V-22 Ospreys will help the Pentagon in its current battles, Lexington Institute military analyst Loren Thompson says. "There is at least one new military system about to enter the force that is relevant right now, and badly needed in places like Iraq," Thompson wrote in his briefing, "V-22 Osprey Is One System the Military Needs Right Now," released Oct. 4. "That is the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey, the world's first operational tilt-rotor aircraft."
The U.S. government's approval of Lockheed Martin and Boeing's United Launch Alliance (ULA) came through on the basis of its anticipated benefits to national security, despite the expectation that it will damage competition and yield little or no savings to the government in the long run, according to documents released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
PENETRATING MUNITION: Boeing Co. has been awarded a $9 million contract modification to design and test a large penetrating munition, the Defense Department said Oct. 4. Boeing will demonstrate the weapon's lethality against a multistory building with hardened bunkers and tunnel facilities. The company will also seek to reduce technology risk for future development.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates orbiting distant stars in the central region of our Milky Way galaxy, the space agency announced Oct. 4. The candidates were uncovered during a sky survey known as the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). The telescope observed 180,000 stars in the central bulge of the Milky Way, 26,000 light-years from Earth, over a swath of sky equal in angular area to about 2 percent of a full moon.
The second of the two Voyager spacecraft should cross the termination shock wave, where the solar wind drops below the deep-space analogy for supersonic speed, sometime in the coming year. At that point it will have passed out of the "bubble" of particles flowing from the sun and into a turbulent region where the solar wind mixes with the "wind" from other stars.
LAUNCH DELAY: The launch of MetOp, Europe's first polar-orbiting weather satellite, has been put off once again by a handling incident. Eumetsat officials say a crane loading the satellite/Fregat upper stage composite onto a flatbed car dropped the load "a few centimeters." A review was set to determine if there was any damage and, if not, set a new launch date. Ground-segment glitches already have delayed launch of the Soyuz/ST rocket carrying MetOp from the Baikonur Cosmodrome several times. The most recent launch date was Oct. 7.
The Pentagon is looking far and wide for ways to conserve energy or use alternative fuel, and is looking at a synthetic fuel apparently developed for commercial South African jets, said John Young, department director of defense research and engineering. "We have military engines and much older engines," Young said during an Oct. 4 briefing. "We will need to do some testing." Still, the synthetic fuel application holds promise, said Young, the Pentagon's chief technology officer.
Northrop Grumman has completed acoustic testing of the payload for the first Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) geosynchronous satellite (GEO-1), the company announced Oct. 3. During tests at a company facility in Redondo Beach, Calif., the GEO-1 payload was subjected to the maximum sound and vibration levels expected during the spacecraft's launch.
Astronomers at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory in Tuscon have observed protoplanetary disks orbiting stars like the sun ripped apart by intense ultraviolet light and solar wind from powerful O-type stars in the vicinity.
A NATO plan to buy three or four more C-17 Globemaster III cargo lifters through a consortium doesn't go far enough "but it's better than zero," according to Gen. James Jones, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Earlier this year, Jones, who is also head of U.S. European Command and a former Marine Corps commandant, said strategic airlift was "a critical shortfall" for NATO (DAILY March 8) as its missions grew in Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa.
OPEN COMMUNICATIONS: U.S. Navy forces and their Iranian counterparts talk to one another constantly to avoid "miscalculations," says U.S. Vice Adm. John Morgan, the deputy naval operations chief for information, plans and strategy. "They are a professional force," Morgan said of the Iranian navy during an Oct. 3 breakfast meeting with reporters. The Iranians recently added quiet Kilo submarines to the country's naval force, he said. Morgan sounded no alarms in the waters surrounding Iran. "Our posture has not changed. Their activity is normal," he said.
AIA CHAIRMAN: A senior executive at CAE Inc. has been named chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada. Donald W. Campbell, executive vice president of the aircraft simulator company, will serve a one-year term at the helm of the Ottawa-based association, which represents the interests of 400 companies in the world's fourth-largest aerospace industry. He succeeds Pierre Racine, president of Rolls-Royce Canada. Campbell joined CAE in 2000 after a career as a diplomat and trade negotiator.
Capitol Hill is allowing the Defense Department to proceed with some of its fiscal 2007 plans to retire aging aircraft and naval ships. Still, congressional defense authorizers have stuck to their overall disapproval of mothballing platforms that provide airlift and naval presence or even jobs, but which the military says are cramping its budgets for new hardware.
In regard to the story "Austin retired" (Oct. 3), the amphibious transport dock USS Austin (LPD 4), which was decommissioned Sept. 27, was "the first LPD class built, and the lead ship in its class," according to the U.S. Navy. Three LPDs - LPD 1, 2 and 3 - sailed before the Austin initiated its own class of amphibious transport dock ships (DAILY, Oct. 3).
PIPELINE WATCH: Russia's RSC Energia hopes to begin development of a monitoring and mapping satellite system to serve Russia's far-flung energy pipeline network, following completion of initial design. The one-meter resolution system, called Smotr, is to be financed by Gazcom, an affiliate of giant gas company Gazprom - perhaps with additional funding from the government of Kazakhstan. The system would consist of two optical satellites and two radar spacecraft using a one-metric-ton bus developed for the Yamal telecom satellite program.
NASA will try to get the space shuttle Discovery under way for another International Space Station assembly mission as early as Dec. 7 to give hard-pressed ground crews at Kennedy Space Center more time off during the holidays later in the month. The launch window was originally set to open a week later, and there is a conflict on the range with an Atlas V launch Dec. 8-9. Agency managers are negotiating the Dec. 7 date with Lockheed Martin and the Air Force, and have not formally reserved the range.
The U.S. Navy is tacking for a 313-ship fleet, but there are cost concerns, said Vice Adm. John Morgan, the deputy naval operations chief for information, plans and strategy. "The 313-plan has been well received," Morgan said during an Oct. 3 Defense Writers Group breakfast meeting with reporters. "The central challenge will be affordability."
ULA: The Federal Trade Commission has finally approved Lockheed Martin and Boeing's proposed United Launch Alliance merger after requiring the firms to sign a consent decree to address anti-competitive concerns raised by other providers. The firms have agreed to "cooperate on equivalent terms" with other providers of government space vehicles, provide equal consideration to them when seeking government satellite contracts, and safeguard competitively sensitive information obtained from them during launch operations.
