SAT LAUNCH SET: The military communications satellite Syracuse 3B, built for French Defense procurement agency (DGA) by Alcatel Alenia Space, is set for an Aug. 11 launch after arriving in Kourou, French Guiana, Alcatel says. Syracuse 3B will complete the Syracuse III system by joining the Syracuse 3A satellite, which was launched on Oct. 13. The Syracuse III system will provide voice communications, secure data transmission, access to military intranets, videoconferencing, and network interconnections.
F-16 ENGINE VANES: Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corp., of Chromalloy, Okla., has been awarded an $8.3 million contract to repair and overhaul the third and fourth stage vanes used on F100 engines of F-16 aircraft, the Defense Department said July 7. The work is set to be complete by January 2009. The contract was awarded by Headquarters Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.
NASA has officially chosen to proceed with the troubled SOFIA airborne astronomy mission, which had its $57.1 million fiscal 2007 budget request cut to zero following a two-year schedule slip and cost growth due to technical problems. Administrator Michael Griffin finally confirmed that NASA will proceed with SOFIA during a July 6 speech to the NASA Advisory Council's science subcommittee in Washington. The details of when and how money might be reprogrammed to sustain the effort aren't yet known, according to a NASA spokesman.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sharply criticizes the U.S. Air Force's "ineffective" oversight of its latest effort to upgrade the tracking facility at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Cheyenne Mountain tracks aircraft, missile launches and satellites. Known as the Combatant Commanders' Integrated Command and Control System (CCIC2S), the upgrade program has run an estimated 51 percent over its initial budget estimates and now is expected to cost about $707 million through fiscal 2006, GAO says.
MORE BRIT VEHICLES, TRUCKS: Britain's military will receive an additional 2,077 new cargo vehicles and recovery trucks under a 250 million pound ($462 million) contract option awarded to Swindon, Wiltshire-based MAN ERF UK Ltd., the United Kingdom's defense ministry says. The order is in addition to a 1.1 billion pound ($2 billion) contract for 5,000 vehicles and trucks announced in 2005. The contract option is part of the ministry of defense's biggest truck and vehicle deal in more than 25 years.
FINLAND'S DEFENSE: Finland's defense budget requires a marked increase in appropriations in the coming decade, the country's defense minister says. "Even in a time of the deepest of peace one must take the long-term perspective into account," Finland Defense Minister Seppo Kaariainen said July 7. The rising price of weapons technology and development will dictate a defense budget hike from 2010 to 2020, with one-third of that amount going toward hardware, he said. Just how big a hike Kaariainen didn't say.
KEYSTONE, Colo. - The U.S. Air Force should continue to push the boundaries of technology in satellite development, but at the same time step up the pace of getting the technology out faster, according to Lt. Gen. Michael A. Hamel, commander of the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.
PAKISTAN SALES: The foreign-military-sales floodgate has opened for Pakistan. After freezing Pakistan out of an F-16 sale in the 1990s because of skepticism about its loyalties, the Pentagon is revealing details of a new sale worth up to $5 billion. Before the Independence Day holiday, the Pentagon announced approval of selling 36 F-16 Block 50/52 fighters to Pakistan along with 500 Aim-120C5 Amraam missiles, 200 Aim-9M-8/9 Sidewinders, 500 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and other weapons.
NASA ASTROBIOLOGY: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is pleading with the leadership of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA to reverse what she calls the "astounding" 50 percent cut in astrobiology research funding proposed by the White House in its fiscal 2007 budget request for the agency. "The proposed budget cut will devastate this nascent discipline and send a message to aspiring scientists that astrobiology is a field not worth exploring," Boxer writes in a letter to Sens. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.).
The Navy has spent more than $212 million between fiscal 2003 and fiscal 2005 - and plans to invest another $264 million in succeeding years - to make future ships and submarines more fuel efficient, according to a congressional study. The money is being spent on "propulsion and ship support technologies," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a July 6 report.
FLYING BLOCKED: A federal administrative law judge says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may not fly its Gulfstream IV-SP jet near the center of hurricanes until it thrashes out the details with its employees' union. Judge Richard Pearson, sitting in Atlanta, says NOAA illegally bypassed the National Weather Service Employees Organization when it began sending the twin turbofan jet closer to hurricanes' eyes at 45,000 feet altitudes during the 2005 storm season.
AEGIS UPGRADES: Lockheed Martin said July 6 that it has been awarded at $30.3 million contract to upgrade the AEGIS weapon system on four of the Spanish navy's F100-class frigates. The work will include combat system engineering, computer program support, system integration and test, ship integration and test, staging, FMS program management, and integrated logistics support including training and technical manuals. The Foreign Military Sales work will take place in Moorestown, N.J., and Spain, and is expected to be finished by December 2008.
SECURITY RULES: The FAA is institutionalizing its security rules on Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flying over and around Washington in an attempt to reduce the number of pilots that stray into the capital's Area Defense Identification Zone (within 100 nautical miles of the Washington VHF Omni-Directional Radio-Range/Distance-Measuring Equipment) and Flight Restricted Zone (within 15 nautical miles).
The crew of STS-121 conducted "focused inspections" of six areas of interest on the space shuttle's thermal protection system July 7, including two tile gap-fillers that apparently shook loose during ascent and might have to be removed, as was done on Discovery's flight last year.
General Dynamics will provide the U.S. Army with 103 more Stryker Combat Vehicles under a $127 million contract, the company said July 6. The work will be done in Anniston, Ala.; Lima, Ohio; and London, Ontario. More than 1,500 Strykers in all have been delivered to the Army by General Dynamics. In fiscal 2006, 409 of the eight-wheel Strykers have been ordered.
ARABSAT: Arabsat has picked Arianespace to launch its recently ordered BADR-6 satellite in 2008. The launch contract, the tenth the company has received from Middle East customers, was signed July 6 in Paris. The 7,495-pound (3,400-kilogram) BADR-6 will be built by EADS Astrium and Alcatel Alenia Space, based on the Eurostar 2000+ platform. It will carry 24 C-band and 20 Ku-band transponders providing mostly video broadcasting services for the Middle East and North Africa. Based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Arabsat has launched five spacecraft on Ariane rockets so far
SEA TRIALS: Canterbury, New Zealand's 8,000-ton multirole vessel set for commissioning in 2007, underwent two days of sea trials in Holland last week and is slated for more trials July 16, the country's defense ministry says. The trials included testing of the ship's main propulsion, bow thrusters, Integrated Platform Management System, radars, navigation and mission systems. The vessel then returned to port for a planned dry-docking to allow a hull underwater inspection. Canterbury was launched on Feb. 11.
July 11 - 13 -- Aircraft Combat Survivability Short Course, Kent Space Center, Boeing Company, Seattle Wash. For more information go to http://jas.jcte.jcs.mil/. July 16 - 18 -- Summer Legislative Issues Conference, co-sponsored by AAAE & ACI-NA, Washington, D.C. For more information contact Ashleigh de la Torre at 202-293-8500, email [email protected] or go to www.aci-na.aero. July 17 - 23 -- 45th Farnborough International Airshow 2006, Farnborough Aerodrome, Hampshire, England. For more information go to www.farnborough.com.
In a new report, the National Academies' Space Studies Board (SSB) criticizes the lack of a Mars sample return mission in NASA's current plans, and urges the agency to begin technology development to support such a mission as soon as possible.
