SATELLITE SUPPORT: Raytheon Co. said June 15 that its Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC subsidiary received a $31.5 million U.S. Navy contract to provide logistics support for the USC-38 satellite communications system. Under the five-year performance based logistics contract, the company will support the Navy's Extremely High Frequency Satellite Program's AN/USC-38(V) equipment. Services include engineering and maintenance, as well as materials and services to evaluate, test, repair, modify, package and ship systems assets, and spares and repairs support.
The Lockheed Martin/General Atomics Mariner unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) demonstrator has flown three homeland security-focused demonstrations so far as part of the U.S. Navy's Trident Warrior exercise, and on June 16 is slated to perform a battle damage assessment during a live-fire event. Trident Warrior '06, which began June 13, is a Navy-sponsored event for experimenting with network-centric warfare capabilities. The West Coast-based exercise wraps up June 17.
Heather Rarick and Ron Spencer have been appointed flight directors. Joyce M. Short has been named deputy executive director of NASA Shared Services Center.
Don Brownlee is retiring at the end of 2006 as Aerojet vice president of Washington, D.C., operations. John D. Schumacher has been named to replace Brownlee. Jim Jamieson has been appointed Boeing senior vice president of engineering, operations and technology.
David Albritton has been named director of media relations in the Washington office. Dan Smith has been elected to Northeastern University's board of overseers. Smith is a Raytheon vice president and president of Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems.
ALTERNATIVE FUELS: The U.S. Special Operations Command has awarded AeroVironment a $6.3 million alternate fuel technologies research and development contract, with an option for additional duration testing. The company will work at its Monrovia, Calif., base. The contract, awarded using sole-source procedures, was announced June 14. The company has been working on defense-related unmanned aircraft fueling efforts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Thomas J. Scanlan is retiring effective June 30 as vice president and general manager, special programs for the Space Systems Company. Mark Valerio has been named to replace Scanlan.
Paul Jaggard and Don McCreesh have been named to the board of directors. Jaggard is president and founder of Vincero Capital Management Inc. McCreesh is a corporate director and president of The Garnet Group Inc.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA plans further laser communications experiments after establishing a three-minute link between its Optical Inter-orbit Communication Engineering Test Satellite "Kirari" and a mobile ground receiver fielded by the German Aerospace Agency DLR.
Jacob Goldman has been named director of corporate procurement and logistics. Arie Halsband has been appointed general manager of the MBT Space Division - Systems, Missiles & Space Group. Baruch Mevorach has been named deputy vice president and assistant to the president. Uri Sinai has been appointed general manager of the MLM Division - Systems, Missiles & Space Group.
Boeing unveiled the first production CH-47F Chinook to the U.S. Army on June 15 during a rollout ceremony at the company's helicopter facility in Ridley Park, Pa. The aircraft is the first of 452 new CH-47Fs included in the Army's Cargo Helicopter modernization program. The F-model features a new airframe and a digital cockpit from Rockwell Collins.
NASA's Program Management Council has determined there are "no insurmountable technical or programmatic challenges" to finishing the U.S./German Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), but the agency still hasn't decided to go ahead with the project.
Orbiting observatories continue to give scientists new views of the universe, unraveling old mysteries and revealing new ones. Space dust - small particles of carbon, silicon, magnesium, iron, oxygen and other elements - is a significant part of galactic structures, as the dark "dust lane" in a new side-on Hubble Space Telescope view of the galaxy NGC 5866 shows. The galaxy has a diameter of about 60,000 light years.
President Bush is nominating Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Conway to gain a fourth star and for commandant of the Marine Corps. Conway, who commanded the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during two combat tours in Iraq, now is director of operations, J-3, Joint Staff. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, "General Conway is a superb choice to be the next commandant."
DEFENSE FUNDS: The House Appropriations Committee quickly approved its defense subcommittee's markup of fiscal 2007 spending legislation on June 13. The full panel added only one amendment, by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) against funds toward permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, to the subcommittee's $377.6 billion legislation, which includes a $50 billion supplemental "bridge fund" for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (DAILY, June 12).
