NEW YORK - Despite continued protestations by the U.S. Air Force that the service lacks the money to procure additional C-17 airlifters, Boeing CEO Jim Albaugh said he is "confident" the 2008 Global War on Terror (GWOT) bill contains provisions for the aircraft.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending that NASA not proceed beyond the 2008 preliminary design review (PDR) for the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle until it establishes a sound business case for the program.
MARINES IN AFGHANISTAN: U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Castellaw, deputy commandant for programs and resources, says that his service is well postured to shift its attention to the increasingly tenuous military situation in Afghanistan. NATO now leads the operation there. But political strife in Pakistan has provided an opening for an already aggressive resurgence of the Taliban to grow.
JAPAN'S TANKER: Boeing has completed first flight of Japan's second KC-767 following its modification to an aerial refueler, the company announced Nov. 29. The 2-hour, 45-minute flight was conducted Nov. 18 at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas. The company also has flight-tested a new pylon design for the Wing Air Refueling Pod (WARP) designed for Italian KC-767s. The Italian air force has two aircraft flying, and testing of the WARP and hose drum unit refueling systems will demonstrate fuel transfer.
LEAK CHECK: Concerned that the vestibule to the Destiny lab aboard the International Space Station (ISS) may be leaking, the Expedition 16 crew has performed two leak checks on successive nights but found no signs of pressure loss. There was no pressure change detected between the Destiny Lab and the vestibule when Commander Peggy Whitson opened the lab's forward hatch for the second check on the morning of Nov. 29, according to NASA. Telemetry also suggested that the vestibule did not leak overnight.
Honeywell Aerospace is working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on a system to help intelligence analysts screen reconnaissance imagery from satellites and aircraft six times faster than is currently possible. The $4 million, multiphase DARPA contract is aimed at tackling a critical problem in the intelligence community: surveillance systems can gather images much faster than computers and humans can screen them for targets of interest. The program is called Neurotechnology for Intelligence Analysts (NIA).
NASA UAVSAR: NASA said Nov. 27 it is evaluating a small L-Band synthetic aperture radar, potentially for unmanned aircraft, to detect changes in the Earth's surface such as volcanoes, earthquake faults, landslides and glaciers. NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are partnering in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), mounted below a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft that is outfitted with a precision autopilot system for repeat passes over land.
CUTTER WAESCHE: The Coast Guard's second National Security Cutter (NSC), the to-be-commissioned Waesche (WMSL 751), is 42 percent complete and launch is scheduled for April 2008, industry representatives said. Waesche is now fully assembled at the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems facility in Pascagoula, Miss., they said Nov. 28. "Because of planning and work sequencing lessons learned from USCGC Bertholf, Waesche's mast was landed with 30 percent more of its outfitting work completed prior to the lift," said Bob Penney, ship program manager for NSC 2.
GENERAL AWARDS: General Dynamics C4 Systems has received a $75 million order on the U.S. Army's Common Hardware/Software 3 (CHS-3) contract, namely computers and network equipment for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) program. WIN-T has been restructured, delayed and reduced this year, yet General Dynamics eyes hundreds of millions of dollars in work under the revamped program (DAILY, Nov. 16). Also Nov. 27, General Dynamics Land Systems said it received a $47.2 million order for spare parts from Force Protection Inc.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army plan to address difficult issues associated with the command and control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the second phase of the Heterogeneous Unmanned Reconnaissance Team (HURT) program, according to agency and industry officials.
IEDs: A Defense Science Board (DSB) task force on improvised explosive devices is examining ongoing anti-IED programs and the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) in the context of a strategic campaign to address the IED threat. Senate defense authorizers have said they expect the DSB to address perceived duplication in different armed services' anti-IED efforts, along with JIEDDO's approach to short- and long-term investments. Monthly meetings of the task force next year were announced in the Federal Register on Nov. 26.
U.S. missile defense officials welcome recent congressional support for Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) beyond what the Bush administration requested for fiscal 2008, but the Aegis BMD program director says the military still may not have enough missiles to meet needs.
NEW YORK - U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne says his service is likely to add extra redundancy and hardening to its next-generation bomber to ensure the platform can carry and deliver nuclear weapons.
EAGLES FLY: All of the U.S. Air Force's F-15E Eagles have returned to flight after a temporary stand-down following a crash earlier this month, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said Nov. 28. The service put them back into operation around the globe following a rigorous structural inspection. Inspections on earlier models continue, and they are being returned to flight on a case-by-case basis. Wynne said the temporary gap in F-15 support underscored the need to fund a modernized fleet, specifically the F-22 Raptor (DAILY, Nov. 7).
The U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering and Development Center (AEDC) and GE/Rolls-Royce are initiating a series of tests aimed at collecting data on the alternate F136 engine for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. The engine and afterburner have been installed in AEDC's J-2 test cell and will undergo a variety of simulated flight conditions across a wide envelope of altitudes and Mach speeds, says Gene Klingensmith, project manager for the tests.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) completed thermal vacuum testing on the second of its two Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) satellites, which are expected to launch from Cape Canaveral in July.
NEW YORK - U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, deputy commandant for programs and resources, says the V-22 is performing as expected during its first deployment to Iraq. Ten of the tiltrotors deployed in October via ship to their destination in the Anbar province in western Iraq, where much of the Marine Corps activity is concentrated. They are operating out of Al Asad Air Base there.
NEW YORK - U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne says air presence is becoming the United States' primary means of deterring enemies. Highlighting the global U.S. bomber presence, including repositioned B-2s in Guam, Wynne said, "We are saying to [the] North Koreans, don't do it because we have you covered." Wynne focused on the U.S. Air Force providing "sovereign options in a dramatic way" at the Aerospace & Defense Finance conference Nov. 28 here, hosted by Aviation Week and Credit Suisse.
NEW YORK - U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne says his push to garner an extra $20 billion per year to boost the service's procurement plans is "beginning to get some traction" with the White House. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley have consistently told Congress that the extra funding is required to pay for aircraft - including the F-22, Joint Strike Fighter, future refueling tanker and next-generation combat search and rescue helicopter - in higher quantities and at lower per unit costs.
Implementing the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act and addressing some of the issues raised by the director of national intelligence (DNI) is raising some issues for Congress, according to a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. "Some commentators have suggested that ambiguities exist within the Intelligence Reform Act that cover complex relationships among disparate agencies with their own statutory authorities," says the report, "Director of National Intelligence Statutory Authorities: Status and Proposals," released earlier this month.
Northrop Grumman, SAIC and others already have begun developing their own tailored simulations based on Microsoft's ESP simulation toolkit, which the software giant plans to formally release to the market in January. Based on gaming technology, ESP is a software package allowing developers to create their own immersive 3-D simulations. Microsoft hopes ESP will eventually become the standard package with which military, government and commercial users will develop training and decision-support programs (DAILY, Nov. 15).
NEW YORK - U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen says that the key to strong maritime security is to create a "governance structure for all the world's oceans" - a move that would require a culture change among "independent, proprietary" mariners.
