GEO-LOCATION: BAE Systems asserts that it has successfully demonstrated a passive geo-location capability that enables aircraft to quickly and accurately identify enemy positions in crowded radio frequency (RF) environments. It can be deployed on any type of military aircraft, the company says. The new capability, demonstrated at the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, Calif., can almost instantaneously fix a target without the need for multiple aircraft to simultaneously receive the same pulse of an enemy radar signal, BAE claims.
RESIGNING: Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, will resign this month because of security problems at weapons facilities, news service reports said Jan. 4. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Brooks had not sufficiently repaired security breakdowns. Brooks was previously an arms control negotiator and ambassador.
FUTURE MTG: Eumetset is studying two alternatives for a planned third-generation geostationary orbit weather system (MTG) to be deployed around 2015. Three instruments - an imager, infrared sounder and lightning imager - are planned. However, the European Space Agency says developing the IR sounder could take until 2017, and buying one from the U.S. would cost too much. One option, engineers say, would be to put all three sensors on a single spacecraft, flying a dummy or reduced capability IR sounder on the first MTG, and a full capability unit on recurrent satellites.
LOCKHEED ROCKETS: The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. on Dec. 21, 2006, a $166.4 million contract modification for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System full-rate production launchers. The work will be performed in Grand Prairie, Texas (23 percent), and East Camden, Ark. (77 percent), and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2009. The award finalized a sole-source contract initiated on April 5, 2006.
Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she wants to change the way Congress oversees the intelligence budget. One of the Democrats' first acts when they take control of the House this month, Pelosi says, will be creating a new oversight panel to check on the administration's budget for intelligence-gathering. The proposed Select Intelligence Oversight Panel would consist of members of the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees, and would operate as part of the Appropriations Committee.
Early bidding in the upcoming congressional budget negotiations gives NASA exploration managers plenty of heartburn. Amid signs the incoming Democratic leadership plans to pass a full-year continuing resolution (CR) for fiscal 2007 and move on to the fiscal 2008 budget request early in the year, the space agency's legislative office warns that exploration accounts face deep hits.
North Korea's missile test launches last summer demonstrated the country's ability to attack the command-and-control "seams" of the United States and its allies, possibly exposing defense gaps in those networks, according to Ed Butt, director of the Missile Defense Systems Division of Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions.
Trade-offs between guns, butter and taxes may well be forced onto the congressional agenda very early in the new 110th Congress - which starts this week - according to a recent primer from the Congressional Research Service.
President Bush on Jan. 3 declared that his fiscal 2008 budget request will include a five-year proposal that he contends will balance the federal budget by 2012, restrain spending and promote national defense. "It will address the most urgent needs of our nation; in particular the need to protect ourselves from radicals and terrorists, the need to win the war on terror, the need to maintain a strong national defense and the need to keep this economy growing by making tax relief permanent," he said.
Raytheon Co. announced Jan. 3 that it recently completed negotiations with the U.S. Army for a $1.4 billion contract modification for system development and demonstration of the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS). System testing is scheduled to begin in 2010, with program completion in 2012. The Army once had hoped to begin equipping units with JLENS in fiscal 2010.
Of 25 countries that have provided the United States with "strategic services" in the so-called global war on terror, more than half of them received more total military assistance in the four years after Sept. 11, 2001, than in the 12 previous years combined, according to a new critique by the Center for Defense Information.
Raytheon has delivered an engineering development unit (EDU) prototype of its VIIRS instrument for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), the company announced Jan. 3. The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) EDU will fly on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft, which will precede the operational NPOESS constellation. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for NPOESS.
BETTER TARGETS: The U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command has extended the Sippican/Granite State Manufacturing Submarine Antenna Joint Venture almost $8 million for the MK 30 Mod 2 Antisubmarine Warfare Target System (ATS), along with associated proofing support material and replenishment spares. It will replace the existing MK 30 Mod 1 system and will feature significant improvements in reliability, maintainability, availability and affordability, the Defense Department said Dec. 29.
The U.S. Navy is tapping two of its largest contractors to work on transformational mast-related initiatives. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors is being awarded an $8.7 million contract and options for development of the Low Profile Mast sensor system. It seeks to develop an electro-optic periscope with a smaller visual cross section for use in tactical situations. The competitively procured Naval Undersea Warfare Center contract, which received two proposals, was announced in late December and is scheduled to finish by December 2008.
SUB CONTRACT: France has awarded shipyard DCN and nuclear propulsion specialist Areva a framework contract worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for the design and development of the Barracuda cruise missile carrying submarine. The award, which includes initial production and through-life support, will be followed by separate production contracts for the six vessels covered by the 20-year, 7.9 billion euro program.
LAUNCH ENGINE AWARD: A Snecma-led team has been awarded a follow-on contract from the European Space Agency to demonstrate Vinci cryogenic upper stage launch engine technology. One of a slate of technology demonstration projects approved a year ago under ESA's Future Launch Preparatory Program, the new-generation expander-cycle engine could power a future higher-lift version of the Ariane 5 launch vehicle capable of multiple in-flight ignitions, necessary for a low- or medium-Earth orbit constellation like the Galileo satellite navigation system.
GLONASS GROWING: Russia plans to begin offering satellite navigation services to domestic users via its updated Glonass system by the end of this year or early in 2008, following launch Dec. 25 of three more Glonass-M spacecraft. Launch of the trio on a Proton-K from Baikonur Cosmodrome brought the number of satellites in the constellation to 17, and officials told reporters in Moscow that the constellation will be able to support commercial customers worldwide beginning in 2009.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are testing new capabilities afforded by the latest revision of their flight software as they near their three-year anniversaries on the red planet. Spirit will mark the third anniversary of its arrival on Mars on Jan. 3 and Opportunity on Jan. 24. The rovers were originally designed for baseline missions of 90 days.
The Defense Department squeezed in several command-and-control (C2) contract announcements before the end of 2006, including for the Blue Force Tracking system, a much-hailed transformational technology already proven in combat.
BETTER AIM: Pakistan has asked Raytheon Missile Systems, via a U.S. Naval Air Systems Command award under Foreign Military Sales, to convert 310 AIM-9M missiles to AIM-9M-8/9s and for 10 Captive Air Training Missiles and 20 guidance control sections. The $5.9 million contract modification was announced Dec. 28 and is expected to be completed in October 2007. Pakistan has asked for $185 million worth of Raytheon Co. missiles and other technology to help it control its "porous" border region and fight terrorists (DAILY, Dec. 20, 2006).
