General Dynamics Electric Boat has been awarded a $15.6 million U.S. Navy contract to develop advanced submarine technologies for current and future undersea platforms, according to the Pentagon and the company. Electric Boat will perform Concept Formulation (CONFORM) studies over manufacturability, maintainability, survivability, hydrodynamics, acoustics and materials, as well as research and development in manning, hull integrity, performance, ship control, logistics, weapons handling and safety.
CHAIRMAN MURTHA: Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), the ranking Democratic defense appropriator, will become chairman of that subcommittee when Democrats take over the 110th Congress. Murtha lost an internal race Nov. 16 for House majority leader to current Democratic whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) by a vote of 149-86 of 110th House Democrats. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), already the House Democratic leader, was unanimously elected by the Democratic caucus to become the first woman as House speaker.
IRANIAN THREAT: R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence who advocates for nonviolent regime change in Iran, said Nov. 15 that he thought the window of opportunity for nonmilitary options against potential Iranian nuclear weapons was closing. Woolsey said at an American Foreign Policy Council briefing on Capitol Hill that the only thing worse than a military strike on Iran over its nuclear development would be for Iran to possess nuclear weaponry.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Despite their victory on Election Day, Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services believes that a Democratic-controlled Congress - and the departure of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary - is unlikely to impact the health of the aerospace and defense industry because of a number of longer-term issues it is facing, analysts said Nov. 15.
The incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee wants to maintain jurisdiction over the Coast Guard's non-Homeland Security operations. Rep. James Oberstar, (D-Minn.), just elected to a 17th term, is currently the senior Democrat on the Transportation panel and expected to become committee chairman when his party officially takes control of Congress in January.
Astronomers want to use the same sort of cueing techniques that allow them to pinpoint gamma ray bursts to monitor the moon's surface for ongoing geological activity. Although the moon has long been thought to be essentially dead geologically for more than 3 billion years, the authors of a paper in the journal Nature suggest that a heel-shaped surface feature may have been produced as recently as 1 million years ago.
The U.S. Air Force and Boeing are poised to launch the third of a new series of Lockheed Martin Global Positioning System spacecraft on Nov. 16, or Nov. 17 if necessary if poor weather develops at Cape Canaveral as expected. Liftoff Nov. 16 of the $75 million mission is set for 2:17 p.m. Eastern time onboard a Boeing Delta II fired off Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 17A. A Nov. 17 launch would be at about the same time. The flight will be the second GPS processed and launched by the 45th Space Wing in the last two months.
Prime contractor Lockheed Martin and other program officials for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) have proved that they cut down on schedule and technical risk to develop the U.S. Marine Corps' version of the aircraft, and the service now wants to ensure that the jet is developed as planned, according to Marine aviation officers.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has shifted $126.2 million in internal funding to help pay for a program restructuring and additional testing for the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) Block 6 test satellite program. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for STSS, a planned constellation of satellites for tracking missiles and re-entry vehicles through the boost, midcourse and terminal phases of flight. STSS previously was known as the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Low, an Air Force-led program that was shelved in the late 1990s.
The Defense Department and the military branches focus too much on awarding contracts for services, up 72 percent in a decade, and rarely know whether contractor performance meets expectations or even if users' needs are truly translated into the requirements underpinning contracts, according to the Government Accountability Office. "As a result, DOD is not in a position to determine whether investments in services are achieving their desired outcomes," the GAO said.
DEAL INKED: Russian defense export firm Rosoboronexport has inked a deal to cooperate with French naval contractor DCN. Initially limited to research and development and ship engineering, the deal could later be extended to naval systems.
The U.S. Army is finalizing its program objective memorandum (POM) budget estimate for fiscal years 2008 through 2013, which by Thanksgiving should begin its final round of Pentagon vetting before the Defense Department budget submission goes to the White House next month.
Arianespace continues to rein in new launch business, benefiting from what has become a sellers' market. CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall recently revealed the company had signed up its 11th payload of the year, for an unannounced customer, just a week after landing an award for the TerreStar-1 mobile communications spacecraft. Le Gall said the new orders - three more than the company had originally targeted for 2006 - reflect the company's dependable launch record over the past three years and a scarcity of available capacity elsewhere.
NORTHROP ADVOCATE: Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott will be Senate Republicans' No. 2 leader when they enter the minority next January for the 110th Congress. Lott, once Senate majority leader when Republicans controlled the chamber at the start of the decade, beat Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) after a close, eleventh-hour push that was decided Nov. 15. Lott has been an advocate for Northrop Grumman Corp. programs such as U.S. Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding and the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft.
Blue Origin, the startup personal spaceflight concern backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, gave its New Shepherd reusable launch vehicle its first flight-test on Nov. 13, opening a test series that is planned to continue into 2009.
PARACHUTE CONTRACT: Irvin Aerospace will design the parachutes that ease NASA's planned Orion crew vehicle back into the atmosphere after trips to the International Space Station and eventually the moon. The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company, which also designed the chutes that took Europe's Huygens probe to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, will work with Jacobs Sverdrup and engineers from NASA's Johnson Space Center as an integrated product team for the government-furnished parachute system. Testing is expected to begin next spring.
Congress - still finishing its 109th session - should make increasing funding for "vital" aeronautics research, extending the charter for the Export-Import Bank and reapproving the research and development (R&D) tax credit its priorities for the post-election "lame-duck" session, Aerospace Industries Association chief John Douglass said Nov. 13. "The aerospace industry counts on these measures to play our critical role in keeping the country safe and enhancing the nation's high-technology economy," he said.
With the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) flight-test scheduled for next month - and questions swirling around the Pentagon about the aircraft's ability to survive after the departure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - the Marine Corps is beefing up the battle to secure the jet's future. The service sees the JSF as its aviation anchor in the coming decades. The F-35 is more than a replacement for the current fleet, Marine aviation officers say. The JSF, or Lightening II, is changing the way the service is looking at close-air support (CAS).
ROUGH WATERS: Naval analyst Robert Work of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment suggests the U.S. Navy invest its planned roughly $16 billion for the Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) (MPF(F)) program into 16 additional LPD-17-class amphibious transport dock ships instead. Moreover, Work, in a public briefing on Capitol Hill, advocated for a "joint, zero-baseline review" of the seabasing concept, which he said is a millennia-old strategy that still means something different to the Navy, Marine Corps and Army.
Intelsat posted a net loss of $172.5 million for the third quarter of calendar year 2006, which reflects both the charges related to a satellite failure and the ongoing integration of the former PanAmSat into its operations. Intelsat reported revenue of $528.5 million for the quarter. The net loss includes $49 million in charges related to a Sept. 21 power anomaly with the IS-802 satellite that cut off two-thirds of its usable capacity. The satellite's affected customers in Africa and the Indian Ocean region were shifted to other satellites.
CHINESE SATELLITES: China in 2007 will launch two more Beidou "Compass" navigation spacecraft, increasing to five the number of satellites in the Chinese navigation satellite constellation. Even in its rudimentary form, the Beidou navigation satellite system can help new Chinese Type 094 ballistic missile submarines better target their missiles. China plans the Beidou system to eventually involve 35 satellites, five of them in geosynchronous orbit and the rest in medium altitude orbits.
