Elbit Systems Ltd. will upgrade 18 helicopters for Bulgaria's military under a $70 million contract, the company said Dec. 4. The Haifa, Israel, company will upgrade 12 Mi-24 combat helicopters and six Mi-17 transport helicopters over a three-year period to comply with NATO standards. Bulgarian aerospace and defense industries will take part in the process.
NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers are entering their second martian year of operations, having spent nearly 700 days exploring the red planet. Spirit started its new year three weeks ago and Opportunity starts its second martian year Dec. 11. Each Martian year is roughly two Earth years. The rovers' baseline mission was for 90 days.
LASER CRIME: The House is expected to pass a bill Dec. 7 or 8 that would create a new federal crime for aiming lasers at aircraft cockpits in the United States. Since 1990, there have been more than 400 such incidents, with more than 100 reported since November 2004 alone, according to the bill (H.R. 1400) sponsored by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
SPAWAR HEAD: U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, announced Dec. 5 that one-star Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann is has been assigned to head the service's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego. Bachmann currently is serving as vice commander of the Naval Air Systems Command in Washington.
BIZ OPPS: Up to 134 companies are hoping a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman is interested in their technologies as part of the U.S. Coast Guard's $24 billion, 25-year Deepwater recapitalization program. The companies - 18 percent of an original 740 firms that expressed interest in a recent Deepwater industry day - are waiting for the joint venture, Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), to wrap up evaluations and contact them. That is expected by mid-December, ICGS says.
FIRE SCOUT CDR: Northrop Grumman completed the critical design review of its MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle for the U.S. Navy in mid-November, the company announced Dec. 2. The review covered air-vehicle design, avionics and payload architecture, communications and data links, ship- and land-based launch and recovery and the ability to integrate future payloads, Northrop Grumman said.
DISCOVERY PLAN: European space ministers plan to meet in Berlin this week to consider a plan for "discovery and competitiveness for Europe in space," and to decide on future programs. The ministers will be "invited to take decisions that will provide Europe and its citizens with a competitive space sector able to lead the search for new discoveries, guarantee access to strategic data and new services, and consolidate its share of the worldwide commercial market," ESA says.
J-2 REVISITED: NASA is pondering whether to resurrect the J-2 engine that sent Apollo spacecraft from Earth orbit to the moon or develop a new engine to perform the same task for the upcoming Crew Exploration Vehicle during its lunar voyages. Producing roughly 260,000 pounds of thrust, the last version of the Rocketdyne-built engine was the J-2S, which was tested in the mid 1970s before the Apollo production lines were canceled.
ABORT TEST: Mindful of the importance of having demonstrable milestones along the road to its planned 2018 lunar return, NASA is considering performing a flight-test of the Crew Launch Vehicle's abort system in 2008. The test would feature the shuttle-derived first stage of the CLV mated with a dummy second stage featuring the escape system on top, according to Scott Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems. The CLV abort test would last all the way through first-stage separation to ensure representative speeds and atmospheric pressures.
Northrop Grumman has created a new organization within its Integrated Systems sector to focus exclusively on space exploration opportunities with NASA, the company announced Dec. 2. Art Stephenson, a former director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has been appointed sector vice president of Space Exploration Systems to lead the new organization.
The U.S. and Singaporean navies are collaborating to demonstrate small, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) and other technologies for shallow-water mine countermeasures, according to the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command. New UUVs also are under development for an anti-UUV capability, known as UUV neutralizing (UUVN), according to Lt. j.g. Giancarlo Waghelstein of the San Diego-based Naval Special Clearance Team One.
As the F-14 Tomcat creeps closer to its retirement, dwindling resources have forced U.S. Navy program planners to seek "unconventional" options for getting aircraft parts, including contracting to PZL-Swidnik, a Polish company that once made helicopters for the Soviet Union and its allies. It is the first time the Navy has acquired a major aircraft part from a former East Bloc country, the Naval Air Systems Command said. Poland is a staunch U.S. ally and recipient of U.S. favor (DAILY, Sept. 20, 2002).
The first of the U.S. Navy's newest class of amphibious ship, the San Antonio (LPD-17), departed Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard Dec. 3 to steam to its new homeport in Norfolk, Va.
CUTTING CUTTERS: The first hull in the eight-ship Legend class of National Security Cutters is more than 30 percent complete, according to Coast Guard Capt. Douglas Russell, program manager for the service's Deepwater recapitalization effort. Fabrication of the second hull is under way and money for the third hull is provided in the Coast Guard's fiscal 2006 budget. Northrop Grumman Corp. is building the first ship - recently named after the Coast Guard's first commandant, Ellsworth Bertholf - in its Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard.
Dec. 5 - 8 -- Fatigue Concepts' Short Course: "Fatigue, Fracture Mechanics and Damage Tolerance," Atlanta Airport Hilton. For more information call +1 (916) 933-5000, fax +1 (916) 933-5222 or go to www.fatcon.com. Dec. 6 - 8 -- Aerospace Defense Finance Conference, Credit Suisse First Boston Aerospace & Defense Group Headquarters, New York, N.Y. For more information go to http://www.aviationweek.com/conferences.
The interagency committee chartered by Congress to create an aeronautics policy for the United States by next fall already has completed its first draft, according to Lisa Porter, NASA's associate administrator for aeronautics. As head of aeronautics for NASA, Porter is co-chairing the group, which is a subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The committee was stood up in September and has one year to complete its work.
The U.S. Army recently completed capstone testing for the system development and demonstration phase of the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical program, according to officials.
WYNNE TRIP: U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne plans to travel overseas for about a week near the end of December to see how airmen and equipment are faring in wartime conditions, a spokesman says. Although specific stops on the trip have not been disclosed for security reasons, the spokesman says that Wynne will visit U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility, which extends from Central Asia to the Horn of Africa and includes Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his House counterpart have "reasonable confidence" that congressional negotiators will produce a fiscal 2006 defense authorization conference report for the Senate and the House to vote on during the legislative week of Dec. 12.
The Naval Sea Systems Command and the Defense Contract Management Agency are partnering in an effort to boost vendor product quality for critical material used on Navy ships and submarines due to an increasing trend in suppliers' quality assurance "failures." The agencies signed an agreement for the effort on Nov. 28, according to Navsea. DCMA also established a new contract management office with 267 people dedicated full-time to contract administration and quality assurance oversight for critical safety items procured for Navy ships.
Northrop Grumman plans to tap unused radar capabilities of the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft as part of a recently awarded U.S. Air Force contract, according to a company official.
Kuwait is seeking a dozen MKV-C Fast Interceptor Boats and related equipment and services that could total $175 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress on Dec. 2. The deal would include 12 27mm Mauser Lightweight gun systems, communications systems, ground supply equipment and other items, DSCA said.
