The House Science Committee is likely to hold a hearing on NASA's restructured aeronautics program, according to Chief of Staff David Goldston, amid concerns over the agency's shrinking aeronautics budget request. NASA's FY '07 request for aeronautics is $724 million, an 18 percent decrease from the FY '06 budget. The topline includes $447.2 million for fundamental aeronautics, $102.2 million for aviation safety, $120 million for airspace systems and $55 million to preserve the agency's wind tunnels.
Net earnings jumped 24 percent and net sales climbed 13 percent for Curtiss-Wright Corp. in the fourth quarter of 2005, the company said Feb. 9. Full-year net sales also grew 18 percent and net earnings increased 16 percent for the Roseland, N.J., based firm. Fourth-quarter '05 net earnings surged to $25.3 million, or $1.15 per share, compared to $20.4 million, or 94 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of '04. Net sales improved to $317.9 million, compared to $281.1 million in the same period of '04.
Bell Helicopter Textron is smoothing out the bumps in the Coast Guard's vertical takeoff-and-landing unmanned aerial vehicle (VUAV) program, the tiltrotor Eagle Eye, and the first production aircraft is expected next year, according to the aviation program manager for the service's Deepwater recapitalization program. "So far, so good," Capt. Matthew Sisson told the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's unmanned systems program review in Washington. "We're finding out a few little bumps along the way that Bell's smoothing out for us."
Military units from three U.S. services and two allied nations are taking part in a simulated air war exercise over Nevada, the U.S. Air Force said. Exercise Red Flag 06-1, which runs from Feb. 6-18, involves more than 2,500 personnel and 130 aircraft in night and day missions over the Nellis Air Force Base Test and Training Range. U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel are participating along with Australian and British forces.
Details of how and when the Defense Department will proceed with a U.S. Air Force tanker replacement program are still undecided, but "there is less urgency to acquiring a replacement aircraft than had previously been assumed," according to the White House. In turn, White House Office of Management and Budget officials are planning an $896 million cut due to program restructuring over the five-year defense plan, according to a new White House report, titled "Major Savings and Reforms in the President's 2007 Budget."
An emergency landing with just minutes to spare on battery power following an electrical generator failure capped the longest flight in aviation history by Steve Fossett piloting the Scaled Composites/Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
GETTING GERB: Eumetsat has received the first images from an experimental radiation budget instrument on Meteosat-9 that could be a forerunner of future orbital climate prediction systems. The instrument, known as "Gerb" for Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, is designed to provide data on reflected solar radiation and thermal radiation emitted by the Earth and its atmosphere. The main instrument on Meteosat-9 (MSG-2), launched on Dec.
TRY AGAIN: The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos has given contractors an extra month to submit revised proposals for a new human-rated space transportation system to serve the International Space Station (ISS) and future space exploration programs. Roscosmos says earlier proposals that were intended to meet new competitive procurement rules did not fully meet requirements. Vehicles proposed were Energia's Clipper vehicle; a Khrunichev winged vehicle carried by the new Angara booster, and an air-launched system conceived by Molnyia.
SHIP KILLED: The Navy will not require another class of fast combat support ships for the foreseeable future and has decided to keep the existing T-AOE class of ships in service longer and operate them in conjunction with the new T-AKE dry cargo/ammunition ships, according to a White House plan. Navy officials unveiled the decision against starting a new T-AOE(X) class -- as previously planned -- when the fiscal 2007 budget was announced, but it was not known then whether the program was being terminated altogether (DAILY, Feb. 8).
The Defense Department will conduct a review of the U.S. Air Force's combat search and rescue (CSAR-X) helicopter competition in light of the DOD's related capabilities, according to the Pentagon's chief acquisition official. "What we've asked them to do is to come back and look at that overall portfolio of capability that the department has and what they seek to do and try to think through that program in that context," said Ken Krieg, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
Aerospace and defense is leading other industry sectors in the implementation of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and processes, according to Bernard Charles, president and CEO of Dassault Systemes in Paris. While the auto industry led the world in the move to 3D digital mockup of products such as new cars a decade ago, aerospace is moving ahead of auto manufacturers with PLM -- a combination of software and processes created to carry a product from design through manufacturing and the rest of its life cycle.
JDAMS FALLING: The fiscal 2007 defense budget request and subsequent five-year plan proposes to cut Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) annual production by about 25 percent in 2007, and by roughly 50 percent in 2008 and 2009, according to the White House. The JDAM is a joint Air Force-Navy program that upgrades the current inventory of general-purpose bombs with a guidance kit consisting of a precision, satellite-aided navigation system.
Not retiring the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy early -- as the Navy is proposing again after Congress rejected the idea last year -- would cost $2-$3 billion over the next five years, a cost that would be taken out of the $77.5 billion projected for new shipbuilding, the chief of naval operations told The DAILY. Speaking to reporters Feb. 10 after appearing at a Capitol Hill luncheon, Adm. Mike Mullen also said that maintaining the JFK would then impact the "imperative" of shipbuilding.
LONG RANGE: Industry expects the Defense Department to wrap up a classified report on its newly revised long-range air strike capability, including a new vehicle platform as well as missiles, within a few weeks. An industry member says it won't hold any major surprises itself, but will start to fill in the blanks on a new manned or unmanned bomber, moved up to 2018 from 2037 by the Quadrennial Defense Review (DAILY, Feb. 3).
Space Adventures, which markets commercial space tourism trips to the International Space Station (ISS) using Russian Soyuz vehicles, hopes eventually to mount missions to the lunar surface using a variant of the Russian Soyuz TMA spacecraft. The company announced last year that it plans to offer trips that will orbit the moon using a lunar-rated Soyuz starting in 2009 or 2010, at a ticket price of $100 million per seat on the two-seat vehicle (DAILY, Aug. 12, 2005).
HIGH-FLYING PLAN: The Defense Department will conduct a review of a phasing plan to ensure that high-altitude, long-endurance surveillance and reconnaissance requirements will be satisfied during a transition from the aging U-2 spy plane to the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, according to a White House plan. The review will be ready by May 1. The five-year savings for retiring the U-2 by fiscal 2011 will run more than $1 billion, the executive branch says. Similarly, the Air Force also will retire its fleet of 52 F-117A aircraft by 2008, saving another $1 billion.
THREE FOR PROTON: International Launch Services has won three new contracts, all for repeat customers and all on the Russian Proton rocket it markets along with the Atlas V. Japan's JSAT Corp. has committed its fourth launch with ILS and its first using the Proton Breeze M. The launch of JCSat-11, built on a Lockheed Martin A2100 series platform, is to be in 2007. In 2008, Canada's Telesat will launch its Nimiq 4 spacecraft in its fifth ILS mission.
BUILDING BRIDGES: C. Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, is ambiguous about how many F-22As the Air Force eventually will buy. The 183 stealth fighters currently approved are "roughly sufficient," he says. "We did need the [F-35] JSF capability, specifically the carrier-based aspects. It did not make sense to make cuts of the JSF variants within the future years defense budget. [But] there was a technical risk in shutting down one production line before you brought up another one.
POSTPONED: It probably will be another two to four weeks before SpaceX can re-attempt the debut launch of its low-cost Falcon 1 rocket from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific, according to company CEO Elon Musk. The long-delayed liftoff had been scheduled for Feb. 10, but a static test firing the day before prompted the company to scrub and lower the vehicle "for further investigation," Musk says. The nature of the problem was not disclosed. The rocket is carrying the FalconSat-2 spacecraft for the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
