The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing a $28 million quick reaction capability contract for delivery of the company's Laser Joint Direct Attack Munition (LJDAM) weapon system. The contract adds 600 laser seekers (400 for the Air Force and 200 for the U.S. Navy) to the services' existing inventory of 500-pound Global Positioning System-guided JDAMs. Initial production deliveries are scheduled to begin early next year and Boeing will have delivered all the systems by June 2009.
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, anticipates that the proposed European missile defense site will be a "contentious issue" when the Senate and House eventually confer on a final fiscal 2008 defense authorization.
The first of four Italian Thales Alenia Space Cosmo SkyMed radar earth observation satellites is performing initial in-orbit checks after launch on a Boeing Delta II 7420-10 June 7. Liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex-2 came at 10:35 p.m. Eastern time at the very end of a 13-minutes launch window. A minor technical glitch delayed the launch a few minutes, but it was cleared and the two-stage rocket performed as planned.
HARSH LIGHT: Last week saw big and small defense contractors alike lambasted and the harsh Washington spotlight may not let up anytime soon. Small business Pinnacle Armor's chief executive was chewed out by the full House Armed Services Committee (HASC) over Army disfavor to its body armor product, while the HASC seapower subcommittee tore into a rule-flanking boat-barrier project allegedly contracted to preferred individuals without producing good results.
EXPLORATION NEEDS: Countries working on a strategy for cooperative space exploration have prepared a list of "challenging technologies" that must be developed by spacefaring nations independently or jointly.
BIGGER DROPS: A 10,000-pound capacity version of the Joint Precision Air Drop System (JPADS) is under development and could see quick fielding following results with a 2,000-pound variant. "There are further plans to deploy more of those (2,000-pound systems) over the next six months, and then rapidly field the 10,000-pound systems as well," says Ed Doucette, director of air delivery and warfighter protection at the U.S. Army's Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center.
FOREIGN IED INTERESTS: Delegations from Israel, Italy and Norway have been touring the U.S. Navy's explosive ordnance disposal technology division in Indian Head, Md., in recent weeks, Navy officials say. A six-member Israel Defense Forces delegation, along with a small component from the U.S. Joint Improvised Explosives Device Defeat Organization, visited June 5. The commander of the Italian Joint Intelligence Center also visited the same day. The Italian army general's tour was part of a larger visit of U.S.
SYNTHETIC ISSUES: By 2016, the U.S. Air Force wants to be buying half of its continental U.S. fuel supply from domestic sources producing a synthetic fuel-blend and using carbon-capture and sequestration technology. That actually could be good news for major U.S. oil companies, as evidenced by Houston-based Shell Oil Products' new $1.1 million order for 315,000 gallons of syn jet fuel. Still, despite promising flight tests starting last fall with a B-52 using Fischer-Tropsch fuel mixed 50-50 with military jet fuel, Capitol Hill is not entirely sold on the idea yet. Why?
APACHE ENGINES: The 18 new AH-64D Apache helicopters ordered by the U.S. Army in April will include upgraded T700 engines. Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) will convert existing GE T700-701 and -701C engines to -701D engines via a kit supplied by General Electric's Lynn, Mass., facility. CCAD expects to complete 540 conversions this year, and each should take between 650 to 750 man-hours. This is part of the Army's announcement in 2004 that it plans to convert its Apache and Black Hawk helicopter fleets to the T700-701D configuration.
UNDERSEA: Lockheed Martin is being awarded a $10.5 million cost plus fixed fee contract for engineering support to the Navy's SQQ-89A(V)15 Undersea Warfare System, DOD announced June 8. Work will be performed in Syracuse, N.Y., and is expected to be completed by September 2008. Naval Sea Systems Command at Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity
PACE OUT: Defense Secretary Roberts Gates says he won't recommend Gen. Peter Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the end of the fiscal year. Congress' displeasure with the war in Iraq was expected to focus Pace's confirmation hearing "on the past rather than the future," Gates said June 8. Instead, he is tapping Adm. Michael Mullen, the chief of naval operations, for the top uniform spot at the Pentagon. Pace, the first Marine Corps general to become joint chiefs chairman, has held the post since the summer of 2005.
DON'T GO: House Science subcommittee chairman Nick Lampson (D-Texas) and David Powner, director of information technology management issues for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, both think it's too early for U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Susan Mashiko to leave her stint as DOD's head of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Powner calls Mashiko's scheduled re-assignment next month "premature," given her success so far in getting the troubled weather satellite effort under control.
Long-awaited decisions about the U.S. Air Force's Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS) are expected some time after the fall, when the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) will deliver an analysis of what mix of space- and ground-based systems will be needed to fulfill the service's evolving space surveillance requirements.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] June 11 - 13 -- Armaments Technology Firepower Symposium and Exhibition, Hilton Parsippany, Parsippany, N.J. For more information call (703) 522-1820, fax: (703) 522-1885 or go to www.ndia.org. June 11 - 14 -- Defense Network Centric Operations 2007, "Improving Information Sharing, Collaboration and Shared Situational Awareness for Mission Success," Hilton Alexandria Mark Center, Alexandria, Va. For more information go to www.dnco2007.com.
LICENSE BACKLOG: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is studying the State Department's backlog in considering export licenses of critical technology, says Anne Marie Calvaresi Barr, director of GAO's acquisition and sourcing management unit. According to a new industry trade group, the Coalition for Security and Competitiveness, the State Department has a 10,000-case backlog.
A Russian proposal to use Azerbaijan to house parts of a third U.S. national missile defense site may not be feasible for geographic reasons, NATO and industry officials suggest. Russia has been strongly opposed to a U.S. proposal to place interceptors in Poland and a cueing radar in the Czech Republic. Last week, Moscow said it could live with a Pentagon installation near its borders if it were placed in Azerbaijan (DAILY, June 8).
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should focus on a broad maritime domain awareness strategy rather than specific attack scenarios involving small boats or other terrorist threats, a think tank study concludes. "Fixating on reducing vulnerabilities by addressing a particular attack method or trying to protect a particular target set is a loser strategy," says the paper written by James Carafano, a homeland security scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
NASA and planetary scientists have split on the issue of how to mount human exploration of the moon, with NASA moving toward a fixed outpost at one of the poles and the scientists looking for lunar samples from across the lunar surface. The final report of a National Research Council (NRC) panel on "The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon" urges a "diversity of lunar samples" to fill gaps left by the Apollo and Luna sample-return data.
FUNDING PLEA: NATO defense ministers due to convene this week in Brussels will get an ear full from the alliance's secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to put more effort into rebuilding the Afghan army. "We should do much more," he argues, adding that "NATO, as an alliance, is lagging behind" where it should be. That's necessary as a show of commitment to locals, he argues, and to ensure Afghan forces can take control of territory once the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has driven Taliban fighters from a region.
SATMEX ACQUIRED: Eutelsat has acquired 100 percent of Mexican telecom satellite operator Satmex for an undisclosed sum, in partnership with Miguel Aleman and Clemente Serna, a pair of local investors. Troubled Satmex had been on the block since a reorganization last year.
PLANET FINDER: Ball Aerospace expects to begin integrating NASA's Kepler planet-finding spacecraft in August, and has already bonded a Schmidt Corrector to the mounting ring that will hold it about 3 meters in front of the 1.4-meter primary light-gathering mirror. There it will correct spherical aberration in the main mirror once the spacecraft is in orbit, staring at a field of 100,000 stars and measuring their brightness every half-hour to detect transiting planets.
Scientists on the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (Messenger) mission will spend the coming weeks examining some six gigabits of data from as close as 200 miles above the clouds of Venus.
