COST CUTS: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, says the Navy next year will try to get a better understanding of its contractors with an eye toward cost cutting and better spending. In an April 3 appearance at the Brookings Institution in Washington, he pointed to plans to cut 10,000 sailors annually and intentions to tighten civilian employee ranks as well.
LAUNCH DELAYED: The launch of Germany's pioneering TerraSAR-X - the first commercial one-meter resolution radar imaging satellite - has been put off once again because of launch manifest problems with the Dnepr-1 booster. The mission, initially set for October 2006 and most recently for late March/early April, will now slip until late May/early June, says German aerospace center DLR. DLR is providing part of the funding for the mission, with the remainder provided by EADS/Infoterra, which will operate and market the spacecraft.
Northrop Grumman and its KC-30 Tanker Team, including EADS, are "in this competition to win it," the group declared April 10 in announcing that they had submitted their proposal to the U.S. Air Force. More than 300 representatives of Northrop Grumman, EADS, General Electric, Sargent Fletcher, Honeywell and other potential KC-30 tanker suppliers labored longer than two-and-a-half years on the bid, Northrop officials said.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) remains concerned about the risks of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's (JSF) development plan, despite a 2006 blitz of reports and meetings in Washington by prime contractor Lockheed Martin aimed at assuaging such concerns. Comparing the JSF plan to that of Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor, GAO again cites concerns over concurrent development and procurement, cost growth and program delays in a recent report on tactical aircraft.
NATO LAW: President Bush on April 9 signed the NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007, according to the White House. The new law reaffirms U.S. support for continued enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and designates Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine as eligible to receive assistance under the NATO Participation Act of 1994. It also authorizes fiscal 2008 appropriations - which have been requested but remain far from finalized by Congress - for military assistance for these countries, the Bush administration said April 10.
NEW CREW: The Expedition 15 crew arrived onboard the International Space Station April 9. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov and Space Tourist Charles Simonyi docked in their Soyuz spacecraft two days after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On April 20 Simonyi will return home with Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, who have been living in space since last September.
COLORADO SPRINGS - Bigelow Aerospace will charge "sovereign customers" - nations that want to send their astronauts into space - $14.95 million to spend four weeks in one of the company's proposed inflatable orbiting modules. That time can be doubled for another $2.95 million. Private companies that want to lease a module for industrial research would be charged $88 million per year for a full 350-cubic meter module, and as little as $4.5 million per month for a half-module.
Arianespace affiliate Starsem has set the first Soyuz launch of the year for May 22, carrying the first of two Globalstar replenishment payloads. It will be preceded in early May by an Ariane 5 mission, carrying Intelsat's Galaxy 17 and the SES Astra 1L communications satellites.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has repositioned its GOES-10 satellite over South America to help detect severe weather and forest fires sooner in the region, U.S. and Brazilian officials announced April 10.
This month's public chastisement of the shipbuilding industry by U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter and Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) close scrutiny of the Air Force's handling of its combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) replacement may be a harbinger of things to come, according to defense officials and analysts. Navy and Defense Department officials also warned this month that the Pentagon and its services are not fooling around any more when it comes to changing the way they spend their money.
D5 EXTENSION EXTENDED: Lockheed Martin said April 9 that the U.S. Navy awarded it a $135 million contract modification to continue the Trident II D5 Life Extension program. The award comes on top of the $654.9 million contract Lockheed Martin received earlier this year for fiscal 2007 production and deployed systems support for the D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile program (DAILY, Jan. 16). Deliveries under the original D5 contract, which called for production of 425 missiles, began in 1989, and the final two missiles are scheduled for delivery this year.
The U.S. Navy's experimental littoral surface craft, the Sea Fighter (FSF 1), has moved to Panama City, Fla., where the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) precursor apparently will remain a testbed for mine warfare technology and related concepts. The move comes after Congress expressed a desire last fall for the unique Sea Fighter to become an operationally deployable asset (DAILY, Nov. 7, 2006).
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, fixed-wing and other aircraft expenses have dominated Pentagon spending, according to an Aerospace Daily computer analysis of expense trends throughout the decade. The Pentagon has focused its spent or designated money outlays for contracts and contract modifications on most of the same top 20 products and services, the analysis showed (see charts p. 5-7).
FAA on April 6 released new guidelines for obtaining one-year experimental launch permits for reusable spacecraft that will give developers the opportunity to fly and test their vehicles before applying for an FAA launch license. Each permit will cover multiple vehicles of a particular design and will allow an unlimited number of launches. The vehicles must operate in an area large enough to contain its trajectory that is not close to any densely populated areas.
The four chiefs of the armed services have petitioned Congress for quick passage of the second supplemental fiscal 2007 request, asserting that the military "will be forced to take increasingly disruptive measures in order to sustain combat operations" if the additional funds are not provided as soon as April 15.
A March 29 DAILY story should have said that Alliant Techsystems (ATK) leads the Ares I upper-stage bidding team that also includes Pratt & Whitney/Rocketdyne and Lockheed Martin. Aerospace Daily regrets the error.
