Lockheed Martin has begun testing a new type of vehicle armor designed to protect against both improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and armor-piercing bullets that the company hopes will cost as little as 1/10th as much as current ceramic armors. U.S. troops in Iraq often experience coordinated attacks by insurgents that employ an IED blast followed by armor-piercing sniper fire or other projectiles, according to Lockheed Martin.
DHS SPENDING: The House on May 25 is slated to take up the fiscal 2007 Homeland Security Department appropriations bill. The House Appropriations Committee sliced $41.6 million from the Coast Guard's $934 million Deepwater recapitalization request, approved $373.2 million for operations, maintenance and procurement by Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine division and withheld $6.8 million of the requested $10.3 million for the CBP Predator program (DAILY, May 18).
Congress will not complete a fiscal 2006 supplemental spending bill for the U.S. military and other federal efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by the Memorial Day recess, a setback that will spur the Pentagon to shift funding temporarily while adding to a compressed election-year schedule on Capitol Hill. "I am disappointed that a conference agreement with the House cannot be completed this week," said Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
ARMY ACQUISITION: The Bush administration has promoted Army Maj. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III for a third star and to become military deputy/director, Army Acquisition Corps, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology). Thompson is director, Program Analysis and Evaluation, Office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff.
Pentagon acquisition chief Ken Krieg has decided not to terminate the troubled National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), although he plans to approve moving forward only with the first two satellites, according to industry and government officials.
U.S. Astronaut Jeff Williams, flight engineer on Expedition 13 to the International Space Station, may eventually get to use a laptop controller for some manual "flight" of the first of three microsat test beds to reach the station. But for now, MIT engineers are evaluating the results of the first autonomous tests May 18 and 20 of their Synchronized Position Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites (Spheres) hardware in microgravity.
TALON ROBOTS: The U.S. Navy has awarded Foster-Miller Inc. a $63.9 million contract for new Talon robots and related support for the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office. The contract includes operator and technician training and spare parts, and is for Joint Robotics Repair Facilities and imbedded repair teams deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department announced May 22. The Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division's contract runs through May 2008.
European Space Agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says ESA is studying four different scenarios for participating in a proposed U.S.-led lunar exploration program, even though the agency's clear priority will be on Mars.
Aerospace specialty metals supplier Precision Castparts Corp. has received a go-ahead from U.S. government regulators to finalize its acquisition of Specialty Metals Corp., a leading supplier of high-performance nickel-based alloys and super alloys. The $540 million deal was announced last August, but took nearly nine months to clear an anti-trust review by the Federal Trade Commission. Precision Castparts, which will pay $295 million in cash and assume $245 million of Specialty Metals' debt, said it expects to close on the purchase within two weeks.
AUSA CHIMES IN: The president of the Association of the United States Army wrote congressional leaders warning that "a disaster is looming" if Congress recesses two weeks for Memorial Day without passing a supplemental appropriations measure to cover continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "By the end of June, funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, support programs for soldiers and their families, daily maintenance activities and other needs will be completely exhausted," retired Army Gen. Gordon Sullivan said.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, chair of the Senate Commerce subcommittee that oversees NASA, said May 23 that she would support more money being added to the fiscal 2007 appropriation for the agency. Congress' recent five-year re-authorization bill for NASA approved a topline FY '07 budget of about $1.1 billion more than President Bush's $16.8 billion request.
Three European Union countries - Spain, Hungary and Denmark - will not be part of the common defense equipment market being established starting July 1. The market opening is based on a voluntary code of conduct and is supposed to open competitions for defense items to industries across EU states, rather than having them go to national entities as has been typically done. The Treaty of Rome that opened trade within the EU exempted defense purchases from the mandate, which the code of conduct aims to rectify.
European Space Agency officials are expressing bemusement at recent statements by former research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and other specialists that the European Union should consider scaling back the Galileo satellite navigation system from 30 spacecraft to 24-25 to help cope with budget problems.
The French government wants to field a new family of precision-guided ground-to-ground weapons starting next decade. After several years of work with the army staff and military acquisition organization, the DGA, the defense ministry is asking industry for input on what may be the art of the possible. The program is called the precision-guided ground-to-ground artillery ammunition effort, known by the French acronym MAPESD.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is beginning to shuffle its Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) spacecraft constellation as the advanced new Boeing GOES-N is readied for launch from Cape Canaveral as early as May 24.
PAYLOAD ADAPTORS: Saab Ericsson Space has won a contract to provide modular payload adaptors for Boeing's new Land Launch booster, which will provide medium-lift geosynchronous transfer orbit launches from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, starting next year. The adapter systems, including harness, purge lines and initiators, are earmarked for PanAmSat-11 and Horizons-2, both of which are scheduled for a 2007 launch.
