Russia's video of its Father of All Bombs shows that it doesn't quite meet Moscow's claims of being the equivalent of a nuclear weapon without the radiation or that it was dropped from a high-speed bomber.
U.S. Air Force special operations officials changed a key performance parameter (KPP) during a vital review stage of the combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter source selection in a way that avoided Pentagon attention because they wanted to field a new aircraft more quickly and thought there was too much risk involved in developing other platforms, according to sources intimately familiar with the service community and the program.
The DigitalGlobe Ball Aerospace WorldView 1 spacecraft is undergoing early checkout in a 270-nautical-mile polar orbit following launch onboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Sept. 18. The spacecraft has half-meter panchromatic resolution. This is four times greater than any previous commercial imaging spacecraft.
SES Global South America Holdings, a unit of Luxembourg-based SES, has finalized a five-year agreement to lease two standard Ku-band and three extended Ku-band transponders on SES Americom's AMC-6 satellite to AR-SAT, an Argentine satcom startup created in 2006. Earlier this year, SES sold off its holdings in Brazlian-based Star One, after earlier unloading its shares in Nahuelsat, a struggling Argentine operator, so it could reorganize its effort to penetrate the Latin American market.
Dragonfly Pictures says it has sold two of its DP-6 Whisper tandem rotorcraft to major U.S. prime contractors. The electrically powered unmanned aircraft is designed for quiet operation in combat reconnaissance.
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Space must be a national priority and its exploration a shared responsibility of government and the private sector, a Boeing official said Sept. 18 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics space conference.
The Pentagon announced Sept. 18 that it will stop buying Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites with the capability to intentionally degrade the accuracy of civil signals, called selective availability (SA), as it pushes for the GPS III system.
A robotic Russian recoverable capsule crammed with life sciences and other microgravity experiments is due to return to Earth Sept. 26 following its successful liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Foton-M3 lifted off on a Soyuz-U rocket at 7 a.m. EDT Sept. 14 and achieved its 300-kilometer orbit without incident. The mission plan calls for 12 days in orbit at that altitude before a parachute return to the steppes of Kazakhstan near the Russian border.
Northrop Grumman and EADS North America, its partner in the KC-X competition, still expect the Air Force to select a replacement aircraft for its aging refueling tanker fleet by year's end, a company official said Sept. 18. "The information we're getting today [on the downselect date] is year end," said Paul Meyer, vice president of Air Mobility Systems for Northrop's Integrated Systems unit. "Until they decide other factors play out, we're hoping that that is the date," he added.
In a unique flight set for liftoff from India Sept. 17-20, Israel's first "Polaris" military imaging radar satellite is to be launched along with India's first military reconnaissance spacecraft on the same powerful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The mission, set from India's launch site on an island in the Bay of Bengal, also will put into practice major new military space cooperation between India and Israel.
ARMY Waukesha Foundry Inc., Waukesha, Wis., was awarded on Sept. 7, 2007, a $10,499,998 firm-fixed-price contract for P900 Plates for Mine Protected Ambush Resistant Vehicle Armor Kits. Work will be performed in Waukesha, Wis., and is expected to be completed by April 22, 2008. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on Aug. 22, 2007. The U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-07-C-0621). AIR FORCE
After more than a year of development work, the U.S. Air Force has conducted its second flight-test of an inert version of its new low-collateral-damage weapon. The Sept. 14 test demonstrated solid flight characteristics for the Focused Lethality Munition (FLM), a variant of the 250-pound Small-Diameter Bomb (SDB). This test, together with a July 11 trial, validates that the weapon's in-flight guidance flew as required.
Saudi Arabia and Britain have finalized a deal covering the purchase of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft - the main element of a broader program to be known as Project Salaam. The final part of the government-to- government deal was signed between the two countries toward the end of August. The Royal Saudi Air Force will receive the first 24 aircraft from the British final assembly line. The intent is that the remaining 48 are assembled in-country.
WIN-T: Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics said their recent award for $921 million for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) will deliver an initial on-the-move broadband networking capability using satellite and radio links, with fielding scheduled to begin in 2009. Their award also will fund continued development of WIN-T components.
A Sept. 14 article on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission includes the statement that the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) on the Mars Phoenix lander "has an electronics glitch discovered too late to repair, and will take only one image during its descent." As explained in a July 9 DAILY article, the glitch involves "an interface card designed to route data within the spacecraft payload" that is not part of the MARDI instrument.
The U.S. DigitalGlobe Worldview 1 spacecraft is set for liftoff Sept. 18 onboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II, marking the first commercial launch with a unique quasi-commercial spacecraft. WorldView 1 was built by Ball Aerospace, ITT and DigitalGlobe with $500 million from the Defense Department's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
A new Congressional Budget Office analysis reports that operating rates for some weapons systems in Iraq, like Army attack helicopters, actually are below those for which they were designed and, with a few exceptions, should be capable of sustaining those rates for many years. The CBO affirms that the military does face some equipment challenges, especially the National Guard. But with significant attention inside Washington and subsequent appropriations, the services are apparently making headway (See related charts, pages 6-7).
