MORE INFORMATION: Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and John Spratt (D-S.C.) have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joshua Bolten, the Office of Management and Budget Director, asking for more information on funding for operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle.
NO COMMENT: The Defense Support Program (DSP) system of missile early warning satellites presumably detected a huge railroad station explosion in North Korea on April 22, but the Air Force isn't confirming that. The explosion at Ryongchon, in the northwestern corner of the country, may have killed 150 people and injured more than 1,200. Some 1,850 homes and apartments apparently were destroyed, and an additional 6,350 may have been damaged.
The White House hopes to finally release its policies on space transportation and space-based navigation and timing later this year, according to Brett Alexander, senior policy analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. For the past two years, the White House's space policy coordinating committee has been working on a "rolling review" of U.S. space policy at the request of President Bush. The administration's policy on remote sensing was released last May (DAILY, May 14, 2003).
ABL COMPONENTS: Lockheed Martin said it plans to deliver the key components of the Airborne Laser's (ABL) beam control/fire control system to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency program later this spring. The beam control/fire control system is to help guide the ABL's kill laser to its target. The ABL, a modified 747-400 freighter that is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their boost phase of flight, is expected to attempt its first missile intercept as early as the first half of 2005.
GUN SYSTEMS: General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada will enter into negotiations with the government of Canada for 66 Mobile Gun Systems, the company said. The Mobile Gun System is a variant of the Stryker family of vehicles General Dynamics is building for the U.S. Army's Stryker Brigade Combat Teams. "The Stryker Mobile Gun System can provide Canadian forces with a fast, highly mobile, highly lethal gun system, just as it will for the U.S. forces," John Ulrich, senior vice president of General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, said in a statement.
PRESSURE: Because the long-term federal budget picture is expected to worsen in future years due to deficits, pressure will grow for the U.S. Department of Defense to scale back its plans, says a recent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) report. "More actions like the recent cancellation of the Army's Comanche helicopter program will likely have to be taken," says Steven Kosiak's analysis.
Defense Department and congressional officials don't have a "full understanding" of the overall cost of developing and fielding the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS), and what its capabilities will be, the General Accounting Office concluded in a report released April 23. The Missile Defense Agency, which is fielding the system, made progress on software development, ground and flight testing and facility construction in 2003, GAO said.
The U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Command is asking industry for ideas on a tiny proximity sensor that would be carried by miniature missiles that a vehicle would automatically fire at attacking rocket-propelled grenades and similar weapons. The sensor would tell a missile to explode close to the enemy weapon, destroying it before it reached the vehicle.
NO CLOSURES: NASA doesn't foresee having to close any field centers as part of the president's new exploration initiative, agency Administrator Sean O'Keefe says. "I couldn't anticipate that at the moment," he says. "I don't see it as being a requisite at this point." O'Keefe appeared before the House Appropriations Committee's VA/HUD/NASA subcommittee last week.
The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) is part of a coalition urging Congress to pass legislation to make the federal research and development tax credit permanent. The credit has been renewed by Congress 12 times since its creation in 1981, and without another renewal will expire June 30. The credit benefits mostly manufacturers, who receive 68.6 percent of the value.
TACTOM MULTI-YEAR: The U.S. Navy is on track to award a five-year procurement contract for the Tactical Tomahawk (TacTom) in late June, says Capt. Bob Novak, who oversees the Tomahawk program for the Navy. A decision to move from low-rate to full-rate production of the Raytheon-built TacTom also is expected that month (DAILY, March 5). The missile, which has been funded for low-rate production since fiscal 2002, is the latest version of the long-range, ship- and submarine-launched Tomahawk.
April 26 - 28 -- 48th Annual Fuze Conference, "Technology in Fuzing," Charlotte Hilton and Towers, Charlotte, N.C. Call Christy O'Hara at (703) 247-2586 or email [email protected], ref. #4560. April 26 - 29 -- 55th Annual Avionics Maintenance Conference (AMC), Le Centre Sheraton, Montreal, Canada. Contact Roger S. Goldberg at (410) 266-2915, email [email protected] or go to www.arinc.com/amc.
