SAVIOR SATELLITES: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites helped rescue 353 people equipped with locator beacons from potentially life-threatening situations in the U.S. and its surrounding waters during 2007. NOAA's polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites, along with Russia's Cospas spacecraft, are part of the international Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System, called COSPAS-SARSAT. The system uses a network of satellites to quickly detect and locate distress signals.
PARIS - France is establishing a permanent base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that will allow it to hike its support of peacekeeping and security activities in the face of increased unrest in the Gulf region and a growing Iranian menace. The French took advantage of a state visit this week by President Nicolas Sarkozy to establish a permanent base in Abu Dhabi that could accommodate air, naval and land forces and serve as a platform for growing multilateral exercises with Qatar and Kuwait, with which France also has close defense ties.
The U.S. Army has accelerated testing of two of the prototype unmanned vehicles in its Future Combat Systems (FCS) program - the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) and the Class I unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Beginning this month, 25 SUGV units from iRobot Corp. and 11 Class I (Block 0) UAVs from Honeywell will be delivered to Army Evaluation Task Force soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, who will train with the equipment before conducting user testing in the summer.
CANADIAN HERCULES: Lockheed Martin announced late Jan. 16 that Canada officially signed for 17 C-130J Super Hercules airlifters and related equipment and services worth $1.4 billion. Lockheed has trumpeted its Hercules backlog as the Canadian order was expected, along with potentially others for Norway, India and Australia. Canada's version will sport a longer fuselage - the "stretched" variant - of the C-130J, similar to those being delivered to the U.S. Air Force. Deliveries to Canada will begin in 2010, according to Lockheed.
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has awarded a development contract to BAE Systems for the development of an interim all-quadrant defensive weapon system for the CV-22 tiltrotor aircraft. The contract for the CV-22 interim capability is valued at $491,000, with a potential value of $16.3 million including options.
In observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Aerospace Daily and Defense Report will not publish on Jan. 21. The next issue will be dated Jan. 22.
COLOMBIAN BREW: FLIR Systems said Jan. 16 that it received a $13 million order from the Colombian Ministry of Defense for its Star Safire high-definition stabilized, multisensor systems. The units will be loaded aboard Colombian air force helicopters for national security and counter-narcotics missions. Deliveries are expected to take place during the second half of the year.
The U.S. Air Force has declared a Global Positioning System IIR-M satellite launched in December fully operational. The declaration came Jan. 2; IIR-M contractor Lockheed Martin made the announcement Jan. 15. The Air Force and Lockheed Martin declared the system operational in a record-setting three days, according to the company. Liftoff from a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket took place Dec. 20 at 3:04 p.m. EST.
MEADS MSE AWARD: Lockheed Martin said Jan. 16 that the NATO Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) Management Agency awarded it a $66 million contract to incorporate its PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missile as the baseline interceptor for the tri-national program. The MSE increases the system's range and "lethality" over the baseline PAC-3 Missile, which was selected as the primary MEADS missile when the design and development program began in 2004, Lockheed said.
After considering alternatives to the Lockheed Martin VH-71 presidential helicopter - including upgrading the Sikorsky H-3s - the Navy has decided to stick with the US101 aircraft and fund more significant and costly modifications, according to sources familiar with the program and recent discussions between the contractor and the government.
Sen. James Webb (R-Va.) says a 313-ship Navy "should be viewed as a floor," and that the U.S. needs "more ships to carry out what we need to do." Webb addressed a group at the National Surface Navy Association symposium in Arlington, Va., Jan. 16. His primary concern is what he deems the waning U.S. naval force structure. "[When I resigned as Secretary of the Navy, I said] I do not choose to become the father of the 350-ship Navy," Webb said. "Actually, today that [number] looks pretty good."
