South Korea is seeking to purchase Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles from the United States, South Korea's defense ministry said July 12. An official request was made last month in Hawaii during a sub-panel session of the Security Consultative Meeting, an annual defense ministerial meeting between South Korea and the U.S. The SCM is scheduled for October. South Korea wants the high-altitude, long-range surveillance aircraft as part of its mid- to long-term arms acquisition plan, ministry officials said.
National Guard troops are outfitted with "superb" equipment overseas, but resulting deficiencies in the United States must be addressed, the chief of the U.S. National Guard Bureau says.
The United States and Singapore pledged July 12 to increase cooperation with each other in such areas as defense technology and joint military exercises. President Bush and Singapore Prime Minister Hsien Loong Lee, who met at the White House, signed an agreement committing their countries to closer ties. The pact was announced as Singapore considers whether to buy the U.S. Boeing F-15 or the French-built Dassault Rafael. A decision on the fighters is expected by late summer (DAILY, May 23).
The Homeland Security Department spending bill for fiscal 2006 that has been under consideration on the Senate floor this week contains a provision that would rescind $14 million in unobligated funding to research and develop a covert manned aircraft for the U.S. Coast Guard.
The U.S. Navy's Strategic Systems Program Office has awarded a Lockheed Martin-Alliant Techsystems team a $9.2 million contract to identify and prove solid rocket motor technologies for the Submarine Launched Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile System (SLIRBM).
Lockheed Martin has delivered to the U.S. Navy the first Update II.5 P-3C aircraft modified under the Anti-Surface Warfare Improvement Program (AIP), the company said July 12. The company, the original manufacturer of the aircraft, will install the AIP kits on five of the Update II.5 P-3Cs. The Update II.5 aircraft are older planes that, in some cases, have been used less than later production aircraft, Lockheed Martin said. The AIP upgrade program originally focused on Update III aircraft and now is going to the earlier II.5s.
The July 12 launch of the South Korean navy ship Dokdo Ham was attended by President Roh Moo-hyun, the Korean Overseas Information Service said. The ceremony was held at the Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction shipyard in Busan. The 13,000-ton class multipurpose ship will serve as a light aircraft carrier. The amphibious ship is the first of its kind for South Korea's navy. A second ship is planned for development by 2010.
A new X-ray detector, developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Md., and Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, is in orbit after the successful launch of a new space observatory. The X-ray Spectrometer (XRS) was launched on the Suzaku space observatory on July 10 from Japan's Uchinoura Space Center. The spacecraft - previously named Astro-E2 - complements NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton mission, NASA said.
United Kingdom aerospace industry orders grew 28% in 2005 to their highest level since 1998, a Society of British Aerospace Companies survey says. The survey, published July 11, shows orders grew to 22.6 billion pounds ($40.1 billion) and that industry productivity jumped 7.8%. The survey also shows: * U.K. aerospace defense sales climbed 3% to 8.94 billion pounds ($15.8 billion), the civil aerospace sector was flat at 8.35 billion pounds ($14.8 billion), and the space sector rose 11% to 427 million pounds ($758.5 million).
DRS Technologies Inc. will continue to manufacture electronic troubleshooting sets for the M1A1, M1A2 and M1A3 Abrams battle tanks and the M2/M3 family of Bradley fighting vehicles, the company said July 12. Deliveries of the test sets are to start immediately under the $35 million contract from the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, and continue through June 2007. The work will be done by the company's DRS Test & Energy Management business in Huntsville, Ala.
A panel of U.S. military and intelligence space leaders and specialists agreed July 12 that the Defense Department's space acquisition system has suffered serious flaws, producing unrealistic cost estimates that lead to programs that can't be carried out, but they disagreed on whether changes already implemented will remedy the process. "That picture is in the rear view mirror," Gen. Lance Lord, head of U.S. Air Force Space Command, said at a hearing of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.
