The amount of unfunded priorities listed by the U.S. military services this year is up nearly 48 percent over last year and is the highest total since post-Sept. 11, 2001, operations began, according to the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
Australia's rapidly modernizing Air Force counts on net-centricity to overcome long-distances and small force size. Air Marshal Geoffrey D. Shepherd, Australia's Chief of Air Force, will explain the vision at mid-course and how it's changing with shifts in world events in an upcoming edition of Aviation Week & Space Technology. The following is an excerpt.
SPACE TOURIST: First Japanese space tourist Daisuke Enomoto has begun cosmonaut training in preparation for his scheduled September trip to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft, Space Adventures announced March 6. Enomoto was able to begin his training after receiving Government Medical Committee approval from the Russian Federal Space Agency. The first phase of training will include cosmonaut theoretical and physical training, along with Russian language lessons.
iRobot has developed a payload for its PackBot robot that will fire a slug of water at an improvised explosive device (IED) to render it inert, according to iRobot Executive Vice President and General Manager Joseph Dyer. Explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel deployed in Iraq are expressing increasing interest in systems that are capable of rendering IEDs inert without detonating them, to preserve forensic evidence that might lead back to the bomb-maker (DAILY, July 5, 2005).
The European Defense Agency (EDA) has asked Sagem Defense Securite to examine technology options for "sense and avoid technologies" to be used on future long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles. It's the second contract in the UAV field for EDA, after naming Finnish Patria Oyj to focus on "Digital Line of Sight & Beyond Line of Sight Data Links" options for long-dwell UAVs.
NEW DELHI - India could emerge as a global satellite launch hub with the United States permitting satellites with U.S components to be launched by Indian rockets. During President Bush's recent visit to India, the two countries agreed to continue exploring further cooperation in civil space, including space exploration, satellite navigation, and Earth sciences. Agreements are also being finalized that will allow the launch of U.S. satellites and satellites containing U.S. components by Indian launch vehicles.
The U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) has awarded BAE Systems a $32 million contract for add-on-armor kits and transparent armored gun shields, the company announced Feb. 6. Meanwhile, another BAE unit has received a $9.5 million contract from TACOM to provide 24 spare engines for M88A2 Hercules heavy equipment recovery vehicles to the U.S. Marine Corps.
Scientists who have combined modern solar observations with the record of sunspot activity dating back to 1880 predict a stronger "hurricane season" on the sun beginning late next year or early in 2008.
The Rolls-Royce MT30 contains more than 75 percent U.S. content and is packaged in partnership with DRS Power Technology Inc. of Fitchburg, Mass., a Rolls-Royce North America Inc. spokeswoman told The DAILY. The statement came in response to a March 2 DAILY article that noted recent concern voiced by Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) over the alternative choice to the originally planned permanent magnet motor (PMM) for the DD(X) destroyer program.
The four-nation consortium developing the Eurofighter Typhoon expects to receive government certification for full operational capability of the Trance 1 aircraft next year, according to program officials.
The U.S. Navy is preparing design modifications to the Virginia-class submarine program to cut acquisition costs "while sustaining or improving warfighting capability," the chief of naval operations (CNO) has told House members.
MINI MCS: The U.S. Transportation Command is carrying out its own "Focused Mobility Analysis" to concentrate on finding the "correct mix of C-17s, C-5s, and C-130 assets and aerial refueling and sealift recapitalization" from a TransCom perspective, according to the command's chief. Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz told House lawmakers March 2 that the recently finalized Mobility Capability Study (MCS) "provides a starting point" for supporting far-flung combatant commands' needs in 2012.
MEASURING NUNAVUT: Vexcel Canada, an Ottawa-based remote sensing company, has used 10-year-old data from the European Space Agency's ERS-Tandem mission to map elevations on Baffin Island and elsewhere in the frozen territory of Nunavut with unprecedented accuracy, demonstrating the long-term utility of space-derived data sets. Vexcel has produced 21 digital elevation model map sheets of Nunavut as part of a Canadian government effort to update its geographic data on the Arctic territory, which is roughly the size of Western Europe.
Congress is moving to pass a bill to authorize President Bush to award a congressional gold medal to the Tuskegee Airmen in recognition of their historical role, "which inspired revolutionary reform in the armed forces, paving the way for full racial integration," according to the sponsoring legislation.
Leading Defense Department officials are defending their fiscal 2007 budget request on Capitol Hill as not oversized and a small portion of the nation's wealth. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, have told the House and Senate Budget committees in early March that the $439.3 billion request and the accompanying $50 billion supplemental request total just 7 percent higher than the current fiscal year's enacted budget.
Transportation Command Chief Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz has told the House Armed Services Committee that his command is looking for new platforms that can lift more than 60,000 pounds to or from shorter, unprepared landing zones while providing improved survivability, speed and range.
The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program will relax Cold War design constraints on nuclear weapons that maximized yield-to-weight ratios and allow U.S. researchers to design replacement parts that are easier to manufacture, safer and more secure, a top Energy Department official said last week.
A pair of NASA/German spacecraft that measures subtle changes in the mass of the terrain below has detected major melting in the ice sheet that covers most of Antarctica. The discovery by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), twin satellites that use lasers for extremely precise measurements of the distance between them as they orbit the Earth, suggests a global warming trend is already raising the mean sea level worldwide.
SHIPBUILDING: The U.S. Military Sealift Command's controlled fleet of four fuel tankers will pass their useful age in 2010, and the desire for additional international trade tankers for Defense Department cargo may result in opportunities for new tanker construction in U.S. shipyards, Transportation Command chief Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz says.
NEW MISSION: The European Space Agency's Earth observation program board has OK'd construction and launch of a new CryoSat ice-measurement mission to replace the one lost in an October 2005 Rockot booster mishap. The go-ahead will allow the start of industrial contracting and pre-launch scientific validation campaigns for the mission, which is intended to measure land and sea ice with unparalleled accuracy.
Top Air Force leaders are asking Congress to undo a requirement that prohibits the service from retiring C-5A aircraft as its cargo fleet is stressed from global warfighting operations. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley promoted the issues March 1 and 2 before the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
FOOD FROM SPACE: EADS Astrium's Infoterra unit, which will operate Germany's 1-meter-resolution TerraSAR-X synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, says more than 10,000 wheat, colza, sugar beet and corn farmers operating on 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) of farmland are using a satellite-based precision-farming system it developed with Arvalis, a leading French agricultural institute. Infoterra and Arvalis say the Farmstar system has help farmers cut nitrogen fertilizer use by 10-15 kilograms per hectare in 70 percent of the farms covered.
