The U.S. Navy has chosen Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. to go ahead with their Persistent Unmanned Maritime Airborne Surveillance (PUMAS) planning, helping the service figure out its manned and unmanned force structure for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
Arianespace has postponed the scheduled Feb. 21 dual-launch of the Hot Bird 7A and Spainsat satellites aboard a heavy-lift Ariane 5 ECA rocket due to a problem with ground support equipment at the company's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. A new date for the mission will be announced soon, the company said.
The first of two fourth-generation spacecraft for the Arab l Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) is set for a March 1 launch from Baikonur. EADS Astrium shipped Arabsat 4A to the launch site in Kazakstan on Jan. 26, where it is in the final stage of preparation atop the Breeze M upper stage of the International Launch Services Proton booster that will take it into orbit. EADS also developed new satellite control centers in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia for the new spacecraft. Alcatel Alenia Space supplied the satellite's payload.
DALLAS -- More than 3,500 workers at Sikorsky Aircraft Co. went on strike Feb. 20 after overwhelmingly rejecting a new, three-year contract. Local 1150 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents hourly employees at Sikorsky's Stratford, Conn., and West Palm Beach, Fla., facilities, voted on Feb. 19 to reject the proposal chiefly because of increased health insurance costs. It is the first strike at the helicopter manufacturer since 1963.
Deciding that mothballing an aircraft carrier early was better than dipping into the already tenuous U.S. Navy shipbuilding plan, an influential senator has changed sides and is pushing the Navy's proposal to retire the USS John F. Kennedy. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has introduced a bill that would reverse legislation he himself helped become law last year to allow the Navy to drop to fewer than a dozen active flattops.
The Senate has confirmed James Finley to be deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology and Preston Geren to be undersecretary of the Army. Thomas D'Agostino also was confirmed Feb. 17 to be deputy administrator for defense programs at the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Mark Carroll has been named vice president and business manager of U.S. Navy programs for the Ship Systems sector. Chineta K. Davis has been appointed vice president of Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) programs for the company's Electronic Systems sector. Brian J. Morra has been named sector vice president of business development and strategic planning for Electronic Systems. Albert F. Myers, the company's corporate vice president of strategy and technology, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
European Space Agency science program committee members OK'd two new missions following an injection of additional funding at the agency's ministerial summit in December. The BepiColombo Mercury mission and the Gaia planet-finding observatory will go ahead as planned. But to fit them in, the committee delayed the start of the Solar Orbiter from 2013 to 2015.
CLARIFICATION: The White House has requested $1.8 billion for the Defense Department in the latest supplemental spending request for last year's hurricanes, of which $1.05 billion would be used to replace destroyed or damaged equipment for Navy ships and associated work force costs at affected Gulf Coast shipyards (DAILY, Feb. 22). The $1.8 billion also includes $405 million for military construction in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Eying the shift to a stealthier force with a larger number of unmanned aerial vehicles, the U.S. Air Force hopes to retire or divest 1,124 planes across the course of the Future Years Defense Plan. The service wants to retire more than half those aircraft during the next two fiscal years -- FY 2007 and FY 2008 -- and nearly a quarter of the retirements are accounted for by the Lockheed Martin F-16C/D fighter force. Not surprisingly, older Boeing F-15A/B fighters also account for a large share of retirements, as does the KC-135 tanker force.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $144,300,000 cost plus fixed fee contract modification. This undefinitized contract action provides for F-22A Lot 6 Weapon System Support as a Capability Performance-Based Agile Logistics Support (PALS). At this time, $72,005,700 has been obligated. Negotiations were complete in January 2006. The work will be complete by May 2006. The Headquarters Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8611-05-C-2850/P00010).
Gen. Bantz Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, says he sees "great potential" for aerostats, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites to help with the monitoring of illegal traffic to and from Central and South America. Such platforms should be coupled with "software to be able to provide, quick, real-time downlink," Craddock said during a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington Feb. 21. "I think we've got to pursue that."
The Joint Strike Fighter, the Army's Future Combat Systems and the Navy's DD(X) destroyer are "obvious candidates" for defense programs likely to be scaled back by the end of the decade or beyond as Washington deals with a budget crunch, according to two independent analysts at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
RUMSFELD PRIORITY: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Executive Director Andrew Krepinevich said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has shown personal interest in special operations aviation - and maybe more than any other particular new capability discussed in the Quadrennial Defense Review. "That probably insulates from some of the pernicious things that can happen along the line," he told a public audience near Capitol Hill.
