A variety of U.S. military aircraft, ships, equipment, and personnel were deployed in response to Hurricane Rita, which struck the Texas and Louisiana coasts on Sept. 24, the Defense Department said. Thirteen HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters from the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., and the 347th Rescue Wing at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., flew 14 search-and-rescue missions and rescued five stranded people.
Senate defense appropriators on Sept. 26 passed the initial draft of their fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill, setting up a potential showdown with the House over naval shipbuilding, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and other weapons programs.
The U.S. Air Force has not been thorough in waiving a number of aircraft programs from compliance with a 1941 law aimed at encouraging a healthy domestic industrial base, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.
EXTENDED: Pleased with the program's success, the European Space Agency has extended the mission of its Mars Express spacecraft by one martian year, or about 23 months, ESA says, beginning from December. The move, approved last week by ESA's science program committee, allows Mars Express to "continue building on the legacy of its own scientific success," ESA says. Mars Express began its mission early last year and has been studying Mars' surface and atmosphere.
'WHITE TAIL': Even if it is not able to find customers for the system, Northrop Grumman may use the upcoming "white tail" prototype of its Hunter II unmanned aerial vehicle as a test bed for various UAV payloads, according to a company spokesman. Partner Aurora Flight Sciences is building the prototype at its facility in Starkville, Miss., and expects to deliver it next year.
CSAR-X RFP: The U.S. Air Force is expected to release a final request for proposals for the Combat Search and Rescue-X (CSAR-X) program any day now, industry sources say. Four aircraft are lined up to compete: the Bell-Boeing CV-22 tiltrotor aircraft, the Boeing HH-47 helicopter, the Lockheed Martin-AgustaWestland-Bell Helicopter Textron US101 helicopter and Sikorsky's HH-92 helicopter.
CENTER DIRECTOR: Woodrow Whitlow Jr. will be the next director of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, NASA says. Whitlow is the deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will succeed Julian Earls, who is retiring. The Glenn center focuses on aeronautics and space propulsion, space power and communications and microgravity sciences.
Sept. 26 - 27 -- Information Assurance Engineering, "The Latest Requirements, Tools and Techniques," Holiday Inn On The Bay, San Diego, Calif. For more information go to www.technologytraining.com. Sept. 26 - 28 -- 2005 Albany Symposium on The Global Business of Semiconductors & Nanotechnology, The Sagamore, Lake George, N.Y. For more information go to www.albanysymposium.org.
ARMOR TILE SETS: General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products said Sept. 23 that it has been awarded an additional $16 million contract to produce armor tile sets for Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The original $102 million contract was awarded in November 2004. Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd., Ordnance Systems, of Haifa, Israel, will share in the production workload. The work will be directed from the General Dynamics technology center in Burlington, Vt. U.S. tile production will take place in Stone County, Miss. The contract was awarded by the U.S.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said he fears that China may beat U.S. astronauts back to the moon if NASA's current schedule target of 2018 isn't accelerated. "I've been talking to a number of people that are much more knowledgeable about that than I am, [about] some things that maybe are still classified, but they believe that the Chinese are probably on the mark to get there sooner," Calvert told The DAILY.
IRAQI FLEET: While the Iraqi navy needs small patrol boats to enforce sovereignty inside the country's territorial waters, the service most needs to work on "building the ability to sustain," according to the three-star admiral leading U.S. and coalition forces in the Persian Gulf. The Iraqi navy has six patrol boats, 700 sailors and about 400 marines, with efforts going toward protecting Iraqi oil platforms, said Vice Adm. David Nichols Jr., commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and U.S. 5th Fleet. Meanwhile, the U.S.
Last week NASA's James Webb Space Telescope program received approval from the U.S. State Department to launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket, finally clearing a hurdle that added roughly an extra year of delay to the already technically challenged program.
T-45 TRAINING SUPPORT: L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace of Madison, Miss., has been awarded a $90.8 million U.S. Navy contract modification to provide contractor logistics support for the T-45 aircraft training system, the Defense Department said Sept. 23. The work is expected to be finished in September 2006.
APPROPRIATIONS: With fiscal 2006 less than a week away, Senate appropriators this week will start working on their FY '06 defense appropriations bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee's defense panel is slated to meet Sept. 26. Meanwhile, the incomplete defense authorization bill hangs in limbo in the Senate. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the senior minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other Democrats have complained that the legislation, which was ready in May, still has not been brought back to the floor since it was suspended in late July. Sen.
Northrop Grumman has finished a U.S. Air Force-funded review of re-engining options for the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS), potentially moving the ground-surveillance aircraft a step closer to getting new engines.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a vocal proponent of military aircraft programs built in part in his state, met Sept. 22 with Michael Wynne, President Bush's nominee to be the next Air Force secretary, and expressed his support.
UAV SERVICES: Boeing Co. has been awarded a $13.8 million contract modification to provide persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle services for the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, the Defense Department said Sept. 23. The work will be done onboard a U.S. Navy vessel in the Pacific and is expected to be finished in September 2006. The contract was awarded by the Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md.
Kimberly Johnson, Airports editor for our sister publication Aviation Daily, has embedded in Iraq with the 2nd Marine Division for three months. She is reporting for The DAILY from there, covering the performance of specific weapon systems, the realities of warfare in Iraq and other topics important to our readers. She also writes and takes photographs for "Mother of All Blogs," a Web journal about her experiences. It is located at http://www.moab-iraq.blogspot.com.
The U.S. Air Force has asked an independent team of experts to review its controversial Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program. Former Martin Marietta executive A. Thomas Young, who has led other reviews of military space programs, will oversee the TSAT study, which is expected to last about a month.
NEW CHAIRMAN: Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), the new House Homeland Security chairman, says Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) will serve as chairman for the panel's emergency preparedness, science and technology subcommittee. As subcommittee chairman, Reichert will lead the House's primary oversight panel for the Homeland Security Department's Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, Science and Technology Directorate and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's terrorism preparedness and response missions.
Lt. Gen. William "Tom" Hobbins (USAF) has been nominated for a fourth star and as commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, the Allied Air Component Command and the U.S. European's Command's Air Component, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee. All are based at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
JSF GUN: General Dynamics, which is developing the gun system for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is ahead of schedule and under cost with that effort and recently completed a successful critical design review, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Defense Department's JSF program office. The company's GD-425 four-barrel Gatling gun will be mounted inside JSF's conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) version and be carried externally by the carrier variant (CV) and short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) version.
Orbital Sciences launched a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency satellite on its Minotaur I rocket late Sept. 22 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., the company said. The STP-R1 satellite, also known as the "Streak" technology demonstrator, was inserted into its 300-kilometer (186-miles) orbit about nine minutes after launch, Orbital said. The satellite is part of DARPA's Space Test Program (DAILY, July 22).
Northrop Grumman will provide a new ground-based radar to the U.S. Marine Corps which consolidates four radar mission areas into one, the company said Sept. 22. The first increment of the system design and development phase for the Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) is $7.9 million, and the whole program could be worth up to $125 million over four years, the company said.
Israel Aircraft Industries will build an AMOS 3 communications satellite for Spacecom under a $170 million contract, the company said last week. The spacecraft will be built at IAI's Systems Missiles & Space Group and is to be launched by the end of 2007. AMOS 3 is to replace AMOS 1, which has been operating since 1996 and is slated to continue until 2008. The new spacecraft will "implement advanced technologies," IAI President and CEO Moshe Keret said in a statement.
