SPIKE MISSILES: General Dynamics Santa Barbara Sistemas has been awarded a $424.5 million contract by Spain's army for a supply of Long-Range Spike Missile Systems, the company said Jan. 10. Sistemas, the prime contractor, has an agreement with the Israeli company RAFAEL for the manufacture of the systems.
President Bush's announced increase of U.S. troops in Iraq and his administration's proposal to grow the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 service members will require far greater personnel spending while also boosting war-related funding for theater missile defense and intelligence technology. Bush's late Jan. 10 proposal disrupted budget expectations on Capitol Hill as lawmakers and their aides said they were unsure where the new costs will be financed, i.e., supplemental appropriations or the regular annual budget, both of which are expected Feb. 5.
The Navy needs to review possible hull stress issues in its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and Congress needs to look more closely at military equipment replacement needs, U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said Jan. 10 at the Surface Navy Association Nineteenth National Symposium. Taylor was very troubled by recent press revelations of some hull stress issues with the new U.S. Coast Guard cutters being proposed under the Deepwater program.
Congress and the Navy need to make the service's carrier escort ships nuclear powered and should consider offering incentives to make it possible for more shipyards to build the vessels, U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said Jan. 10. "We have a choice and the ships should be nuclear powered," Taylor said during a keynote address at the Surface Navy Association Nineteenth National Symposium. "Carriers have it. Why not escort ships?" he said. Conventionally powered escort ships have held up carrier battle groups, he said.
As short-term solutions to keep warfighting equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as tapping into prepositioned stocks, become long-term plans and erode once-expected cost savings, Congress may want to rethink its related appropriations and authorization, congressional researchers say.
Administrator Michael Griffin has tasked NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) to begin this year laying the conceptual groundwork for the first human landing on the red planet. Last year was considered the "year of the moon," when NASA did a great deal of planning and justification for its lunar exploration architecture. Griffin considers 2007 the "year of Mars," according to NASA officials.
DALLAS - Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. has agreed to buy PZL Mielec, the largest fixed-wing airframe manufacturer in Poland, from the Polish government. President Jeff Pino says the acquisition will help the Stratford, Conn.-based company become "a leading member of the European aerospace community" and will allow the two companies to "build on each other's strengths."
NASA will trim from the bottom to accommodate a half-billion-dollar hole in its expected funding this year, halting or shrinking low-priority programs to keep top-dollar efforts like the Orion crew exploration vehicle and International Space Station assembly on track. With scant hope for a loophole in the year-long continuing resolution ordered by the new appropriations chairmen in the Democratic 110th Congress, Administrator Michael Griffin says his choices are clear.
Aircraft components supplier TransDigm group has agreed to pay $430 million to acquire Aviation Technologies Inc. (ATI), a Seattle based supplier of interior products for a wide array of military and commercial aircraft. The deal, which is expected to close in February, is by far the largest acquisition ever made by TransDigm and the first since the Cleveland company went public in March 2006. ATI had revenues of $105 million last year and would expand TransDigm's sales base by nearly 25 percent.
APACHE AWARD: The U.S. Army has awarded Boeing a $469.84 million contract modification for the Extended Block II remanufacture program of the Apache Longbow Advanced Attack Helicopter. The work will be performed in Mesa, Ariz., and is expected to be finished by the end of 2010. The Army continues to press ahead with its post-Comanche aviation plan and has invested in upgrades or remanufacturing and new builds of its utility and attack helicopters.
U.S. and Afghanistan officials are building up the nucleus of an Afghani counter-terrorist force similar to elite American military forces, says U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin, commander of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
Technological advances are still important, but the key to winning current conflicts will be the human element, U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter said Jan. 9 during his keynote talk at the Surface Navy Association Nineteenth National Symposium. "There is no technology breakthrough that will change the course of this war," Winter said. Instead, it will be the combination of human ingenuity along with the platforms, he said.
SENIOR NOTES: Intelsat says its wholly owned Bermuda affiliate intends to issue some $600 million in senior notes intended, along with cash, to repay a $600 million senior unsecured bridge loan. The notes would come due in 2015. The move follows plans announced Jan. 3 by Intelsat's Subsidiary Holding Co. to redeem $1 billion in floating rate senior bonds due in 2012. The measures are part of an ongoing effort to restructure and pay down debt amassed in the takeover of PanAmSat last year.
Congress needs to do a better job reforming its own oversight of homeland security issues, the new chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee said Jan. 9. And Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Congress "has done even less with oversight of the intelligence community," as was recommended by the 9/11 Commission. "We found it a lot easier to reform the rest of the government than to reform ourselves post 9/11. That's unfinished business," Lieberman said as his panel considered the 9/11 Commission's unmet recommendations.
The new Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), is promising more oversight of acquisition reform issues in general but says he will wait until the release of the official Air Force request before weighing in again on the embattled effort to replace the service's aging tanker fleet. "They're going to have to persuade us that there's real competition," Levin nonetheless told defense reporters Jan. 9.
WATCHDOG BITES: The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will unveil a list of "hundreds" of cases of alleged misconduct by the federal government's top 50 contractors, many of them aerospace and defense companies. The total results in more than $10 billion in fines, penalties, settlements and restitution, the Washington watchdog group asserts.
The U.S. Army is deferring additional work on its Class II and Class III unmanned aerial vehicle systems, opting instead to use its existing Class I and Class IV options together with networking technology for future platoon and brigade requirements. The unmanned systems were part of the Army's sweeping $14.9 billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, a collection of ground, air and communication elements geared to make soldiers of the future lighter and more responsive.
NIMIQ 5 LAUNCH: Telesat has contracted with Space Systems/Loral to build and launch Nimiq 5, a new digital broadcasting spacecraft whose acquisition was approved in late December, along with the sale of the company to a joint venture headed by SS/L's parent company, Loral Space & Communications. The 32-transponder spacecraft, to be orbited in 2009, will be leased out to Bell Canada affiliate Bell ExpressVu, the former owner of Telesat.
Radar subcontractors vying for Navy contracts for the new Littoral Combat Ship sensors could get feedback on the request for proposals (RFPs) in March, said officials from ITT Corp. and Thales Corp., who announced Jan. 9 their new partnership for radar work at the Surface Navy Association Nineteenth National Symposium.
LITENING PODS: Northrop Grumman Corp. said Jan. 9 it was awarded a U.S. Air Force contract to begin integrating Marine Corp EA-6B aircraft with LITENING Advanced Targeting (AT) pods. The contract, issued by the Air Force as the executive procurement agent for all LITENING AT pods, marks the first integration of an advanced targeting and sensor system on any EA-6B, the company said. Northrop Grumman did not disclose the size of the award.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it will establish an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) pilot program for the northern border, based in Grand Forks, N.D., by the end of fiscal 2007. "As unmanned aircraft have proven to be effective on our southern border, this first step in North Dakota will lay the foundation to expand UAS operations along the nation's northern border," Michael Kostelnik, chief of CBP Air and Marine, said Jan. 8.
NASA's Phoenix lander has run over budget because of problems with the radar altimeter the spacecraft will use for its landing on Mars in May 2008, although program officials are now confident that they have fixed the situation.
