Belated but surging congressional oversight on U.S. Coast Guard and other Homeland Security Department (DHS) acquisition efforts - namely the Deepwater recapitalization program under Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman - seems likely to result in contract changes but not program cancellation, according to lawmakers' statements.
Japan's Koichi Wakata and Europe's Leopold Eyharts have been assigned slots on future long-duration expeditions to the International Space Station, continuing the trend toward broader national participation in the orbiting facility as NASA delivers pressurized modules supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The joint Israeli-U.S. Arrow missile defense system completed a successful intercept test on Feb. 11 over the Mediterranean Sea, destroying a Rafael-built "Black Sparrow" target launched from an F-15. Part of the Arrow System Improvement Program (ASIP), it was the first nighttime Arrow test and marked the system's 13th success out of 15 attempts. It also was the first test from the system's improved launcher, according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
RAYTHEON AWARDS: Naval Sea Systems Command has awarded two separate contract actions to Raytheon Co., including a $305.7 million modification to a previously awarded contract for DDG-1000 Mission System Equipment (MSE) and engineering support services. The MSE is being developed as part of the destroyer's ship systems detailed design and integration effort.
Plans to train and equip national security forces in Afghanistan include providing a "small but capable air corps," to increase the Afghan army's combat mobility, Pentagon officials told the House Armed Services Committee Feb. 13.
MASINT AWARD: Science Applications International Corp. said Feb. 13 that it won a contract from the U.S. Air Force to provide measurement and signature intelligence within the Air Force's Distributed Common Ground System for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va. The single-award, firm-fixed-price contract runs five years and is worth $26.9 million. Teammates include Spectrum Comm Inc., SRA International Inc. and MacAulay-Brown Inc.
THAAD AWARD: The Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency is awarding Raytheon Co. a $20 million contract modification for the manufacture, delivery and integration support of the radar component of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. The award brings the contract's total value to $212.2 million. DOD said late Feb. 10 that the work will be performed at Woburn, Mass., and is slated to be finished by May 2010. Fiscal 2007 research and development funds were used for the initial $20 million.
The U.S. Navy has asked Boeing to be ready to start building up to six EA-18G Growler electronic jamming and attack aircraft to meet supplemental requests, according to Mike Gibbons, Boeing's EA-18G program manager.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is concerned about the Coast Guard's Deep-water recapitalization program but despite its qualms still wants the Bush administration to better fund the Homeland Security De-partment's armed service.
While the U.S. Air Force continues to act and plan as though the F-22 Raptor multiyear procurement (MYP) is a done deal, another independent federally funded review still has to be completed and Congress still has much to consider about the plan, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
A panel of witnesses told the House Committee on Science and Technology Feb. 13 that the U.S. system of earth-monitoring satellites is at risk in the coming decade, the committee said in a statement. The Capitol Hill hearing examined the findings of the first National Academies decadal survey on earth science, called "Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond."
STREAMLINED SECRET: House defense appropriators decry the fact that it is expected to take years to field a long-awaited, commercially derived aerial refueling tanker for the U.S. Air Force, and the service's top officials say that despite their best efforts the acquisition process has not been streamlined further. But Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley made another interesting point on Feb. 13: the so-called "black" budget, for secret spending, tends to move aircraft purchases along faster.
HUBBLE TRAINING: The astronauts that will conduct the final space shuttle servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope in 2008 are at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., this week for their first formal crew orientation. Goddard personnel are briefing the crew and discussing the mission's five spacewalks, which will install two new science instruments and perform upgrades. Veteran astronaut Scott Altman will command the mission and U.S. Navy Reserve Capt. Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot.
A longtime finance executive who left Boeing in 2003 is rejoining the aerospace industry as Northrop Grumman's new chief financial officer (CFO). Northrop Grumman's appointment of James F. Palmer on Feb. 13 ends a long CFO search that began when Wesley G. Bush was promoted to company president in May 2006. Bush had retained the dual titles of president and CFO while the search for a new CFO was conducted.
The American Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is recommending that the U.S. establish a base at the lunar south pole base sooner than currently planned and work with international partners to establish the basis of a robust lunar commerce. In January 2004, President Bush announced plans for NASA to develop a new human spaceflight vehicle to succeed the space shuttle that would return astronauts to the moon no later than 2020. The agency plans to establish a base at the lunar south pole later in that decade (DAILY, Dec. 5).
China's National Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan says there won't be a repeat of the Jan. 11 anti-satellite weapon test that scattered more than 900 trackable pieces of debris across the most heavily used satellite orbits in space. Fukushiro Nukaga, the former Japanese minister of state for defense, told reporters in Tokyo that during a meeting in Beijing Cao also repeated past Chinese denials that the test was a hostile act.
NASA's current strategy of favoring large astrophysics missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope at the expense of smaller missions could be closing the door on future scientific discoveries, according to the National Academies' National Research Council (NRC). The NRC's Space Studies board performed a one-year survey of NASA's astrophysics portfolio at the agency's request to assess, among other things, how well it matches with the priorities of the National Academies' decadal survey, which polls scientists on their highest-priority research goals.
The Swedish government is looking to buy small explosive ordnance disposal robots in the near future. The military's Defense Material Administration, or FMV, indicates a formal procurement program of systems in the 15-kilogram to 50-kilogram range could emerge in the coming months. The systems would serve as complements to medium-sized explosive ordnance disposal systems the military has already fielded. The new robots would be used to deal with explosives in hard-to-reach places, including inside commercial aircraft or buses or under vehicles.
