BOEING LAUDED: NASA has selected The Boeing Company as its 2007 Large Business Contractor of the Year for providing outstanding support to small businesses at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The specific contract involved in the honor is the Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services (CAPPS) program. As the CAPPS prime contractor, Boeing performs designated activities for the International Space Station (ISS), space shuttle and expendable launch vehicle payloads, including managing the handling of large ISS modules in the Space Station Assembly Facility.
The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members - Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE - have seen their collective defense spending grow from $31.15 billion in 2003 to $40.33 billion in 2005 and reaching roughly $49.6 billion in 2007, according to a new Forecast International report. This collective figure is expected to grow again in 2008, likely topping $51 billion, says Dan Darling, Forecast's Middle East Military Market analyst.
An airlift and rotorcraft shortfall - the eternal NATO bugaboo - may delay deployment of a force to Chad and the Central African Republic to assist a United Nations/African Union effort to help defuse the Darfur humanitarian crisis. Military officials in France, which has committed 1,300 troops to the 2,800-3,000 man European Union (EU) force, say a third force generation conference in Brussels Nov. 21 failed to raise the necessary number of helicopters, fixed-wing transports and medical support units to sustain the effort.
FREQUENCY HOPPING: Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $20 million follow-on contract from U.S. Army Communication and Electronics Command to provide soldiers additional Frequency Hopping Multiplexers (FHMUX) antenna systems. The primary function of the FHMUX is to reduce the number of antennas while providing RF isolation between multiple frequency hopping radios. The FHMUX operates across the 30.0 to 87.97 MHz band and has the ability to combine up to four Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) transceivers in a single antenna.
Thwarted by unusually strong ocean currents at its launch site in the equatorial ocean, Sea Launch has decided to postpone the Thuraya-3 launch campaign, and its command ship and Odyssey launch platform are on their way home. Driven by El Nina, the winds and currents at the site "made it difficult for the platform to stay in position," Sea Launch spokeswoman Paula Korn said. "We were using up a lot of fuel just staying in place."
The outgoing head of the Defense Department's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) says the group will not be able to fund any new initiatives - its raison d'etre - or contracts after Dec. 1 because new off-budget Iraq funds have not been provided. Retired Army Gen. Montgomery Meigs, who hands over the reins to active Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz on Nov. 30, told reporters last week that besides headquarter costs, JIEDDO workers and sustainment of nascent initiatives, JIEDDO will stop paying for new efforts next month.
AMPED UP: Boeing said Nov. 27 that the first two C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) aircraft are currently at the U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where they continue to undergo ground and flight-testing that is more than 10 percent ahead of schedule. A third aircraft was "inducted" the day before. The program recently encountered major cost overruns and the Air Force more than halved the number of C-130s it expects to be upgraded (DAILY, Nov. 1).
PARIS - The U.K.'s Principal Anti-Air Missile System (PAAMS) is in the final phases of preparation for end-to-end testing that will begin in France next year. The Longbow platform that will be used for the trials has arrived in France at the Toulon naval base, in preparation for test firings that will take place at the French missile launch test center near the Ile du Levant in the Mediterranean. The trial phase is supposed to be completed in 2009.
A flight readiness review by senior International Space Station (ISS) managers formally adopted a recommendation Nov. 27 that space shuttle Atlantis launch on time Dec. 6 with Europe's long-delayed Columbus laboratory module in its cargo bay.
Inmarsat has awarded EADS Astrium a contract to build an experimental L-band communications satellite based on a new high-power satcom bus being developed by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space.
TESTING RADAR: Northrop Grumman has completed the installation, integration and initial flight-testing of the first developmental test units (DTU) of the new radar antenna developed for the B-2 bomber's radar modernization program (RMP). The availability of the new Raytheon-built Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) antenna will allow Northrop Grumman to complete the B-2 RMP flight-test program, which was interrupted last year by integration issues with the antenna (DAILY, Sept. 27). The first flight test was completed on Oct. 30.
International Space Station (ISS) crew members are activating the new Harmony pressurized node for the arrival of Europe's long-delayed Columbus laboratory module, following one final spacewalk Nov. 24 to complete external hookups on the node.
The U.S. Air Force cannot guarantee that tens of millions of dollars meant for research and development to support the global war on terrorism (GWOT) was indeed spent for those specific tasks, according to the Pentagon Inspector General (IG).
SUPERSONIC MUNITIONS: During a recent test at the High-Speed Test Track at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., researchers from Boeing Phantom Works and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) used a rocket sled and active flow control to successfully release an MK-82 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) standard test vehicle at a speed of about Mach 2 from a weapons bay with a size approximating that of a U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber. The technology involved in active flow control enabled this first-ever munitions test at high supersonic speeds, Boeing said.
AMAZONAS: Thales Alenia Space will supply an AMERHIS-2 onboard processor (OBP) for two-way broadband communications on the next Amazonas communications satellite. Hispasat, which operates the Amazonas spacecraft through a joint venture with Brazil's Telemar, ordered the new satellite in June for launch in late 2009. The OBP, which includes a new network control center, will be a recurrent model of an experimental processor provided by Thales Alenia for Amazonas-1, orbited in 2004.
European finance ministers have accepted a funding scheme that will allow the European Commission (EC) to earmark unused money from the agricultural price support program, along with funds from next year's research budget, for the Galileo satellite navigation system.
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon both have won $160 million, 18-month awards for system design and risk reduction efforts for the Global Positioning System (GPS) operational control segment (OCX). If chosen for system development, OCX could be valued at more than $1 billion, according to Northrop Grumman.
The use of Russian AN-124s to airlift Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to Iraq is becoming a hot-button political issue on Capitol Hill.
AIR FORCE PLANNING: U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Raymond Johns says the Air Force has been re-evaluating its capabilities, "back-casting" them to where the service is today and "how we need to evolve to meet the growing threat." Johns, in a recent conversation with Aerospace Daily, referred to something he calls the "sufficiency piece," the need for future Air Force requirements to be met by a combination of capability and capacity. "It's not just one vehicle" that has capability versus 1,000 vehicles that lack capacity, Johns said. "It's a mix in between.
ProtoStar has signed up two more anchor customers for its planned satellite network, moving the Asian satcom startup venture, targeted at underserved direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting markets in the Asia-Pacific, a step closer to reality. On Nov. 26, SingTel agreed to lease an undisclosed amount of C-band capacity on ProtoStar-1, to be launched next May by Arianespace, and to provide ProtoStar with satellite control services from its operations center in Singapore, where ProtoStar's Asian headquarters is located.
