SYNCHRONICITY: NASA's Constellation program plans to "update and synchronize" all of its baseline requirements by the end of May, following completion of project-level reviews across the back-to-the-moon hardware-development effort. The ground operations system requirements review wrapped up last week following a meeting at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) May 5.
URBAN CHALLENGE: Next month the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to travel around the country visiting 53 of the initial 89 registered teams in its Urban Challenge robotic vehicle competition to assess their vehicles and winnow the field down to 30 semi-finalists. Vehicles will have to run a test course including a four-way intersection with moving traffic. The semi-finalists, who will be announced Aug. 10, will participate in a National Qualification Event in October where the finalists will be chosen. The Urban Challenge will take place Nov.
Following the Hubble Space Telescope's final scheduled space shuttle servicing next year, scientists probably will opt to ditch the observatory in the Pacific Ocean sometime in the coming decade, rather than mount another mission to service it with an Orion capsule or other piloted spacecraft still on the drawing board. Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute that manages use of the Hubble, told a Capitol Hill breakfast May 11 that one more servicing mission may be all scientists will want to give Hubble.
Space shuttle managers expressed unanimous confidence in repairs made to Atlantis' external tank during a review May 11, clearing the orbiter to roll out to its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center as early as May 15 for a scheduled June liftoff.
TURF WARS: House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) is pushing legislative language under the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill that would require the Defense Department to reassess its roles and missions - namely what its constituent agencies and armed services do. "We haven't taken a real hard look at what the department and services do and asked why they do those things in a long time," he says, pointing to the 1947 National Security Act.
DHS CHALLENGES: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may need to hire a chief management official with sufficient authority to sort out the agency's continuing problems with performance metrics, milestones, financial management and delays in providing Congress information on programs and operations, a new study says. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says it's keeping DHS on its list of high-risk government operations as the department struggles to transform and integrate 22 federal agencies into a cohesive unit.
FLANKING NUNN-MCCURDY: The U.S. Air Force is looking to bust up major acquisitions into more manageable chunks to get a better grasp on them when, and if, they breach Nunn-McCurdy cost and schedule caps, says Charles Riechers, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and management. The KC-X program's initial 179-aircraft purchase is one example: it's obvious that the service will need more aerial refueling tankers this century but the service is looking to go in more manageable waves of acquisition.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] May 14 - 15 -- Harmonizing Aviation: A Global Challenge Doubletree Hotel Crystal City, Arlington, Va. For more information go to www.aiaa.org/events/insideaerospace. May 14 - 17 -- Global Demilitarization Symposium & Exhibition, Reno, Nev. For more information call (703) 522-1820, fax: (703) 522-1885 or go to www.ndia.org.
DEMOCRATIC DEEP POCKETS: "Judging from action taken so far on most weapons programs, bipartisan support for big military investments has returned to Capitol Hill," says Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson. He says recent legislation decisions by the House Armed Services Committee - now controlled by Democrats like the rest of Congress - for fiscal 2008 show that most of the funding pressure being exerted on the budget is positive regarding the Bush administration's requests, and Democrats seem more than happy to go along.
DOD CMO: The Pentagon increasingly is facing the prospect of a chief management officer (CMO), a new high-level bureaucrat that defense leaders have resisted over recent years even as they repeatedly failed to make significant gains in reining in the Defense Department's spending duplicities, waste and territorial culture. The House Armed Services Committee is pushing language in the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill that would establish the CMO, long recommended by the congressional Government Accountability Office and the U.S. comptroller general.
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) is going through a growth spurt with manpower at 13,000 and expected to grow another 2,000 over the next five years. Equally important, there's a lot of new technology on the way as well as consideration of what next-generation capabilities will be, says AFSOC's chief, Lt. Gen. Michael W. Wooley. The command has formed a Predator squadron, the 3rd Special Operations Squadron. Nevertheless, "There is a great need for more unmanned sensor capability," Wooley says.
The U.K. Defense Ministry is working to define its concept of operations with the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), including how the system will exploit satellite infrastructure. The U.K. is initially acquiring three Predator Bs. Defense Ministry officials say work is underway to identify how the U.K. will operate the UAVs, and the extent to which the platforms will use the British Skynet network of communications satellites. The UAVs are due to be operated in Afghanistan by the end of 2007.
FIRST AWARD: Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) has won a contract to manufacture a spacecraft for SES New Skies, the companies announced May 10. Scheduled for completion in 2009, the NSS-12 satellite will provide communications services for broadcasters, corporations and governments in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India and other parts of Asia. NSS-12 is the first satellite contract that SES New Skies has awarded to SS/L. The spacecraft will be based on SS/L's 1300 satellite bus and will be equipped with 40 C-band and 48 Ku-band transponders.
TRAINING DEALS: InterSense said it will deliver its hybrid IS-900 inertial-acoustic helmet tracking systems to support various L-3 Link flight simulator programs, including the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard F-16 Aircrew Training Device Program and the Navy's programs for F/A-18 C through F model trainers. The company said its IS-900 motion tracking system also has been installed in BAE Systems' Active Cockpit Rig for the Typhoon fighter aircraft.
European Space Agency (ESA) managers are working toward a mid-November launch date for the first flight of the new Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to the International Space Station (ISS), following a meeting between ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and NASA Administrator Mike Griffin late last month.
Providing situational awareness with a variety of sensors from a spectrum of platforms is the key thread running through the efforts of several companies competing for the interest and funding of the Pentagon and prime contractors.
APKWS: BAE Systems said it conducted a successful test flight of its 2.75-inch guided rocket, the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS), on May 8. The test, funded by the U.S. Navy program office, was the first with the APKWS - a joint Army, Navy and Marine Corps program - in its production-ready configuration. The rocket hit the target within the 2-meter requirement of a laser spot that was designating it.
Personnel from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Edwards Air Force Base in California conducted a training exercise at the base May 5 in which they simulated the rescue of a space shuttle crew in the event of a landing mishap. The exercises are held periodically to train U.S. Air Force fire/rescue and medical crews in helping astronauts out of the shuttle and away from the mishap area, as well as safely evacuating injured crew members after triage assessment.
The defense budget just tabled by Prime Minister John Howard's government in Australia calls for $2 billion (Australian) in increased spending for the coming year and a total of $14 billion more over ten years. This funding increase comes on top of $4.1 billion in additional spending for an Army initiative to form two extra battalions of troops. In all, the Australian Defense Force will grow from 51,000 to 57,000 personnel over ten years.
House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee chair Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) fended off challenges to her fiscal 2008 defense authorization markup late May 9, although she agreed with Republicans to add $150 million back into the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser (ABL) program to keep it moving forward and allow for its long-awaited shootdown test.
The political logjam over war supplemental funding is causing the U.S. Army to commandeer money from spare parts and other accounts to pay for immediate battle needs, said acting service Secretary Pete Geren. We're robbing the rest of the Army," Geren said May 10 during a breakfast speech before the Association of the U.S. Army's (AUSA) Institute of Land Warfare in Arlington, Va.
While all the services are clamoring for more situational awareness, the U.S. Navy is trying to see if it is doing all it can do effectively with the data and information once the service has it. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has been funding Navy Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs to measure, monitor and manage situational awareness.
