The U.S. Air Force is closing its battlelabs due to "fiscal restraints," one service official says. The battlelabs were designed and established in different functional areas to rapidly transition technologies to the field at low cost. Seven separate battlelabs are shutting their doors in short order. Air Force Space Command closed the doors of its Air Force Space Battlelab at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., earlier this month, with seven of its 14 projects now shifting to the management of the Space Innovation and Development Center there.
NAVSEA MODERNIZATION: U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has signed a $14.2 million fiscal 2008 contract extension for ITT Corp.'s AN/SPS-48 Radar Obsolescence, Availability Recovery (ROAR) program. The program passed a successful critical design review (CDR) in October 2007, prompting the contract extension, ITT said. The total contract value to date is more than $32 million. AN/SPS-48 radars were first introduced into the fleet in the mid-1980s as part of a New Threat Upgrade (NTU) program on aircraft carriers, cruisers and destroyers.
France says it is preparing to send a fifth Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (OMLT) to Afghanistan as part of a promise to boost its effort within the NATO coalition there. The new team, to be dispatched next year, is earmarked for the troubled southern provinces of the country, where the increased French involvement is being focused. Paris had previously decided to deploy two additional OMLTs by the end of 2007 to the south, where it also has redeployed its six strike aircraft.
ON THE LINES: Joseph Rouge, director of the National Security Space Office, says he's "willing to put [his] career on the line to make sure" that a new Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) initiative led by the U.S. Air Force doesn't get derailed. The new ORS office was established earlier this year at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and its first budget was approved along with the Pentagon's budget in November.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) likely will try to recover some costs from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics because one of the suppliers for the contractor was inflating costs for tools for aircraft manufacturing. DOJ says Lockheed should have known that the supplier, Tools & Metals Inc., was doctoring invoices and defrauding the government of about $20 million. Todd Brian Loftis, Tools & Metals' former CEO, pleaded guilty in December 2005 to conspiring to defraud the government.
Improved situational awareness and protection capabilities are the top two priorities for the U.S. Air Force's growing space control efforts in the fiscal 2009 budget cycle, according to Joseph Rouge, director of the National Security Space Office.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Nov. 25 - 27 -- China Helicopter Expo 2007. Beijing International Convention Center: Call +1 (805) 963-4095, fax +1 (877) 564 4878 or go to www.heli-china.com.cn Nov. 26 - 29 -- I/ITSEC - Interservice/Industry Training Simulation & Education Conference, "Maintaining the Edge ... Transforming the Force," Orlando, Fla. For more information go to www.iitsec.org.
TARANIS SOARS: The British Project Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, will build an unmanned fast jet demonstrator the size of a T-45 Goshawk. The jet UAV will be stealthy and able to test-deploy a range of munitions over a number of targets, as well as defend itself against other manned and unmanned enemy aircraft. The first metal airframe of the Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle was cut in a ceremony at BAE Systems in Lancashire, England, Nov. 20.
Arianespace is in negotiations to purchase an additional 10-15 Soyuz rockets to add to the eight it already has on firm order. The Soyuz is being used to broaden the European company's portfolio of launch systems. Arianespace's first Soyuz launch is now penciled in for March 2009 from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana. Work is well underway to "replicate" the Baikonur, Kazakhstan Soyuz facility in the equatorial rain forest.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center soon will begin integrating a state-of-the-art seismic imager into its planned Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the first spacecraft in the U.S. agency's "Living With A Star" research effort. Built by Stanford University and the Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory, this Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) will measure the Doppler shifts of sound waves generated by hot, ionized gas.
ULYSSES EXTENDED: Europe's Ulysses solar observatory will spend another year making observations out of the plane of the ecliptic, following a unanimous decision by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Science Programme Committee to continue its service life until March 2009. The extension will give the spacecraft more time to work with NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft, which are moving apart in heliocentric orbit to provide 3-dimensional views of coronal mass ejections and other solar phenomena as they interact with Earth.
U.K. INTERESTS: U.S. defense companies with business interests in the U.K. - that is all of the major primes - will be closely watching developments resulting from the delay in the second iteration of London's Defense Industrial Strategy document. Due for publication Dec. 13, it has now been pushed back as a result of defense budget funding issues. No revised date for publication has yet been announced.
INTEROPERABLE SHIPS: The U.S. Coast Guard's Long Range Interceptor (LRI) will undergo machinery trials in December. The 35-foot long rigid hull inflatable craft will launch from rear ramps on the National Security Cutter (NSC) and proposed Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC). The OPC and NSC will be able to carry two LRIs. In the meantime, the LRI successfully demonstrated system interoperability with the first National Security Cutter (NSC) on Nov. 20.
PARIS - Rulings by the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC) will ensure satellite operators uninterrupted use of the C-band spectrum and the promise of future bandwidth in which to roll out new broadband services. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) body last week concluded four weeks of discussion at the WRC-07 conference with an unequivocal decision not to open up the 3.4-4.2 GHZ C-band to Wimax and other so-called International Mobile Telecom (IMT) users (DAILY, Sept. 12).
Raytheon's Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS) will be installed on the USS Nimitz in June 2008, after completion of the U.S. Navy's warfare system integration and interoperability testing in San Diego.
SPARTAN CHASSIS: Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles built by General Dynamics Land Systems will have key chassis components supplied and integrated by Spartan Chassis, Inc. under a $49 million subcontract order. This order is in addition to the company's $317 million MRAP subcontract orders already on the books. On Sept. 27, Spartan received a $52 million contract for Force Protection, another MRAP builder, to support the production of Cougar-series vehicles.
COTS BIDDERS: With proposals submitted by industry hopefuls Nov. 21, NASA is now pondering who should receive the roughly $175 million in seed money that was freed up when the agency terminated its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with Rocketplane Kistler (RpK). NASA expects to sign a funded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with the winning COTS provider by February 2008. That company will join SpaceX in the ranks of COTS participants actually receiving funding from NASA.
Raytheon Company has completed the final system acceptance test for Global Positioning System Aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system signals over India. In the latest test, the Raytheon system demonstrated that ground elements could successfully integrate with a geosynchronous satellite over India and generate a test signal that conformed to international flight requirements for the region.
U.K. COOPERATION: British government officials are in Washington the week beginning Nov. 26 trying to nail down the fine print of a U.S.-U.K. defense trade cooperation treaty. The process has made further progress than previous efforts to ease Anglo-American defense collaboration, but all interested parties will be keeping an eye out for any signs of last-minute political hitches.
FORWARD WASP: The U.S. Marine Corps. will receive $19.3 million in Battlefield Air Targeting Micro Air Vehicle (BATMAV) systems from AeroVironment, Inc. as part of an order announced Nov. 20. The Marine Corps will procure the BATMAV systems through the Air Force BATMAV contract, awarded to the company in Dec. 2006, which provides a means for other U.S. armed services to procure these systems. Each BATMAV system consists of two Wasp III micro air vehicles, AV's advanced battery charger, spares and support services.
