-fleet issues appear to be only increasing in the U.S. Air Force. Bob Stevens, Lockheed chairman, president and CEO, pointed to recent groundings of Boeing F-15 aircraft and noted that the pace of foreign counterinsurgency and other military operations looks to remain high – thus speeding up wear and tear on decades-old fighters.
While the Pentagon continues to develop more interoperable network-centric systems linking the different branches, the services still get their wires crossed, officers from the U.S. Marine Corps and Army said Jan. 24. While the Marines and Army use essentially the same hardware, the officers said, the way they use and connect them is different enough to keep the services from operating effectively in key tactical areas. More problems
PARIS – French armaments agency DGA has awarded Eurocopter a 220 million euro ($330 million) contract to upgrade 27 Cougar helicopters in a move that should help fill a looming rotorcraft capability gap. The retrofit, which involves installing new avionics, self-protection suites and data links, is intended to keep the Cougar fleet operational until France’s fleet of NH90 transports is at full strength towards the end of the next decade.
DECISION UPGRADE: Under a $49.2 million contract, Ball Aerospace and Technologies will find and integrate science and technology that offers commanders and other Air Force personnel revolutionary ways to make better decisions through advanced interfaces with the service’s systems. Five research areas will be battlespace acoustics, battlespace vision, cognitive systems, collaborative technologies and system controls.
NASA's astronauts will publish their new code of conduct soon, but an anonymous survey of most of them and the flight surgeons who oversee their health suggests they don't believe preflight drinking is a problem. Following up the work of an outside panel of flight surgeons who reported hearing accounts of "heavy use of alcohol in the immediate preflight period, which has led to safety concerns," the anonymous survey of active U.S. astronauts and civil service and contract flight surgeons working at Johnson Space Center drew a blank.
A panel of top Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) officials pleaded with the Washington-area defense technology industry Jan. 22 to adopt network-centric and network-operational models for their national security goods and services, and warned them that contracting oversight and expectations are rising.
Raytheon will provide the U.S. Navy with its APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar (AESA) to retrofit 135 F/A-18 Super Hornets and eventually to equip production aircraft as they come off the line. An initial contract worth nearly $55 million authorizes Raytheon to supply 19 AESA systems, spares and maintenance. The APG-79 program is moving toward full-rate production in anticipation of delivering 415 systems plus spares to the Navy in the coming years.
Touting the need for change, military jointness and decentralization, two-time former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld covered familiar ground Jan. 23 during a network centric warfare conference. "The leading edge of transformation can be a very turbulent spot," Rumsfeld said at the conference, sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA).
A decision by France to earmark nine helicopters and a logistics unit for a U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping mission to Chad and the Central African Republic appears to have been motivated by an agreement to expand the amount of hardware that can be funded jointly for the European Union (EU) mission.
SENSOR CENTER: BAE Systems opened a new 33,000-square-foot electro-optics/infrared (EO/IR) sensor technology design center on Jan. 23 in Lexington, Mass. Among the products that will be designed and tested at the new facility will be BAE's new Enhanced Night Vision Digital Goggle for the U.S. Army, a helmet-mounted goggle that converts infrared energy to video images.
IRAQI HUMAN RESOURCES: Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions said Jan. 22 it is completing the largest-ever Oracle-based Human Resources and Payroll Management System. The system, under a contract with the Multi National Security Transition Command - Iraq, will go to paying and overseeing Iraqi security forces, which have suffered from "rampant" corruption and payroll-related challenges, such as a Saddam Hussein-era tradition of soldiers and police ferrying money from their bases to families, MNSTC-I officials acknowledged on Capitol Hill last week.
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) was the only defense or other U.S. agency to respond to an Air Force desire to move missions to Cannon Air Force Base, N.M. - thus keeping the base open despite independent recommendations in 2005 to otherwise close it, according to a congressional auditors' report.
