EADS North America has restructured its defense business into EADS North America Defense Company, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. said Sept. 29. The new company is a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS North America, Inc., operating under a special security agreement to regulate and ease the management of classified information through procedures establishing industrial security and export control measures, the company said. James Mulato will serve as CEO and the company will be located in Arlington, Va.
A House-Senate conference on the fiscal year 2005 defense authorization bill got under way a day after the House leadership chose the members who will work to reconcile the two versions of the measure. The conferees gathered for a full committee meeting on Sept. 29. Sources on Capitol Hill told The DAILY that members would try to reach agreement before the presidential election.
Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne completed its first qualification flight to win the Ansari X Prize Sept. 29, reaching suborbital space despite an unexpected roll that caused pilot Mike Melvill to shut the vehicle's rocket engine off 11 seconds early. SpaceShipOne and its White Knight carrier aircraft took off from the Civilian Aerospace Test Center at Mojave Airport at 7:12 a.m. Pacific time. After being carried to 47,000 feet, SpaceShipOne detached and fired its SpaceDev-built hybrid rocket engine.
TESTING: Ground and flight-tests of the Yak-130 training and light combat aircraft will be completed by the end of 2005, Moscow-based IRKUT Corp. said. First production flight-tests are being completed, a second production aircraft will fly in November and a third will be tested next year, the company said. Two other aircraft are undergoing static ground testing. The tests have checked stability and controllability, power plant operation, aircraft systems, and takeoff and landing performance, the company said.
Intelligence community-revamping legislation being considered by the House Armed Services Committee would remove the secretary of defense from the funding loop between the White House budget office and federal agencies. The committee met in a markup session Sept. 29 to work on H.R. 10, legislation proposed in response to the recommendations recently made by the 9-11 Commission.
The Department of Defense (DOD) outsources almost half of its contracts on a noncompetitive basis, has increased the amount it contracts out, and awards most of its funding to a small percentage of firms, according to a new report by the watchdog group Center for Public Integrity, released Sept. 29. No-bid contracts have accounted for more than 40 percent, or about $362 billion, of Pentagon contracting from 1998 to 2003, said Charles Lewis, the group's executive director.
Lockheed Martin's Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) team recently completed airborne and ground demonstrations of potential sensors for the vehicle, the company announced Sept. 29.
Comprehensive avionics upgrades of the Australian air force's C-130J and C-130H full-flight simulators have recently been completed by CAE Inc. of Montreal, the company said Sept. 29. The simulators are located in Richmond, New South Wales, Australia.
AEROSPACE CORP., El Segundo, Calif. Heinz L. Butner has been named principal engineer in the Delta IV Program Directorate, Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Division (EELV), at the company's El Segundo headquarters. Steve Pavlica and Thomas A. Ramberg have been promoted to principal engineer in the Electronic Programs Division in the company's Chantilly, Va., office. HERLEY INDUSTRIES, Lancaster, Pa. Thomas V. Gilboy has been appointed vice president and chief financial officer. HONEYWELL, Morris Township, N.J.
MERGER: Sensytech Inc. and Argon Engineering Associates have completed their merger, the companies said Sept. 29. Company stockholders approved a name change, from Sensytech to ARGON ST Inc. The company's headquarters will be in Fairfax, Va.
Developers of the Tactical Tomahawk (TacTom) are turning their attention to the horizontally launched variant of the cruise missile now that the vertically launched version has been fielded. Capt. Robert Novak, the U.S. Navy's Tomahawk program manager, said Sept. 29 that the first launch test for the horizontally launched version of TacTom is scheduled for May 2005 from a British submarine. Deliveries of the variant are slated to begin about two years after that.
MARS DRILL: NASA's Johnson Space Center is testing a drilling rig designed for use on the moon or Mars at the Eureka Weather Station in the Canadian Arctic. Located on Ellesmere Island in Canada, the testing location is about 690 miles from the North Pole and approximates certain attributes of the martian environment. The drill itself is roughly the height of a street sign and consumes only 100 watts of power. For the tests, JSC is collaborating with McGill University in Montreal, the University of Toronto, and Baker Hughes Inc. of Houston. Testing will last through Oct.
