Competitors for the beleaguered U.S. Air Force Combat, Search and Rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter replacement program will meet next week with service officials for briefings meant to ensure a more open selection process and to prevent another protest, sources familiar with the acquisition say. The Air Force had awarded Boeing the program, worth between $10 billion and $15 billon, for more than 140 HH-47 variants of the company's Chinook. But the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has twice upheld protests by competitors Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky.
EADS will face its second earnings hit in as many years over delays in a major aircraft program now that the company acknowledges the A400M airlifter will be at least six months late. Just how big the financial setback will be is not being disclosed for several more weeks. Moreover, the scale of the financial hit could grow; EADS says that in addition to the six-month delay, another six-month schedule slip may loom.
Providing ground forces with data while on the move is still the greatest unmet land-oriented C4ISR need, according to Brig. Gen George Allen, Marine Corps chief information officer. "We still don't have that," he told DefenseNews' C4ISR Integration conference in Arlington, Va. "We're still not where we need to be."
NASA is soliciting bids for almost $175 million in seed money for industry to develop new vehicles to supply the International Space Station after formally terminating its agreement with Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) under the Commercial Orbital Space Transportation (COTS) program.
Gen. Richard Cody, Army vice chief of staff, says turning the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program into a single acquisition and operation platform under the Air Force would mean significant cost increases. Cody spoke in response to questions from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Cody also sent Levin a copy of the Oct. 9 appeal to restore authorization for JCA funding to the Army aircraft procurement account.
SPRINGFIELD, Va. - A stronger reliance on the commercial marketplace would benefit the defense industry despite barriers to fostering that alliance, says William Greenwalt, deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy. Greenwalt spoke at a Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) conference Oct. 16.
Saying his company has been "perhaps too quiet about how we compete for military procurement," Airbus North America Chairman Allan McArtor took aim at Boeing's business practices during a National Press Club press conference in Washington Oct. 18.
IRAQ AIRLIFTERS: The Iraq government wants to buy $172 million worth of logistics, spares and maintenance support for three C-130E aircraft, according to a Pentagon announcement over the foreign military sale. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency told Congress Sept .21 that there will be a competition between contractors in joint negotiations for the U.S. Air Force's Contractor Engineering Technical Services contract vehicle. The C-130Es, bought from the United States, will be used for airlift support. Services will include flares and electronic warfare.
Lockheed Martin and Patria of Finland have teamed to compete for the U.S. Marine Corps' Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC), the companies announced Oct. 18. The Marines are expected to release a request for proposals for the next-generation medium armored vehicle during the second quarter of 2008.
INFO SECURITY: The United States should ensure the open exchange of unclassified research despite the small risk that it could be misused for harm by terrorists or rogue nations, declared a new report by the National Research Council. Researchers such as Jacques Gansler, Gary Hart and high-profile academics unveiled their report Oct. 18 and said extreme measures to curtail the flow of essential information or people would significantly disrupt advances that are critical to U.S. military and economic security.
U.S. Air Force generals responsible for shepherding the service's nascent cyberspace command are starting to identify their requirements and hope to have a strong plan for spending requests come the fiscal 2010 budget cycle. Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, told an industry audience Oct. 18 that Maj. Gen. William Lord, who is taking over Air Force Cyber Command, is joining Barksdale Air Force Base, La., in that effort.
The military maritime services will focus on integrating their forces to fight or deter wars and keep U.S. shores safe, according to a new maritime strategy report released Oct. 17. "Never before have the maritime forces of the United States -- the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard -- come together to create a unified maritime strategy," the report says. "This strategy stresses an approach that integrates seapower with other elements of national power, as well as those of our friends and allies." Global reach
The Pentagon is negotiating an update to defense procurement deals with Italy and is asking U.S. industry with experience in public defense procurements conducted by or on behalf of the Italian military to speak up, according to a Pentagon notice in the Federal Register. The current Research Defense Procurement Memorandum of Understanding (RDP MOU) includes reciprocal waivers of buy-national laws by each country and the replacement is expected to continue these waivers, defense acquisition officials said in the Oct. 17 notice.
ILLEGAL EXPORTS: The Homeland Security Department's inspector general (IG) said foreign-bound shipments of defense goods are not consistently targeted and inspected by Customs and Border Protection (CPB) officers at U.S. ports for compliance with federal export laws and regulations. CBP does not devote sufficient resources, does not have the information necessary to effectively monitor the program and does not have performance measures to evaluate program results, the IG said in a summary of report published Oct. 17.
The question of whether the burgeoning program for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles is a "$25 billion Kleenex" that meets only immediate war needs or if the heavily armored personnel carrier is set find a niche in long-term U.S. land forces bedeviled analysts, commenters and military officers gathered on Capitol Hill Oct. 17. Leading Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) analysts issued a report questioning the Pentagon's crash program this year for more than 15,000 MRAPs costing as much as $25 billion (See charts pp. 6-8).
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued 22 safety recommendations springing from its first investigation of an unmanned aircraft accident - the 2006 crash of a Predator B while flying a mission for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Arizona.
Top NASA managers have cleared the space shuttle Discovery to launch on Oct. 23 on the STS-120 space station assembly mission, despite concerns over degradation of a protective coating on three reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panels that protect the orbiter's wing leading edges from the 3,000-degree heat of reentry.
Achieving stealth in space will be a critical element in dealing with the Chinese threat to U.S. space assets, according to a panel on emerging U.S.-Chinese military competition hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Oct. 17.
LOCKHEED ACCA: Lockheed Martin announced Oct. 17 that U.S. Air Force researchers will fund Phase II of the company's bid for an Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft (ACCA) Flight Demonstration contract. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Air Vehicles Directorate is pursuing the aircraft, whose mission is to cut the weight and cost of future military air transports, and in the spring tapped Lockheed and Aurora Flight Sciences to work on demonstrators (DAILY, April 23).
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II rocket sent the latest Global Positioning System IIR-M (GPS IIR-17M) satellite on the way to its slot in the GPS constellation Oct. 17 after a launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Liftoff of the Delta II came at 8:23 a.m. EDT. All nine of the vehicle's strap-on solid-fuel boosters - six ignited on liftoff and three in the air - had burned out and separated as planned two minutes later.
The Senate passed its $54 billion fiscal 2008 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations bill (H.R. 3093) by a vote of 75-19 on the evening of Oct. 16, approving a $17.5 billion budget for NASA and $4.2 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Passage of the bill brightens somewhat NASA's prospects of not having to suffer through another year-long continuing budget resolution for FY '08 - which would amount to about a billion-dollar cut from the agency's request - although the bill faces a showdown with the White House.