HYPERSONIC REALISM: Hypersonics may be ready to bloom now that government customers are becoming more realistic in their performance expectations, according to Ron Samborsky, the vice president for business development at Aerojet. "One of the reasons that hypersonics have had such a difficult time getting started is that some of the folks who have set the requirements haven't done a particularly good job of understanding the technology," Samborsky says. "NASP [the National Aerospace Plane] was a good example of that, where people were talking about going to Mach 25.
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Saab Training Systems of Huskvarna, Sweden, is to deliver a digitized Direct Fire Weapon Effects Simulator (DFWES) in time for a British army digitized exercise at the Salisbury Plain training area next month. The company announced April 21 that the contract includes the update of previously delivered Saab BT 46 simulator systems to be compatible with the British Army's new Bowman digital radio system. The radio system will provide secure tactical combat communications for United Kingdom land, air and coastal operations.
LESSONS LEARNED: The Force Application and Launch from the Continental U.S. (FALCON) program is telling the contractor teams working on the Small Launch Vehicle (SLV) to assume relatively modest flight rates in their cost proposals, according to FALCON Deputy Program Manager Lt. Col. Rick Einstman. "The idea is to not overestimate the launch rate early on, because then it forces a large standing army [of personnel] early, and then if that launch rate doesn't materialize, you're going to be paying for this standing army for a while.
The U.S. Air Force's new subscale aerial target is moving closer to becoming a reality, with the first flight expected to occur "within a few months," a service official said April 22.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a vocal critic of the U.S. Air Force's lease-buy deal with Boeing for 100 KC-767A tankers, said the guilty plea of a former service acquisition official is "a matter of continuing investigative concern." In a statement released late April 20, McCain said court documents related to Darleen Druyun's guilty plea (DAILY, April 21) "plainly indicate that the conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer and compromise the interests of the warfighter runs farther and deeper than originally suspected."
The 2003 Naval Transformation Roadmap, released April 20, is more detailed and useful than its predecessor, but needs more metrics and joint vision, according to a naval analyst. The U.S. Navy's first transformation roadmap, from 2002, was half as long as the 2003 one and was less detailed, Robert Work, a senior Navy analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), told The DAILY.
Military fixed-wing trainer deliveries will rise steadily in the next 10 years, totaling 2,238 shipments worth $17.5 billion from 2004 to 2013, according to a new global market overview from Forecast International (FI). "In light of the tactical aircraft re-equipment cycle now under way by many major air forces, the need to address some long-postponed trainer requirements is receiving new impetus," said FI senior aerospace analyst Bill Dane. According to Dane, the next generation of advanced jet trainers will be products of joint ventures.
The 250-pound-class GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb is intended to enable fighters, bombers and unmanned combat air vehicles to strike multiple targets on one pass. The smaller size allows an aircraft to carry more bombs than is possible with larger bombs, and precision technology will help it meet the accuracy goal. The SDB is projected to be as effective as larger weapons, but at a lower cost.
The selection of a prime contractor for the U.S. Army-led Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) program has been delayed from April until late May or early June, according to a program representative. The choice of a developer for the intelligence-gathering aircraft had been expected April 19, but Richard Sciria, chief of the engineering and sustainment division for the Army's Project Manager for Signals Warfare, told the Precision Strike Association conference at Fort Belvoir, Va., April 21 that the process is taking longer than expected.
POSTPONED: The Czech ministry of defense has again postponed a tender for the purchase of more than 240 wheeled armored transports. The ministry planned to launch a tender for Czech companies to handle the near-$1 billion purchase at the end of February, but then announced a six-week delay so tests could be carried out on the chassis of contending vehicles. Officials said April 22 that the process would be delayed until the end of May because of "fine tuning" required in the tender specification.
AMP WORK: Boeing Integrated Defense Systems will begin modernizing 48 U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Reserve C-130T and KC-130T aircraft under a $3.4 million contract, the company said. The work will build on the company's C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) and will install digital "glass cockpits" in the aircraft, the company said. The work will run through March 2005.