BAE Systems North America has agreed to purchase Alphatech for $88.4 million, BAE Systems said Sept. 28. Alphatech specializes in intelligent systems, multi-intelligence fusion and image and signal processing for the Department of Defense and other government intelligence agencies. It employs 322 people and is headquartered in Burlington, Mass.
The Netherlands has requested Secure Mobile Anti-Jam Reliable Tactical Terminals (SMART-T) and M998A1 Humvees, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress Sept. 28. The Netherlands is seeking seven SMART-Ts and seven Humvees for a total contract value of up to $71 million, DSCA said.
The first flight test for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's revamped Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system has been delayed slightly by a congressional funding cut, according to Defense Department officials. The test had been scheduled for December but now is planned for sometime in the January-March quarter of 2005 because the FY '05 defense appropriations act, without explanation, trimmed $30 million from MDA's $834 million request for THAAD, the DOD officials said Sept. 29.
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) has made 12 Phase 1 awards for six-month studies beginning in October. The proposals selected include work on moon-based infrared telescopes, large swarms of picosats, a lunar space elevator, and redesigning living organisms to survive on Mars. A complete list of winning proposals and abstracts is available on the Web at http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0930niac_phase1.html.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser (ABL) program plans to order more iodine for the ABL's kill laser because the current batch has not performed properly in testing, possibly due to excessive moisture in the chemical, an MDA spokesman said late Sept. 28.
The U.S. Department of Defense plans to hold a fleet induction ceremony of the Tomahawk Block IV Cruise Missile on Sept. 29 at the Pentagon. The assistant secretary of the Navy and Raytheon officials will be on hand for the rollout of the missiles. The Tomahawk Block IVs were approved for initial operating capability in May and a full-rate production contract was awarded to Raytheon Missile Systems in August. The contract provides for the production of up to 2,200 block IV missiles over five years.
COMPLETED: Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.'s acquisition of Schweizer Aircraft Corp. is complete, the company said Sept. 27. Schweizer, based in Elmira, N.Y., specializes in the light helicopter, reconnaissance aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicle markets. Schweizer will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Sikorsky. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
SpaceDev's "Dream Chaser" suborbital spacecraft could serve as a hypersonic testbed for NASA, according to company founder and CEO Jim Benson. The piloted Dream Chaser is derived from an existing X-Plane concept and has an altitude goal of about 100 miles (DAILY, Sept. 21). It would be launched vertically by a single hybrid rocket motor the company is developing for the SpaceDev Streaker, a family of small launch vehicles intended to deliver small satellites to orbit.
EADS Space and VITROCISET of Rome have signed a memorandum of understanding to study aerospace collaborations and initiatives including telecommunication, navigation, and launches, EADS Space said Sept. 27.
An estimated $9.5 billion will be spent on key land- and sea-based electro-optical (EO) systems over the next 10 years, according to a new report from Forecast International (FI). Systems will be produced rapidly over the next few years to meet the demands of deployed military forces, FI said Sept. 27. Night-vision technology for surveillance and targeting missions have been placed on a fast track for production and procurement, according to FI research analyst Andrew Dardine.
COLLABORATION: Twenty-eight major companies have combined to form the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium to recommend a unified approach to "enable sensors, communications and information systems to interact within a global network centric environment," the consortium said Sept. 28. "Today marks the beginning of an unprecedented collaboration," Carl O'Berry, chairman of the consortium's executive council, said in a statement. Founding members include BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.
The overall space tourism market is promising and could generate revenues of more than $1 billion a year by 2021, Futron Corp. said Sept. 28 in its new Space Tourism Market Study. The study, based on a Zogby International poll of affluent Americans commissioned by Futron in 2002, surveyed customer demand for suborbital and orbital space tourism. "Suborbital space tourism will generate the largest demand, with the potential for 15,000 passengers and $700 million in revenues per year by 2021," the report says.