AIR RUBBER: After a competition, the U.S. Naval Inventory Control Point has opted for $92.9 million worth of tires and related support for Navy F-14, V-22, H-60, AV-8B, P-3, S-3, F-18, EA-6B, H-46, T-2, H-53, E-2, C-2 and H3 aircraft from Michelin Aircraft Tire Corp. of Greenville, S.C. While 90% of the award goes to the U.S. Navy, Spain (2%), Kuwait (2%), Japan (1%), Egypt (1%), Taiwan (1%), Malaysia (1%), Italy (1%) and New Zealand (1%) also get orders under the Foreign Military Sales Program.
GLOBAL HAWK: Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. has been awarded a $272.7 million contract modification to provide four Global Hawk RQ-4B production air vehicles with enhanced-integrated sensor suites; one mission control element; one launch recovery element; support equipment and spares, the Department of Defense said July 12. The work is set to be finished by July 2008. The contract was awarded by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
U.S. technology export controls could hamper development of the multinational F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and ultimately endanger jobs at home, the chairman of the United Kingdom's BAE Systems warned July 12. Dick Olver said the problem is particularly acute for the U.K., which "punches above its weight" when it comes to technology but does not benefit from its historically close relationship with the United States.
TRIDENT WORK: Alliant Techsystems will continue to produce solid propulsion systems for all three stages of the U.S. Navy's Trident II fleet ballistic missile under a $75.7 million contract from Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. Under the contract, Minneapolis-based ATK will continue to produce the system through 2009.
Preparations continue smoothly for the scheduled July 13 launch of NASA's space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first shuttle mission since the loss of Columbia in February 2003. Liftoff is scheduled for 3:51 p.m. EDT. The launch countdown officially began at 6 p.m. EDT on July 10, which marked T-43 hours. "All our hardware and systems are performing nominally," NASA Test Director Pete Nickolenko said during a press conference July 11. "We're currently tracking no technical issues."
V-22 RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. Defense Department's operational testers have been urged by their Navy counterparts to declare the V-22 Osprey ready to enter service by the Marine Corps, according to a government source. The V-22 recently completed a nearly three-month test phase designed to guide the fate of the Bell-Boeing tiltrotor aircraft (DAILY, June 28), and all signs so far indicate the phase went well.
ARMY Lockheed Martin Corp., Grand Prairie, Texas, was awarded on June 30, 2005, a $79,405,878 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for Block IA Army TACMS Variants (Unitary) XM57 Guided Missile and Launching Assembly. Work will be performed in Dallas, Texas, and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2007. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on Nov. 7, 2003. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (DAAH01-03-C-0203).
The Boeing Co. plans to pick a subcontractor in the next month or so to play a key role in a "network-centric operations" upgrade it is developing for the U.S. Air Force's B-52 Stratofortress bomber, company officials said July 11.
MOSCOW - A representative of Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos said the agency has lifted the ban on Soyuz vehicle launches that was imposed after the June 21 launch failure of a vehicle carrying a Molniya military communications satellite. The modified Soyuz version, called Molniya, had been used to launch the satellite of the same name. The problem is believed to stem from Molniya-specific hardware, so although the Molniya version still is under a launch moratorium, other Soyuz vehicles are now cleared for flight.
Although FAA has made progress recently in managing its troubled air traffic control acquisition programs, challenges remain for the agency as it seeks to keep pace with projected demand, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. FAA has spent $43.5 billion on airspace modernization since the early 1980s and plans to spend nearly another $10 billion through fiscal 2009. The effort has suffered from cost, schedule and performance problems and has been on GAO's list of high-risk programs since 1995, the report says.
ITT Night Vision and Northrop Grumman both submitted proposals July 11 for the Army's Omnibus VII night vision goggle procurement, which provides for up to 360,000 new goggles. The Army has purchased NVGs in large "omnibus" procurements since the 1980s. Omnibus VII will be the biggest yet, according to Larry Curfiss, ITT Night Vision's vice president and director of business development. An award is expected by September.