787 DELAY: The full extent of Boeing's 787 production delay became apparent Jan. 16 when the company acknowledged first flight has slipped from the end of March to around the end of June. Boeing 787 Vice President and General Manager Pat Shanahan said delay of the initial 787 was caused by the continuing crunch of dealing with "traveled" - or out of sequence - work from the partner suppliers, as well as problems associated with matching production records and processes.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - South African aerospace manufacturer Denel is in talks with Embraer and AgustaWestland about providing fixed-wing and rotary strategic support for Denel's main manufacturing site. Shaun Liebenberg, Denel chief executive officer, confirmed the company is considering the possibility of becoming a risk-sharing partner on Embraer's proposed EMB C-390 tactical airlifter. This would build on the work the company is undertaking on the Airbus A400M program.
LSI CURBED: Defense acquisition regulators have started instituting a new restriction on lead-systems integrators (LSIs) from the fiscal 2007 defense authorization act. According to a notice in the Federal Register, the interim rule implements Section 807 of the October 2006 law, which provides that, with certain exceptions, no LSI in the acquisition of a major system by the Defense Department may have any direct financial interest in the development or construction of any individual system or element of any system of systems.
Raytheon and the U.S. Navy have completed a series of wind tunnel tests of the company's Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) Block 2 at the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel facility at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. Conducted during a four-and-a-half week span in the summer of 2007, the exercise collected more than 500 gigabytes of aerodynamic data during 164 wind tunnel test hours, Raytheon announced Jan. 14.
PARIS - Airbus insists flight-testing of the first A400M will still take place in the summer, but its engine will likely not have been certified at that point. Flight-testing of the TP400 engine has slipped a few weeks to rebuild parts. That shouldn't significantly delay first flight of the A400M airlifter in July or shortly after, but it does mean engine certification will not be in hand, says Airbus Executive Vice President for Programs Tom Williams.
The U.S. Army's top general reiterated Jan. 16 that the service will not be back to health until roughly the end of the next presidential administration, due to prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other demands like re-equipping, modernizing, growing the force, and ever-increasing budget pressures. Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, told an Army trade association near Washington Jan. 16 that the armed service will not regain the desired level of balanced, robust capabilities until about four years from now.
U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen made his case for establishing a coherent U.S. policy in the Arctic in the face of melting ice and Russian encroachment on the territory during a Jan. 16 speech.
BETTER VISION: ITT Corp. said Jan. 16 that its night vision business received a potentially $174.7 million order from the U.S. Army Research, Development & Engineering Command Acquisition Center. The order is for the AN/PVS-14 night vision monocular units and spare image tubes and is the latest under ITT's Omnibus VII contract first awarded in September 2005. The AN/PVS-14 allows users to adjust the gain control in varying light conditions in both urban and rural settings, ITT said. They can be handheld, head- or weapon-mounted, or fitted to a camera.
MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, Huntsville, Ala. - NASA engineers believe they have duplicated the failure mechanism that has plagued the space shuttle program with sporadic bad readings on engine cutoff (ECO) sensors in the orbiter's external tank. The failure produced an intermittent open circuit in the pass-through connector that draws information from ECO sensors in the shuttle's liquid hydrogen tank.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead says that both the number and mix of ships in the U.S. Navy fleet are integral to the success of the newly proposed maritime strategy, which has been greeted with skepticism and outright criticism on Capitol Hill. "In the past year, we've had a net gain of two ships in the Navy," Roughead told a packed room Jan. 15 at the 20th National Surface Navy Association symposium in Arlington, Va. "The question you need to ask yourself is why."
PARIS - International Launch Services (ILS) says it is building a second processing facility at its launch site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, to enable two Proton M launch campaigns to be run simultaneously. The move parallels steps being taken at archrival Arianespace to meet tight demand.
LAW OF WAR: The Pentagon has begun proposing amended regulations requiring Defense Department contractors to institute "effective" programs for preventing violations of laws of war by contractor personnel working with and for the U.S. military outside the United States. The changes come after political and economic fights in Washington under waning days of Republican congressional control and with a jump in outsourced quasi-military work in Iraq to private security contractors.
