The Defense Department will request $3.5 billion for counter-improvised explosive device (IED) efforts for fiscal 2007, the Pentagon effort's leader said Sept. 7. In a meeting with a specially-selected, limited group of reporters, Montgomery Meigs asserted that the Joint IED Defeat Organization was making progress. "You are not going to solve this overnight," the retired Army general added in a DOD statement released later. The DOD statement said the department is spending almost $3.5 billion this year.
TANKER RFP: Pentagon acquisition chief Kenneth Krieg says the much-awaited request for proposals for the U.S. Air Force's next-generation tanker competition should be out by year's end. He's not yet reviewed the draft of the Air Force's RFP, but says it is forthcoming. Krieg would not take a position on whether the Defense Department will buy a mixed fleet - dividing the work between Boeing and a Northrop Grumman-EADS North America team. "It depends on how mixed mixed is," he says.
Sept. 12 - 14 -- 11th India International Defense/Civil Equipment & Aerospace Systems Conference & Exhibition, Ashok Hotel & Conference Center, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi. For more information email [email protected]. Sept. 13 - 14 -- 2006 European Air & Port Security Expo, Brussels. For more information call +44 (208) 842-9175 or go to www.aps-expo.com.
ASKING A LOT: The centerpiece of U.S. efforts to fashion a better maritime security posture - the "National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness" completed in October of 2005 - asks the nearly impossible, says a recent issue brief by the Lexington Institute. That picture includes a "near-real time, dynamically tailorable, network-centric virtual information grid shared by all U.S.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT: The July launch failure of India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is likely to set back development of the heavier-lift Mk. 3 version, since engineers from the future effort have been pulled off those activities to help fix the near-term issue. First launch of the Mk. 3 was nominally expected in 2008 or 2009, but at least a six-month delay can now be expected, according to an Indian official. The Indian Space Research Organization hopes to have GSLV back in operation in six to 10 months.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Congress is inching closer to establishing a Web site for public scrutiny of how most federal dollars are spent, including grants, contracts, subgrants, subcontracts, loans, awards and other financial assistance above $25,000. Classified national security spending, of course, would be exempt. The Senate late Sept. 7 unanimously passed the so-called Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. The House already approved similar legislation, the Federal Spending and Assistance bill.
Opposition by NASA Flight Crew Operations, representing the Astronaut Office, to the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis with a failed hydrogen fuel level sensor was a key factor Sept. 8 in swaying opinion in the Kennedy Space Center Launch Control Center (LCC) to scrub the launch over recommendations by other managers who wanted to proceed. NASA Mission Management Team lead LeRoy Cain, the Kennedy launch integration manager who was also the Johnson Space Center re-entry flight director during the Columbia accident, also opposed the launch.
Weapon systems that would essentially intercept rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) before they hit Future Combat Systems vehicles -- or even existing ground vehicles -- are not yet deployable, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said Sept. 8 at a Pentagon briefing. The Army and a Raytheon-led contractor team are developing a hit-avoidance anti-RPG system that is scheduled for design and other reviews in November, Army officials said. But no such anti-RPG system has yet passed muster enough for U.S. Army standards, Sorenson said.
LAUNCH DELAYED: SES Global says the launch of AMC-14 will be delayed until early 2008 as engineers study a possible payload reconfiguration that would allow the satellite to serve a new Ku-band slot at 77 degrees west longitude owned by a Mexican joint venture, QuetzSat, set up by SES's Americom unit and Grupo Medcom last year. If agreed to by EchoStar, which owns the satellite, the plan would allow AM-14 to occupy that slot until a dedicated satellite, Quetzsat-1, is ready. Quetzat-1 was to be ordered toward year's end, but the purchase could be delayed.
More unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- or what the U.S. Army calls unmanned aerial systems (UASs) -- has meant more accidents for the service, Army officials say. "The inclusion of UAS accident data into aviation accident statistics has increased our Class B and Class C rates," an Army statement said. "This is exacerbated by the increase in the size of the Army's UAS fleet and its increased operational tempo during the war on terror."
