North Korea fired ground-to-ship Silkworm missiles into the sea May 25, possibly trying to get international attention but earning no more than a shrug from Japan. South Korea thinks it was an annual exercise and Japanese Prime Minister Abe says the incident is "not a serious issue for Japan's security." A U.S. satellite detected the launches of the Chinese-built missiles, which are derivatives of the Soviet P-15 Termit (SS-N-2 Styx) developed in the 1950s.
MAKING IT WORK: U.S. space scientists will set their own priorities for future space- and Earth-science missions, including "trip wires" for killing missions that run over budget. Alan Stern, NASA's new associate administrator for science, says the agency will rely on the decadal survey process run by the National Academies to plan its future program, but with much more emphasis on accurate cost estimates at the start and the trip-wire approach to cost control once mission development is underway.
RSRM TEST: Engineers from Alliant Techsystems and NASA are evaluating the results of a two-minute ground test of a four-segment Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM), both to validate its continuing performance on the space shuttle and evaluate it for its role on the planned Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle. The two-minute test generated average thrust of 2.6 million pounds and was considered a success.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] June 4 - 6 -- AVIATION WEEK's Defense Suppliers Forum, "Mitigating Supply Chain Risk Through Improved Compliance and Contracting Programs," Washington Marriott, Washington, D.C. For more information call Rachelle Young at (212) 904-2779, email: rachelle_ [email protected] or go to http://www.aviationweek.com/forums.
NO TEST: A long-delayed Missile Defense Agency (MDA) ground-based interceptor test failed to take place May 25 when the target missile launched from Kodiak, Alaska didn't reach its proper altitude. A few minutes after launch an anomaly between the first and second stages caused the target to fall over 600 miles short of the intercept zone. The interceptor missile was not launched because the target didn't reach a high enough altitude for the system to classify it as a ballistic missile threat, according to MDA. The test will be rescheduled for summer.
SOLAR STORMS: Future astronauts visiting the moon and Mars should have as much as an hour of advance notice when dangerous solar storms are approaching thanks to measurements from NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) combined with a new solar weather prediction technique, the agency says. Such warning will give astronauts time to seek shelter and ground controllers time to safeguard satellites. Solar radiation storms are swarms of energetic particles accelerated to high speed by explosions on the sun.
The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) last week started a showdown with House counterparts by not just authorizing full funding for the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), but adding $115 million on top of it -- a far cry from the House's roughly 25 percent cut from FCS for fiscal 2008.
The U.S. Defense Department has commissioned a study examining export control regulations and their effect on U.S. efforts to work with friendly governments while maintaining control over sensitive technology. A Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has been selected to conduct the study, which is expected to last about eight months. The study will review the relationships among globalization, technology innovation, defense relationships, export controls and national security.
REPURPOSED: Expect decisions by the end of September on proposals to reuse the "mother ships" from NASA's Deep Impact and Stardust missions to visit secondary targets. Both are still functioning, and there are proposals to use the Deep Impact spacecraft to visit another comet, and to send the Stardust comet-sample-return mother ship to Comet Tempel 1 to take another look into the 70-foot deep crater blasted in it with a copper projectile from Deep Impact (DAILY, July 6, 2005).
FOLLOWING SUIT: Momentum is building for the Pentagon to have to establish a chief management officer (CMO) and put some teeth behind its slow-moving business transformation effort. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has recommended the Senate pass a CMO provision just as the House did earlier this month (DAILY, May 14).
ABM COOPERATION: Australia will join U.S.-Japanese research on ballistic missile defense but won't host an anti-missile system on its soil. The Liberal-National government plans to buy at least three destroyers equipped with the U.S. Aegis defense system, however, and is considering whether to equip them with the RIM-161 Standard Missile 3, which can intercept medium-range ballistic missiles. The Labor opposition says it would support such a move.
NCS MAKEOVER: The U.S. Air Force is seeking maintenance contracts for its NORAD Contingency Suite (NCS) system while at the same time paying tens of millions of dollars more to give Thales Raytheon Systems' (TRS) chosen successor system, the Battle Control System Fixed (BCS-F), some of the same look and feel of NCS for operators. More than $30 million is slated to make the BCS more closely resemble NCS - an interim C2 system for air defense radars that's been in place since late 2001.
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential contender and lead minority member on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), has introduced legislation that he promised would fundamentally reform how the Pentagon buys its biggest and most expensive weapons systems. "Despite the lessons of the past, the acquisition process continues to be dysfunctional," McCain said on the Senate floor May 22.
Although U.S. Air Force leaders say they chose to adopt the Battle Control System Fixed (BCS-F) because the existing interim air defense command and control (C2) system -- the NORAD Contingency Suite (NCS) -- lacks the necessary processing power to handle all the radars the service wants to incorporate, a review of key acquisition documents, reports and interviews with Air Force personnel show that NCS is not nearly as lacking as service BCS officials would have everyone think.
CHINA 2010: By 2010, China's strategic nuclear forces are likely to comprise a combination of enhanced CSS-4s, CSS-3s, CSS-5s, solid-fueled mobile DF-31 and DF-31A intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the JL-1 and JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SSBNs), according to the Pentagon's latest annual report to Congress on China's military capabilities. "The addition of the DF-31 family of missiles and the JL-2 and JIN-class SSBNs will give China a more survivable and flexible nuclear force," the report says.
SHEDDING PROGRAMS: The cost of operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere has European militaries shedding defense programs rather than adding new ones, a U.S. Navy official cautions. "You should not expect major new platform purchases coming out of Europe," says former NATO official and current acting deputy Navy under secretary Marshall Billingslea. For example, he says, last year the Netherlands shut down its P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft program, and Denmark is cutting back its submarine program to better fund Special Operations Forces.
RIVERINE PROSPECT: Northrop Grumman Corp. and Aluminum Chambered Boats Inc. have unveiled their new riverine experimental boat, named the Joint Multimission Expeditionary Craft. It will be demonstrated for the first time to potential customers and the press at the Multiagency Craft Conference on June 5-7 in Little Creek, Va. Northrop has designed a suite of network-centric warfare mission systems, while ACB provided the parent craft. The partnership, announced last December, targets the U.S. Navy's anticipated Riverine/Coastal Warfare program (DAILY, Dec. 13, 2006).
Raytheon announced May 24 that a March award from the U.S. Navy to develop the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) AGM-154C1 (formerly JSOW Block III) will provide a capability against moving maritime targets.
POSTPONED: The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has postponed a scheduled missile intercept test using the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system until May 25 at the earliest due to poor weather at the target missile launch site in Kodiak, Alaska. "The forecast of thick clouds, heavy winds and rain will not meet safety requirements for the launch," an MDA spokesman said May 24. The interceptor missile will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The U.S. and Canada missed an opportunity to deploy an upgraded NORAD radar-based air defense system before the 2001 terrorist attacks because of problems that have hindered both countries' efforts to field a tried-and-proven system for more than a decade, including escalating costs, blown deadlines, mismatched technology and mismanaged programs, according to government audits and acquisition documents.
The Ohio-class conventionally armed "strike" submarine program has passed an important benchmark with the launch of four Tomahawk cruise missiles from the USS Florida May 15-17 during its successful strike operational evaluation (opeval), according to the U.S. Navy. The converted Ohio is supposed to deploy for the first time this year, and Florida's opeval was a critical test, Navy officials said.
John Douglass, the public face and head of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) for nine years, plans to retire at the end of the year, AIA announced May 24.
