The Air Force is scheduled to meet Nov. 5-6 with companies competing for the service's combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter replacement fleet to discuss the revised draft request for proposals (RFPs), sources say. The service and companies were initially scheduled to meet in October, but the discussions were postponed. What remains unclear is whether those discussions also will include the so-called "equal information disclosure" briefings, meant to level the competitive playing field.
NEW ORLEANS - Ninety days after assuming command of the newly established Deployable Operations Group (DOG), U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thomas Atkin is struggling to effect culture change and establish a new training and operations regime. "We have two sets of requirements: operational and training. How do I balance those to make sure the force we're providing to the commander is trained to its advertised capability?" Atkin told Aerospace Daily.
NASA will release aviation incident data gleaned from a controversial pilot survey that the agency originally decided not to provide, NASA's top official told Congress Oct. 31, but the scrubbing process required by law could take up to two months. "The survey results that we can legally release will be released. Period," NASA Administrator Mike Griffin told the House Science and Technology Committee during a hearing into the two-year delay in making the $11 million survey's results public. 2005 survey
BEIJING - China's long-planned Long March 5 heavy rocket, comparable to the U.S. Delta IV, will be a family of launchers to be built at a plant at Tianjin, where construction began this week. The rockets will go into service in 2013 at the new Wenchang launch base on the island of Hainan, which has also been long proposed. Wenchang itself is to be ready by 2012. The diameter of Long March 5 will be 5 meters (16 feet, 5 inches), up from the 3.35 meters (11 feet) of the current Long March 3.
NEW ORLEANS - Adm. Gary Blore, U.S. Coast Guard acquisition chief, says he believes "there have never been workmanship issues" with the National Security Cutter (NSC). Blore, speaking at the Coast Guard Innovation Expo here Oct. 31, dismissed accusations to the contrary, saying design and workmanship issues are "entirely different things," and that people can become "confused" between the two. He added that design issues on the ship have been settled, and any remaining controversy surrounding the NSC "will be resolved with the first rescue."
The latest potential $1 billion overrun and delivery delay for Lockheed Martin's Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) could be less than anticipated, a Pentagon analysis says, but it still could hold up the program enough to possibly cause a gap in the nation's missile defense system. Air Force estimates had put the overrun as high as $1 billion and the delay as long as a year to fix a software and processor bug, which could essentially shut down the satellite's operations (DAILY, Oct. 15).
HOUSTON - International Space Station (ISS) engineers are refining a hurry-up repair technique to fix the torn solar blanket on the outermost set of ISS arrays, but they may need to add yet another day to the STS-120/10A mission to pull it off. If the array can't be fixed, structural limitations from its partially deployed state make it questionable whether the station can produce the power and handle the dockings and undockings needed to continue assembly.
BOOSTER TEST: NASA and manufacturer ATK will test fire a space shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) Nov. 1 at 1 p.m. Mountain time at ATK's launch facility in Promontory, Utah. The primary objective of the test is to validate that the RSRM's thrust vector control system, which directs the nozzle, can still perform if one of the rocket's two auxiliary power units fails (DAILY, Oct. 22).
French defense minister Herve Morin says a new system to streamline defense exports and avoid snafus like the recent failed bid to sell Rafale fighters to Morocco will be in place by early next year. Morin told Parisian daily Les Echos that the system will include a special "war room" designed to deal rapidly with major deals like the Rafale sale, which went to the U.S. F-16 after the French could not agree on a financing package (DAILY, Oct. 24).
Thanks to the addition of a Rockwell Collins heads-up display (HUD), Boeing is proceeding with its C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) aircraft despite a recent Nunn-McCurdy review and a scaled-back program.
NASA Constellation program assignments just made to the agency's field centers for manned lunar system development will define the agency's lunar program manpower requirements before fiscal 2011-2012, when spending will jump for development of the Aries V moon rocket, Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM) and the initial infrastructure on the moon to support a resumption of manned lunar operations starting in about 2020.
INTEL SPENDING: The office of the Director of National Intelligence says that the U.S. government appropriated $43.5 billion to the National Intelligence Program for fiscal 2007. This is a top line figure that Congress mandated be made public in the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. Details of how this amount is allocated among intelligence agencies or programs are not released.
Before the year is out, NASA's Orion team expects to finally answer the longstanding question of whether the capsule will be recovered on land or from the water when it returns crews to Earth. One of the key design trades involved is whether or not it's worth it for Orion to carry the 1,500-pound airbag system that would be required for touching down on land, according to Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley.
PHOENIX - The business and government fascination with unmanned aircraft is likely to continue until a dominant concept takes root, but the market will still pale in comparison to stalwart aerospace and defense sectors like fighters, an analyst told an industry audience here Oct. 30.
NEW ORLEANS - The U.S. Coast Guard is looking to other unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to provide the surveillance capability originally sought from the now-cancelled vertical takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle (VUAV) intended for its National Security Cutter (NSC), Coast Guard Adm. Ron Rabago told Aerospace Daily.
NEW ORLEANS - David Walker, comptroller general of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), believes the United States' best years lie ahead "if we wake up, recognize reality and start addressing serious sustainability challenges we have as a nation." Walker spoke before a large audience at the Coast Guard Innovation Expo here Oct. 30, telling the group "the private status quo is unsustainable...we cannot accept it because it will threaten our future."
NEW DEHLI - India's much-delayed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program received a boost last week when it successfully test-fired the Close Combat Missile R-73 at the air-to-air range off Goa's coast. The test-firing marks the start of the LCA's weaponization - the focus of its current initial operational clearance phase. The test was done at 7 kilometers (23,000 feet) altitude and 0.6 Mach and was conducted from the mobile telemetry vehicle. The Indian navy's INS Hansa provided all support for the flight trial. Missile integration
SES Chairman/CEO Romain Bausch says his company expects to finalize orders by year's end for a first Mexican satellite, QuetzSat-1, and an additional spacecraft for its New Skies unit. Like Ciel-2, a new Canadian satellite to be launched in late 2008, QuetzSat-1 will be pre-leased to EchoStar. The New Skies unit will replace an aging spacecraft that was initially due to be replaced at a later date, permitting the older satellite to be moved to a new slot.
The Boeing Company has opened its first F-15E simulator-based mission training center for the 366th Fighter Wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. The training center provides two high-fidelity, dual-cockpit F-15E simulators with a 360-degree visual system, a synthetic environment and instructor/operator and brief/debrief stations, Boeing said Oct. 29.
HOUSTON - A tear that appeared in one of the International Space Station's (ISS) solar arrays just moments before it was fully redeployed Oct. 30 makes planning the remainder of the STS-120/10A ISS assembly mission even more difficult than it was when all the engineers had to do was figure out what was fouling one of the two big joints that rotate the solar arrays.
