The Senate on April 12 mulled an intelligence policy bill that would, among numerous Democratic-backed provisions, affect space efforts and force more oversight in the federal reporting process - the latter of which the White House said was unacceptable. "If S. 372 were presented to the president, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the same day.
Planning is under way for unprecedented observations at Venus using two different spacecraft simultaneously - the European Space Agency's Venus Express, now in elliptical polar orbit around the next planet in toward the sun - and NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (Messenger), which will train its instruments on Venus during a June 5 flyby en route to Mercury.
Playing off the Northrop Grumman tanker team's competition refrain that "bigger is better," Boeing officials draped their offer this week for the U.S. Air Force's KC-135 replacement concept with this question: how much is too much? The company's smaller KC-767, compared to Northrop's KC-30, would be more economical and flexible, said Mark McGraw, vice president, Boeing tanker programs and precision engagement and mobility systems.
PHANTOM DRONES: BAE Systems said April 12 that it has received a $26.5 million contract to convert 20 F-4 Phantom fighter jets to full-scale aerial targets for the U.S. Air Force. The deal is the third of five such contract options and follows a similar contract last summer (DAILY, June 8, 2006). BAE Systems has converted 217 F-4s to the QF-4 configuration so far.
United Space Alliance (USA) the Boeing/Lockheed Martin joint venture formed to operate NASA's space shuttle fleet, is developing a set of software packages designed to support human exploration of the moon. First up for the company's independent research and development (IRAD) "Questus" set of software tools is a data-management package called Integrated Lunar Information Architecture for Decision Support ("Iliads"), produced in partnership with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
New Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell plans to create an IARPA - an Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency - like the Pentagon's DARPA, according to an intelligence community reform plan announced April 11.
The Pentagon has decided not to send a Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the Pacific this summer for a long-awaited demonstration of the high-flying intelligence collection aircraft's abilities, instead delaying the flights to the spring of 2008. The Northrop Grumman-built UAV was to conduct exercises this June showcasing its abilities in the maritime domain. Several Pacific nations are interested in either buying the UAV - as is the case with Australia - or partaking of its intelligence via cooperative agreements.
A Defense Department project to test Internet routing in space (IRIS) will be managed by Intelsat General, and the payload will convert to commercial use once testing has been completed, the company said April 11.
COLORADO SPRINGS - Raytheon is studying concepts to fill a gap in the midcourse-tracking leg of the Pentagon's layered missile defense system, says Lt. Gen. Brian Arnold (USAF Ret.), the company's space systems vice president.
After hearing testimony from National Guard leaders on Capitol Hill April 11, senior Senate Appropriations Committee member Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) called the guard's equipment situation "a national crisis."
In an effort to gain a foothold in the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) market, Northrop Grumman and Israeli Aerospace Industries are teaming to offer quick-response surveillance satellites that they say could be delivering capabilities to users 28 months after getting the go-ahead, the companies announced April 11.
Federal contracting arbiters have rejected a contract award protest by Northrop Grumman against the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command's (CECOM) potentially $1.6 billion award to Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors for the Enhanced AN/TPQ-36 (EQ-36) Target Acquisition Counter Fire Radar System. Northrop Grumman challenged CECOM's evaluation of proposals and asserted that Lockheed's proposal failed to satisfy a mandatory solicitation requirement.
CANADIAN UAVS: Several Canadian defense companies, the Canadian government and academia have formed a national trade organization to promote advancement and use of Canadian expertise in unmanned vehicle systems. The new organization, known as AUVSI-Canada, is affiliated with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and will be headquartered in Ottawa. It will try to establish regional chapters.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER - Liftoff of space shuttle mission STS-117 will be delayed to no earlier than June 8-July 18 following a decision by shuttle managers that launch site repairs to the external tank will be safe and that there is greater schedule advantage to using the repaired tank than a pristine new one.
ANIK F3: An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton Breeze M rocket has orbited the Anik F3 spacecraft for Telesat Canada - its first launch of the year. The C-/Ku-/Ka-band satellite, leased to Echostar and built by EADS Astrium, lifted off at 10:54 p.m. GMT April 9 from ILS's launch pad at Baikonur, Kazakhstan. ILS plans to perform six launches this year, including the first mission with a higher-thrust Phase 2 Enhancement version of Proton in June.
The recently released Pentagon Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) for the later months of 2006 reveal a marked increase in the cost of high-profile aircraft programs, 10 of which have grown a total of $43 billion, or about 8 percent, according to SAR data. Those 10 programs highlighted in the SARs now total about $578 billion, the data show (see chart p. 5). "The increase is a healthy one," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group. "But with rising commodity costs and other issues, it's not unexpected."
OSPREY DEPLOYMENT: Marine Corps Gen. James Conway, the commandant, will announce the deployment of the first operational MV-22 Osprey squadron April 13 at the Pentagon. Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, deputy commandant for aviation, will also speak and then a small group of reporters will fly onboard one.
The U.S. Air Force's A-10C Thunderbolts should soon be combat operational with upgraded avionics and enhanced weapons capabilities, said Col. James Ratti, 508th Aircraft Sustainment Squadron commander, and A-10 System Program Manager. Ratti said during an April 11 press briefing that he could not divulge where and when the upgraded A-10s would see combat. "You can connect the dots," Ratti said. "You know where they've been flying." The Thunderbolts have been one of the stalwart combat aircraft in Iraq since the war began.
The Pentagon has listed eight programs in its recently released Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) that breached their Nunn-McCurdy unit cost-growth limits, where the program or average unit costs have increased by 15 percent or more to their current acquisition program baselines (APB) or by 30 percent or more to their original APB.
President Bush and congressional Democrats sparred April 10 over the pending supplemental measure for fiscal 2007, with Bush asserting that the military will have to make cuts affecting personnel if supplemental funds don't become available by April 15, while Democrats maintained they are doing what voters asked for in the 2006 elections. Both sides declared their willingness to meet to talk about the supplemental - but without backing down from their positions.
