ACCOUNTABILITY: The U.S. Navy's use of spiral development and capabilities-based planning could hinder Congress' ability to oversee programs and spending, says Congressional Research Service naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke. "When asked about the current uncertainty regarding the planned size and structure of the fleet, Navy and DOD officials sometimes make reference to the concept of capabilities-base planning, and have argued that numbers of ships and aircraft per se are not as important as the total amount of capability represented in the fleet," O'Rourke says.
SENATE ACTIVITY: Senate lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee plan to hold a hearing April 7 to consider fiscal 2005 budget requests for National Guard and Reserve programs. On the same day, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee plan a hearing on defense intelligence programs and lessons learned from recent military operations. Among those scheduled to testify are Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and intelligence chiefs from the services.
SHOPPING: Air Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, head of the Indian air force, is in France through April 7 to discuss India's possible acquisition of more Mirage fighters. India is seeking multirole aircraft from international markets to replace its aging MiG-21, MiG-23 and MiG-25 aircraft. The Indian defense ministry also is considering a proposal from Dassault Aviation to build Mirage 2000-5 aircraft in India under license (DAILY, Jan. 29). Indian defense planners favor the idea, but a final decision has been postponed under after upcoming elections.
ON TARGET: "Increased activity" by the U.S. Navy, Marines and Joint Forces Command in the Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Suffolk, Va., area prompted the Boeing Co. to open an Integrated Defense Systems field office in Norfolk last week, the head of the new office says. Capt. Louis Lalli (USN, ret.) says Boeing is taking to heart the Pentagon's mandate for transformation and joint warfighting.
MOSCOW - Anatoly Perminov, the new head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, said he supports President Bush's proposed expeditions to the moon and Mars, and said both Russia and the European Space Agency (ESA) should participate in it. Perminov, who was named to the post last month (DAILY, March 12), spoke at a meeting here with ESA officials. His predecessor, Yuri Koptev, who headed the agency when it was named the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, had been skeptical of U.S. space exploration plans.
AIRSHIP POWER: At least two companies - Uni-Solar Ovonic, of Auburn Hills, Mich., and Iowa Thin Film Technologies, of Boone, Iowa - have announced they are under consideration to supply the solar energy panels that would power the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's High Altitude Airship (HAA). The HAA is scheduled for a critical design review in mid-June that will help MDA decide whether to give prime contractor Lockheed Martin a $50 million contract to build a prototype flight vehicle. MDA is interested in the HAA mainly as a surveillance and communications relay vehicle.
MDA MICROSATS: SpaceDev of Poway, Calif., will conduct a distributed sensing experiment for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) using three microsatellites flying in formation under a $43 million, five-year contract awarded April 1. The contract also contains options for a laser communications experiment and other microsatellite studies, according to the company. The satellites will be based on the company's Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer satellite (CHIPSat), a microsatellite built for NASA and launched last year.
BIPARTISAN FUNDING: Aerospace industry representatives would like federal funding for space programs to be dealt with in a bipartisan fashion, as is the defense budget, says Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) President John Douglass. In other words, space programs should continue to be funded even when the White House changes hands, he says. In both space and defense, programs take a long time to complete, involve lots of engineering support and need the sustained financial support of the federal government, he says.
NASA's long-awaited $700 million Gravity Probe B (GP-B) experiment has been mated to its Delta II launch vehicle in anticipation of an April 17 liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., according to the agency. "It's already 150 feet off the ground, so we're encouraged," Gravity Probe B Program Manager Rex Geveden joked during a press briefing in Washington April 2.
The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has a number of initiatives aimed at helping aerospace and defense suppliers survive and compete in the tough economic climate since the terrorist attacks of 2001. These include helping small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs) get government research and development work, simplify their certification processes and provide group health insurance, said William Lewandowski, AIA's vice president of supplier management.
One of the U.S. Navy's prototypes for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the High Speed Vessel 2 (HSV) Swift, made a port call to Alexandria, Va., this week to showcase the LCS' transformational platform and modules. The Navy is leasing Swift, a double-hulled catamaran made by the Australian company Incat, through a joint venture with Bollinger Shipyards to use as a test platform for LCS development. Swift was delivered to the Navy on Aug. 15, 2003. The Navy is leasing the ship for two years, although the deal could be extended to five years.
