Donald G. DeGryse has been appointed vice president of navigation systems for the space systems company. Mary Margaret VanDeWeghe has been named senior vice president of finance
GUN SHIELDS: BAE Systems said Feb. 8 that it has delivered to Iraq 1,000 Transparent Armored Gun Shields (TAGS) for U.S. Army Humvees. The $4.7 million contract was awarded in November by the U.S. Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. The TAGS are effective during close-in urban combat and are also used on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, and M113 vehicles, as well as for the Stryker Common Ballistic Shield.
Development of the Boeing X-45C and Northrop Grumman X-47B Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) vehicles is continuing for now with available fiscal 2006 funding, despite uncertainty over what happens in FY '07, when J-UCAS is scheduled to end.
Congressional Democrats continue to raise the prospect of curbing requested funds for national missile defense in light of the Bush administration's fiscal 2007 request and long-term military planning for reduced Guard troop levels. Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace on Feb. 8 that he questioned plans to go "skinny" on Guard levels while going "robust" on missile funding.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has ordered agency public affairs officers not to spin public statements by scientists working with agency funds. "It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff," Griffin says in an e-mail sent to all NASA employees. He was responding to complaints from the agency's top climate expert that headquarters public affairs officials had tried to stifle his contention that more needs to be done to mitigate global warming.
The U.S. military is projecting that there will be 4,000 robotic systems in Iraq and Afghanistan before the end of fiscal 2006, as compared to 2,400 systems in theater today. There will be 22 different robots, ranging from iRobot's PackBot and the Rapid Equipping Force's MarcBot, to larger systems such as the Panther -- a modified Abrams tank equipped with a countermine flail. U.S. military forces are using robots for improvised explosive device (IED) disposal, force protection, countermine, and urban operations missions.
The U.S. Navy's new long-term shipbuilding and fleet structure plan, sent to Congress Feb. 7, notes that with early retirement of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy and funding of the CVN-21 in fiscal 2008, the Navy could fall below its own 11-carrier requirement in FY '13 or FY '14. The plan cited "past delays in beginning the CVN-21 program." Meanwhile, Navy officials have said they will immediately ask Congress to pass new legislation for mothballing the JFK -- which Congress recently rejected (DAILY, Feb. 7).
The Defense Department's Small Business Innovation Research and technology transfer and the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Warfare efforts have been designated as "programs that are not performing" under the White House's new blacklist of federal programs. The list, available at ExpectMore.gov, is part of the Bush administration's attempt to cull federal programs, 28 percent of which the White House asserts are not performing.
NEW YORK -- Top defense industry executives are giving a thumbs up to President Bush's fiscal 2007 budget request, but caution that it will be a long road before a final appropriation clears Capitol Hill. The $439.3 billion budget that Bush submitted on Feb. 6 would boost top line military spending by 7 percent over the budget approved by Congress last year and is missing some of the draconian program cuts that investors and defense executives have worried about for more than a year.
NET LOSSES: SPACEHAB Inc. said Feb. 7 that it suffered net losses for both its second quarter of FY '06 and the six-month period ending Dec. 31. The company's second quarter net loss was $8.9 million on revenue of $11.8 million. In the second quarter of FY '05, the company had a net loss of $1.2 million on revenue of $13.1 million. SPACEHAB's six-month net loss was $10.8 million on revenue of $23.8 million, compared to a net income of $5.7 million on revenue of $26.2 million for the first six months of the previous fiscal year.
Bath Iron Works has been awarded a $30.9 million contract modification to do upgrade, repair, and maintenance work on two Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyers, the company said Feb. 7. The work will be done on the USS Bainbridge (DDG 96) and USS Forrest Sherman (DDG 98), which are homeported in Norfolk, Va.
As the U.S. government reworks its plans to build the next generation of its own high-resolution imaging satellites, it has begun discussing stopgap measures to acquire more imagery from commercial providers, a key vendor says. "We have been asked by a number of people in Washington if we can fill gaps," GeoEye President and CEO Matthew M. O'Connell said at the Satellite 2006 conference and exhibition being held in Washington this week.
The U.S. Air Force is taking the first formal step to kicking off a program to upgrade the engines on its A-10s, to meet performance goals the current standard powerplant can't meet. The service is checking whether there are any contractors who would be interested in developing the kit-upgrade for the General Electric TF34 engines. The Air Force says it has $189.4 million budgeted for the effort, which should commence this fiscal year. The service wants the first engine upgrade kits delivered by late fiscal 2009 or early 2010.
The Defense Department is exploring alternatives to space-based communications as the gap between operational demands and military satellite communications capacity grows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told senators Feb. 7. "Space-based platforms should focus on surveillance capabilities that we cannot readily replicate elsewhere," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Meantime, the DOD will continue to rely upon commercial vendors for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. Navy this year will take a hard look at its aviation investments to "balance" them with shipbuilding and other naval costs, according to the chief of naval operations (CNO). "As anybody in a senior position, we've got to balance all of this," Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon on Feb. 7.