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has opted to end the X-50A Dragonfly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program, which was attempting to pioneer a new type of helicopter capable of stopping its rotor in flight and cruising as a fixed-wing jet until it lost both of its flight prototypes in crashes.
"Once [the Iranians] have a weapon, it can be stored anywhere and it becomes impossible to find. That's why the program has to be delayed soon." These comments, by a senior U.S. Air Force official, resonate in many Western capitols, as well as in Israel, Aviation Week & Space Technology is reporting Sept. 11. The dissonance comes in trying to determine just how to "delay" Iran's nuclear weapons program.
CSAR-X DELAYS: For the past several months, Air Force officials have been chomping at the bit as Pentagon acquisition officials held up various portions of the Combat, Search and Rescue Replacement (CSAR-X) helicopter. But now, the Defense Department says that it's the Air Force that's asking for the latest delay, pushing back acquisition reviews until later this fall. The reason, the Air Force says, is to collect more data. But industry says there's a growing concern that the service is just asking too much from one aircraft.
DEFENSE BILL: The Senate passed its fiscal 2007 defense spending bill late Sept. 7 by a vote of 98-0 (DAILY, Sept. 8). Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in line to take over the Armed Services Committee, decried what he called more than $4 billion in earmarks, as well as the Appropriations panel's $9 billion cut to the Bush administration's request. "During a time of war we should be making every effort to support the president's budget request instead of slashing it and then adding earmarks for favored projects," he said.
Europe's Smart-1 lunar orbiter crashed into the moon's Sea of Excellence Sept. 3 as planned, just three weeks short of a three-year mission that demonstrated several advanced spacecraft technologies and produced valuable data on Earth's natural satellite right up to the end. Operators at the European Space Agency's control center in Darmstadt, Germany, confirmed touchdown at 1:42 a.m. Eastern time, when the New Norcia ground station in Australia lost radio contact with the probe.
Trying again to accelerate an organic U.S. special operations forces (SOF) UAV capability after an earlier legislative attempt was undone, the Senate is set to add $65.4 million in fiscal 2007 defense appropriations to almost double the number of General Atomics Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) going directly to SOF.
As Defense Department contract obligations have skyrocketed in the last five years, so has its reliance on the private sector to help it fulfill its missions and support its operations, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Sept. 7. The Air Force, for example, is now buying launch services rather than rockets for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. And with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draining manpower, the Defense Department is hiring contract guards to protect 57 domestic installations.
LAUNCH SET: NASA has decided to attempt a launch of Atlantis on the STS-115 mission on Sept. 8 following a delay caused by an electrical spike detected in a Freon coolant pump motor associated with one of three orbiter cells. The liftoff target is about 11:40 a.m. Eastern time.
The Navy could wind up with shortfalls in its desired fleet size of next-generation cruisers and destroyers if the service continues with its current acquisition strategy, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The Navy, which plans to procure some of its ships in later years, and Congress have other options to consider, CRS naval expert Ronald O'Rourke says in the Aug. 29 report, "Navy DDG-1000 (DD(X)), CG(X), and LCS Ship Acquisition Programs: Oversight Issues and Options for Congress." (See related charts on page 5.)
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center plans to offer prospective partners in government and industry the opportunity to fly NASA-owned unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and take advantage of the center's UAV safety and flight certification expertise to support their own projects. "What we're trying to do is make the [UAV] community aware of some of the core competencies [and] capabilities that we have here at Dryden that might be of value or of interest to them," said Jeff Bauer, a business development manager at the center.
The annual budget cuts suffered by the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program are beginning to have an effect on its incremental milestones, although so far the program's major milestones remain on track, according to Assistant Army Secretary for Acquisition Claude Bolton.
Lockheed Martin plans to take over the marketing of commercial launch services on its Atlas V vehicles, shifting from collaboration to competition with its Russian partners and their Proton launchers. The U.S. aerospace giant Sept. 7 announced the proposed sale of its interest in International Launch Services (ILS) and Lockheed Khrunichev Energia International (LKEI), the U.S.-Russian partnership under which it gained access to Proton services, to a startup headed by its former Moscow consultant.
