COHERENT AWARD: The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division is awarding small business Coherent a $48.5 million contract for design, manufacture, installation and repair of Navy Special Projects Systems associated with the Electro-Optic and Special Mission Sensors Program. The goal is to focus on the research, development, analysis and prototyping of a family of systems that result in a C4ISR system architecture, the Defense Department said July 16. The contract, which runs through July 2010, was not competitively procured.
Due to a lack of internal controls, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is unable to verify that some of its interagency purchases met needs and complied with regulations, a recent Pentagon Inspector General's (IG) report says.
MARINE MRAPs: Marine Corps Systems Command is awarding Stewart & Stevenson Tactical Vehicle Systems, LP, a division of Armor Holdings, Inc., $518.5 million for the purchase of 1,154 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Category I vehicles, and 16 MRAP Category II vehicles, DOD announced last week. Work will be performed in Sealy, Texas, and should be complete by February 2008.
An ambulating robot being devised by the European Space Agency (ESA) has completed a second set of trials in a neutral buoyancy tank at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany. Intended to assist astronauts in extravehicular activities (EVAs) and eventually to handle some of the more mundane EVA tasks such as work preparation, post-EVA cleanup and inspection, Eurobot consists of a central body with three identical arms, each provided with seven joints, a camera and an end-effector.
LORAN FUTURE: Federal officials next month will host public meetings over the current and proposed Long Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) systems, according to a July 17 notice in the Federal Register. The meetings are slated for Aug. 15, 21 and 23 in Washington, D.C., Juneau, Alaska, and Seattle, Wash., respectively.
Military buyers awarded a sole-source contract for a mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) type vehicle to a company that was having financial problems, a recent IG report says. Acquisition officials awarded the urgent-need contract to Force Protection Inc. (FPI), even though there were questions whether it could do the work, according to the June 27 report, "Procurement Policy for Armored Vehicles."
Lockheed Martin Vice President of Aeronautics Business Development Rob Weiss and his team's presentation on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to India's Ministry of Defense is raising eyebrows. But a senior Indian official dismisses it as a prelude to the forceful promotions that are expected to follow the soon-to-be-released request for proposals for India's 126-aircraft medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) order.
Overshadowed by the Iraq war debate now raging on the Senate floor, the chamber nonetheless is mulling over changes to the U.S. military's C-5 and C-17 strategic airlift fleet as part of its fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill. In particular, senators are targeting defense leaders' assessments and the Pentagon's contentious 2006 Mobility Capabilities Study, which called for a 292-aircraft strategic fleet of 112 Lockheed Martin C-5s and 180 Boeing C-17s.
NASA has awarded Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., a $127.9 million contract to develop the Operational Land Imager (OLI) instrument for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).
U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has awarded EDO Communications & Countermeasures Systems nearly $210 million for 3,000 Vehicle-Mounted Counter-Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device (RCIED) Electronic Warfare (CREW) systems for Iraq and Afghanistan operations. Spiral 2.1 CREW systems are vehicle-mounted electronic jammers designed to prevent RCIEDs from harming ground troops, according to Defense Department announcements. This contract modification responds to a so-called urgent DOD requirement for combat operations, they said.
The Orbital Express mission began its end-of-life maneuver late in the evening of July 16 and both spacecraft should be fully decommissioned by the end of the week, according to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spokeswoman Jan Walker. The decommissioning will take place after one final maneuver in which Boeing's ASTRO will undock and travel much farther away from Ball Aerospace's NextSat than ever before (300 kilometers), then reapproach it to test the acuity of its visual sensors at long ranges (DAILY, July 11).
ATV TRAVELS: EADS Astrium says the protoflight model of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) has left Rotterdam, Netherlands, aboard the Toucan, the vessel used to transport Ariane rockets and large payloads to the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The 400-metric ton shipment, which includes test equipment and rigs as well as the 20-ton ATV, comprises 49 20-foot containers, four 40-foot containers and 16 outsize units. It is due to arrive in Kourou on July 29 in anticipation of a scheduled liftoff in late January.
The Boeing team and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency successfully completed a key Airborne Laser (ABL) flight-test July 13, demonstrating the weapon system's ability to actively track an airborne target, compensate for atmospheric turbulence and fire a surrogate for its missile-killing high energy laser.
CHIEF ENGINEER: NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has named Michael Ryschkewitsch the agency's chief engineer. He succeeds Christopher Scolese, who was selected as NASA's associate administrator on July 11 to replace Rex Geve-den. Ryschkewitsch is responsible for the overall review and technical readiness of all NASA programs. He served as the deputy center director for Goddard Space Flight Center since October 2005.
Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is counting on its deep heritage as an avionics integrator in civil and military aircraft, space launch vehicles and spacecraft to bring it a win in the bidding for the Instrument Unit Avionics (IUA) on NASA's Ares I crew launch vehicle. The company plans to have its final bid documents covering cost in to IUA project managers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center by July 30. The agency is expected to award a contract for the 5.5-meter-diameter instrument ring in November.
NEW FPGAs: BAE Systems will restart production of radiation-hardened field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for use in space after a manufacturing hiatus that has lasted since 2006. The semiconductors will be used on a host of military satellite systems as well as some commercial systems, and they are hardened against a dose of 300K rads (Si). The FPGAs will be produced under a licensing agreement with Actel Corp., a legacy producer of the semiconductors. The new RH1280B will be suitable for systems designed for the earlier RH1280 semiconductor.
Crew protection kits for soldiers in Iraq arrived late, incomplete or broken, putting warfighters at risk, according to a recent DOD Inspector General (IG) report. Military buyers at U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) failed to make sure the contractor could do the work, said the June 27 report, "Procurement Policy for Armored Vehicles."
U.S. and U.K. officials expect to identify contractors and projects by the end of the year that will be preordained to benefit under a pending U.S.-U.K. treaty that would obviate some export licenses between the two countries over most defense and counterterrorism trade.
ARMY The Wexford Group International Inc., Vienna, Va., was awarded a delivery order amount of $63,059,962 as part of a $63,059,962 firm-fixed-price contract for operations support for the Asymmetric Warfare Group. Work will be performed in Vienna, Va., and is expected to be completed by July 2, 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were two bids solicited on March 6, 2006, and two bids were received. The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Huntsville, Ala., is the contracting activity (W9113M-06-D-0005).
ARMY SECRETARY: U.S. Army boosters say Senate confirmation of Pete Geren as the service's 20th secretary July 13 was an important step toward providing continuity of senior leadership.
