SAASM GBU-28: Raytheon will add the Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM) to 279 Laser Guided Bomb Units (GBU-28) and modify 279 Air Foil Groups to fit the BLU-113 Warhead. The requirement stems from the need to have the future production of Enhanced Paveway III be compliant with SAASM, according to a Defense Department contract announcement. The $10.3 million Air Force award is a firm-fixed price supplemental agreement to the GBU-28 C/B production contract, the Pentagon said Aug. 30.
LOCKHEED SUPPORT: Work will begin on Oct. 5 for Lockheed Martin to provide U.S. Joint Forces Command with information technology services under a new Information Systems Support Services (ISSS) contract totaling $186 million over the next five years. The first-year ceiling has been established at $35.3 million, and the next four years are year-long option periods. The ISSS contract was designed to provide Joint Forces Command with mission support including network operations and systems and database development and administration.
HOMEWORK DEFERRAL: With Congress facing fewer than two-dozen legislative days before the end of fiscal 2007, the prospects for a continuing resolution (CR) for most - if not all - of the federal government are rising. When lawmakers reconvene after Labor Day, the Senate will have 19 legislative days until the end of the fiscal year to pass 11 of 12 spending bills and then conference all of them with the House.
Ronald Sega held one last media roundtable the day before he is scheduled to step down as under secretary of the U.S. Air Force on Aug. 31, providing a rundown of the programs of which he is proudest and saying today's Air Force comprises three elements: "air, space and cyberspace."
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has sustained the second round of protests against Boeing's win of the U.S. Air Force's Combat, Search and Rescue replacement (CSAR-X) helicopter program. Losing bidders Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky have twice protested the choice of Boeing's HH-47 Chinook variant in a program to build more than 140 helicopters for an estimated price of $10 billion to $15 billion (DAILY, Aug. 20).
ZHUKOVSKY AIR BASE - Russia's Tactical Missile Corp. has revealed the basic configuration of its Kh-38M, a modular guided-weapons design which will succeed its Kh-25 (AS-10 Karen/AS-12 Kegler) type of tactical air-to-surface weapons. A mock-up of the missile was unveiled at the recent Moscow Air Show, though the Kh-38M program has been in development for more than a decade, with the requirement for a successor to the Kh-25 family probably originating no later than the early 1990s.
International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineers Clay Anderson and Oleg Kotov used the station's Canadian-built robotic arm Aug. 30 to move a pressurized mating adaptor (PMA-3) from the port side of the U.S. Unity node to a hatch on the nadir side of the node.
SAIC MRO: The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency is awarding Science Applications International Corp. a $500 million deal for maintenance, repair and operations supplies for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and other unidentified civilian agencies, the Pentagon announced Aug. 30. The original proposal for the fixed-price-with-economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract was solicited via the Web with seven responses, according the statement.
Russia is carrying out flight trials of an active towed radar-decoy using a MiG-31 Foxhound as a test bed for the program. The system, known locally as Blesna (Lure), also is being offered for export as part of the President-S defensive aids suite. The decoy is intended to counter radar-guided missiles by spoofing the missile to target Blesna rather than the aircraft.
JCSAT-11: International Launch Services (ILS) will orbit Japan's JCSAT-11 spacecraft on a Proton M rocket with a Breeze M upper stage from launch pad 39 at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on Sept. 6 (6:43 p.m. Sept. 5 EDT). The roughly 4,000-kilogram (8,800-pound) spacecraft carries 30 active Ku-band transponders and 12 active C-band transponders. Based on Lockheed Martin's A2100 AX satellite bus, the multipurpose communications satellite has a design life of 15 years.
The U.S. Navy's program executive office for littoral and mine warfare (PEO LMW) has announced the pending delivery of its first littoral combat ship (LCS) mission package to Panama City, Fla., Sept. 14, despite the fact that the first LCS won't be there to accept the package.
With one fell swoop, Menlo Worldwide Government Services moved up into the top ranks of logistics contractors with the recent award of a seven-year deal worth up to about $1.6 billion to handle much of the domestic Pentagon freight movements across the United States. Averaging about $228 million a year, the deal (DAILY, Aug. 22) would rank Menlo Worldwide in a strong third place for logistic service contractors, according to an Aerospace Daily analysis of data provided by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting released Aug. 17.
ATK's loss of the Ares I upper stage contract to Boeing won't impact ATK's fiscal 2008 financial guidance - which excluded the contract - but may indicate that the company isn't quite ready to fulfill its ambition to move into the prime contractor arena, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.
JFCOM SUPPORT: The U.S. Navy has chosen Lockheed Martin to provide U.S. Joint Forces Command with information systems support services under a potentially five-year, $186 million contract award announced Aug. 28. JFCOM is based in Norfolk, Va., where 99 percent of the work will occur, according to a Pentagon statement. An initial $35.3 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee, fixed-price contract runs through October 2008. The award was competitively procured through the Navy Electronic Commerce Online portal with six offers received.
EELV AWARD: The U.S. Air Force is awarding Lockheed Martin Space Systems a firm-fixed price contract for $119 million for Atlas V launch services under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program for launch of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF)-2 satellites. Already, $89.25 million has been obligated, according to the Aug. 29 contract announcement from the Defense Department.
Boeing's win of a contract worth as much as $1.125 billion for production of the Ares I upper stage adds an element of uncertainty for the experienced Lockheed Martin work force at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The 84-foot aluminum lithium stages will be built on the same factory floor where the big foam-covered aluminum-lithium external tanks for the space shuttle fleet are manufactured. But the work force in the government-owned plant won't automatically be hired by Boeing once the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
A key element of Lockheed Martin's Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) payload, its carrier vehicle divert and attitude control system built by Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, has been successfully tested at the National Hover Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The Japanese defense ministry has asked for 15.7 billion yen ($137 million) to proceed with its planned stealth fighter demonstrator in the coming fiscal year, which for Japan begins April 1. Proposals to accelerate upgrades for Japan's F-15Js also are taking a concrete form, with the ministry requesting 112.3 billion yen in fiscal 2008. Improved radars are expected. The number of aircraft involved isn't known, but Japanese media say upgrades that had been planned for the coming three years will all be done next fiscal year.
Spirits at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have risen as the Hayabusa asteroid sample return mission team has announced it has managed to resurrect and switch operations to its third ion engine, engine C, which hadn't been used since August 2005. This could greatly increase the chance of the spacecraft completing the world's first asteroid sample return in 2010.
U.S. Army Apache helicopters are experiencing extensive wear due to the accelerated pace of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, so a contract modification of $19.9 million was recently added to Boeing's Apache Reliability and Safety Recapitalization program to expand its support, the company announced.
