The Defense Department generally is staying on track for making improvements to its supply chain management processes, but the department has a long way to go and its plan could be drafted even better, Government Accountability Office (GAO) auditors are telling Congress. Moreover, GAO's recent review of joint theater logistics raises concerns about whether DOD can effectively implement this initiative without re-examining fundamental aspects of the department's logistics governance and strategy, they said.
U.S.-supplied weapons in northern Iraq may be winding up in the hands of terrorist groups launching attacks along Turkey's border, said Faruk Logoglu, Turkish ambassador to the United States. "We know the United States is supplying the northern Iraq administration [with weapons]," Logoglu said July 12 to reporters at a breakfast roundtable. "It is possible they are ending up in the hands of the terrorist organization."
The U.S. Navy has approved buying 437 of the Raytheon-built APG-79 active electronically scanned radars. A July 9 brief item incorrectly identified the armed service. The DAILY regrets the error.
SBIRS APPROVED: With positive results from the initial system on orbit, the Pentagon's acquisition chief has approved the Air Force's next-generation space-based missile warning system's progression despite years of cost overruns and delays. When confidence in the $11 billion Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program reached an all-time low in 2005, Ken Krieg halted the program at just two highly elliptical orbit payloads and two geosynchronous satellites.
AN/TPY-2 RADAR: The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has awarded Raytheon a $304 million contract to develop advanced tracking and discrimination capabilities for the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) forward-based AN/TPY-2 radar, the company said July 11. The first forward-based capability spiral was released on schedule in October 2006 and is now operational, Raytheon reiterated. The company is currently developing the second forward-based capability spiral, with its release planned in early 2008.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official Mary Kicza downplayed the importance of NASA's aging QuikSCAT satellite to hurricane forecasting during Senate testimony July 11, saying that its loss would not significantly affect predictions of when and where the storms make landfall.
Space Shuttle Endeavour is undergoing three weeks of final checkout in preparation for its scheduled August launch. The work is taking place on Launch Complex 39A after Endeavour was transported to the pad from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center starting late July 10. The vehicle arrived at the pad about 3 a.m. July 11.
With service enthusiasm seemingly flagging and lawmakers and defense leaders throughout Washington scrounging for dollars, a panel of military and budgetary experts hosted a congressional briefing July 11 to urge Congress and defense leaders to maintain the U.S Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System (N-UCAS) demonstration effort.
THAAD SEEKER: BAE Systems said it received a $62.3 million contract from Lockheed Martin to begin production of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Interceptor Seeker. The seeker provides infrared imagery of the targeted warhead to the missile to guide the interceptor to its target. The first THAAD systems will be fielded in fiscal 2009 and ready for deployment in FY '10, according to BAE.
Northrop Grumman Corp.'s KC-30 Tanker team is leveraging Honeywell's FAA-certified Military Airborne Collision Avoidance System - Formation Rendezvous (MILACAS-FR) in its KC-30 tanker bid, Northrop announced July 12. The MILACAS-FR system will enhance accuracy and safety during flight formations by detecting nearby aircraft and evaluating their threat potential to the KC-30.
With billions of dollars and scores of aircraft at stake, the choices that lawmakers legislate on military tactical jets now will be felt decades into the future, says a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.
Scott "Doc" Horowitz, the former astronaut who heads NASA's effort to go back to the moon, is leaving the U.S. space agency in a move one official said came "out of the blue." In an e-mail circulated to staff July 11, Horowitz said he would be leaving on or about Oct. 1 "to devote more attention to my family responsibilities." Horowitz will have served in the position for two years.
The space shuttle Endeavour may be able to stay aloft a full two weeks on its upcoming STS-118/13A.1 International Space Station (ISS) assembly mission, drawing power from the big ISS arrays for the first time to ease the load on its fuel cells.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is still holding off for now on plans to decommission Orbital Express, pending the results of U.S. Air Force senior leadership discussions about what else might be done with the two spacecraft.
Responding to recent media reports about downwash incidents associated with the H-47 Chinook helicopter family that have raised questions about the HH-47 variant's ability to do combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) missions, prime contractor Boeing says their own tests and actual combat experience prove the helicopter's suitability for such a role.
Raytheon Company has been awarded a U.S. Air Force contract to develop the next generation of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) Integration Backbone (DIB). The DIB 1.2 updates will extend the baseline architecture to address new requirements for more widespread sharing of data across enterprise firewalls. They will provide expanded event delivery and notification capabilities using mechanisms such as real simple syndication, or RSS, and e-mail, with additional enhancements for data retrieval and presentation of results to the user.
SCRAMJET SOARS: The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Pentagon to add $3.5 million to its $179.2 million budget request for applied research on aerospace propulsion specifically for scramjet technologies. "The committee notes the role that hypersonic technologies can play in future Air Force operations, by enabling capabilities such as prompt global strike and space access," senators said in their report accompanying the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill.
The Senate is moving toward prompting the Defense Department to reorganize and centralize its drive for prompt global strike, potentially redirecting requested funds from Conventional Trident Modification (CTM), Trident II modifications and the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) to other efforts like an Army proposal for a hypersonic demonstrator.