"Waterproof everything" is the request from soldiers to the Army's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), according to ISN Director Net Thomas. A collaboration between the Army and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the ISN was founded in 2002 to pursue innovations in protective nanotechnology for soldiers (DAILY, April 4).
Some big-ticket defense programs, including the Navy's future aircraft carrier (CVN-21), the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and the Airborne Laser (ABL) are entering system development before all of their technologies mature, a new General Accounting Office (GAO) report concluded.
NASA's latest projection for the total cost of returning the space shuttle to flight some time next year is running at $600-700 million, according to Administrator Sean O'Keefe. The estimates are contained in NASA's latest return-to-flight implementation plan, which should be released April 9, O'Keefe says. NASA updates the plan roughly each month (DAILY, Nov. 25, 2003).
KOREA AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES (KAI) has begun flight testing of the T-50 Golden Eagle supersonic trainer with external stores, KAI and partner Lockheed Martin said. Flight testing with captive AIM-9 air-to-air missiles began in November and the first flight with external fuel tanks occurred in February, the companies said. The initial flights were to verify the aircraft's stability and control, flutter and handling qualities. Later flights are to verify its performance, store functionality and interfaces, and store separation.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Two offensive counter-space systems are coming into use, according to Lt. Gen. Brian A. Arnold, commander of Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. One is the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System (CSRS) and the other is the Counter Communications System (CCS), Arnold said at the National Space Symposium here. Both are ground-based, and both are designed to create only temporary effects, he said. CSRS "will be out there around 2007," and CCS will come later, Arnold told reporters March 31.
SENSYTECH INC. said its Defense Systems Group will provide two WBR-2000 Electronic Warfare Systems and integrated logistics support to ATK Missile Systems Co. under a $2.6 million contract. "These systems will function as an integral part of a forward-deployed air defense system for an international customer, S. Kent Rockwell, the chairman and CEO of Sensytech, said in a statement. "This award to Sensytech is one of several pending for this international customer."
NEW DELHI - The Indian air force plans to buy 20 AgustaWestland EH101 helicopters for multimission operations, a defense ministry official said. The decision to buy the AgustaWestland helicopters was based on an Indian air force proposal submitted last year, which mainly sought to acquire a helicopter powered by GE T700 engines. The EH101s are powered by three of the engines, and are expected to be very effective for use in the high-altitude regions of Jammu and Kashmir.
EMS TECHNOLOGIES INC. said its AMT-50 satellite communications antenna is now available for C-130 aircraft. EMS' Satcom Division developed the Hatch-Mounted Inmarsat Antenna (HMIA) in cooperation with Aerospace Integration Corp. The product incorporates the AMT-50 Aero-H Satcom Antenna coupled to an AIC UNICOM hatch to provide an integrated assembly for use on C-130s, the company said. The HMIA works with the EMS VIPER II ruggedized satcom terminal to provide up to 256 kilobits per second (kbps) of data throughput to the aircraft.
EURO-ART has delivered the first French Counter Battery Radar (COBRA) production system for the French armed forces, the consortium said. The consortium is made up of Thales Air Defence of France and Thales Defence of the United Kingdom, EADS Defence and Communications Systems of France and Lockheed Martin of the U.S. The highly mobile weapon-locating radar, which has a full active phased-array antenna, initially will be used for training, peacetime trials and exercises. Final delivery of the French order for 10 radars is expected to be completed by the end of 2006.
BOEING has selected FR-HITEMP of the United Kingdom as a supplier of fuel pumps and valves for the 7E7 Dreamliner mid-sized passenger aircraft. FR-HiTemp will provide pumps to be used for engine fuel feed, fuel override and jettison, the auxiliary power unit, the center fuel tank and water scavenging, Boeing said. "With this announcement, we have completed more than 60 percent of the systems awards for the 7E7," program Senior Vice President Mike Bair said in a statement. FR-HiTemp is a business unit of Cobham plc's Aerospace Systems Group.
Northrop Grumman says it is ramping up activities for two major manned aviation programs for the U.S. Navy. Operational testing of Northrop Grumman's Increased Capability (ICAP) III radar-jamming system was scheduled to begin April 1 and last five months, paving the way for an initial operational capability (IOC) in the summer of 2005, company representatives said at a March 31 press briefing.
