Combest's IC21 intelligence review has turned up a lot of concern about human intelligence (HUMINT) assets and a good deal of praise for technical collection capabilities, including satellites. But that doesn't mean Congress has no concerns about technical issues. Sen. Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, worries about long lead times for collection systems in an era when targets are evolving and changing much more rapidly than in the past.
Fixing the F119 Advanced Tactical Fighter turbofan's high-pressure turbine vibration problem involved changing the stator count and re-tuning the turbine blades to change their curvature, Pratt&Whitney's F119 VP, Walt Bylciw, told The DAILY. The redesign worked well enough that P&W and the U.S. Air Force decided last month to drop efforts to come up with a back-up turbine design (DAILY, June 28, page 492), but until this week details on that design were sketchy.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has added $135 million to the U.S. Air Force's request for the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) and directed the service to accelerate deployment of the low-Earth orbit (LEO) portion of the early warning satellite constellation.
The Senate Appropriations Committee Friday voted 29-0 to clear a $242.7 billion fiscal 1996 Pentagon money bill that cuts the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program by $103 million and shows a clear preference for procuring and modifying older aircraft instead. The Senate's defense funding bill is $1.4 billion below the House Appropriations Committee version. It is uncertain whether the Senate Appropriations bill will be considered by the Senate before the August recess scheduled to begin Saturday.
Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski has set aside two days in August to focus on the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program. He will meet with program officials early on Aug. 22 and then spend the rest of that day and Aug. 23 talking with JAST contractors Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and McDonnell Douglas/Northrop Grumman. A Defense Acquisition Board meeting also is scheduled for the end of August, following a Joint Requirements Oversight Council review of the JAST Joint Initial Requirement Document.
In the world of information warfare, communications satellites aren't likely to be targets because a country that destroys such a spacecraft may end up eliminating its own communications, Caldarella says. "I don't think people would ever physically or directly attack a satellite because right now everyone shares satellites," he says.
Information age advances also pose a challenge to intelligence from a policy standpoint, Robert Kimmitt, former executive secretary of the National Security Council, tells Combest's IC21 review. "A report by a CNN stringer in a far-off land, who coordinates and clears with no one but his camera and sound crews, is much more likely to stimulate a policy-level response than a coordinated, yet later-in-time intelligence product," he says.
Lt. Col. Steven Hampton, now assistant deputy commander for the operations at the U.S. Air Force's 561st Fighter Squadron, will be the commander of the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron that was activated Saturday at Nellis AFB, Nev., the AF said.
The U.S. should halt cuts to its intelligence budgets until it can assess the new demands placed on the intelligence community by the end of the Cold War, former National Security Advisor Gen. Brent Scowcroft said yesterday. "I think its time to level off and see where we are because the nature of the threat has changed so dramatically," Scowcroft told the House Intelligence Committee. "We may have already gone too far."
The U.S. government needs to support U.S. aerospace companies in the post-Cold War marketplace through the advancement of trade, by strengthening the domestic industrial base, and by promoting technology development and application, a new Aerospace Industries Association study says.
Non-lethal technologies are not a major growth area for the Energy Dept.'s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico because the military requirements for them aren't clear, according to lab director Siegfried Hecker. So far, the field of non-lethal technology development is made up mostly of scientists with a lot of ideas and "fascinating" technologies, he said. However, there's "not a great tie" to military applications, Hecker told reporters yesterday during a breakfast meeting in Washington.
An amendment to kill the International Space Station program and shift the funds to veterans, housing and NASA science programs failed in the House yesterday, but not before a longtime general in the Station budget battles changed sides and voted against the program to protest the "budget cutting frenzy" that has afflicted the U.S. civil space effort.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN said yesterday it has decided not to file a formal protest with the GAO over selection of Raytheon's entry in the JPATS competition. The company had two entries-the Super Tucano, on which it teamed with Brazil's Embraer, and the S. 211A with Italy's Agusta. Northrop Grumman is the last of the losing JPATS competitors to decide whether to protest. Cessna and Rockwell filed GAO protests earlier this month, while Lockheed Martin opted not to.
The German-built main engine on the Galileo spacecraft ignited for a "flawless" five-minute burn early yesterday, setting up a gravitational ballet with Jupiter that will position the spacecraft to collect up to 75 minutes of data as its atmospheric probe parachutes into the planet's clouds on Dec. 7.
Russian Space Forces have orbited a trio of satellites for the domestic Glonass global positioning system, bringing the system just one launch shy of a complete deployment for a fully operational constellation. The three satellites, officially named Cosmos 2316, Cosmos 2317 and Cosmos 2318, were launched July 24 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by a Proton launch vehicle at 15:52 GMT (11:52 a.m. EDT).
Choose one: The Non-Developmental Airlift Aircraft is A) a waste of taxpayer dollars, diverting money that could be spent on military-unique airlifters and on leasing cargo capability from the airlines; or, B) a cost-effective complement to the U.S. Air Force fleet of military cargo planes, capable of flying between 70% and 80% of today's typical airlift missions and plugging the airlift capacity gap a decade ahead of schedule.
Unions representing most unsalaried employees in the aerospace business hope to merge by the year 2000, creating a single industrial union with more than two million members, union leaders reported yesterday. The heads of the unions representing auto workers, steel workers and machinists signed a "unity declaration" committing them to the deal after the executive boards of the three unions-the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers of America, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers-gave their approval.
SIGNAL TECHNOLOGY CORP., Sunnyvale, Calif., said it has received multiple contracts from Hazeltine Corp., valued at $5.1 million, to produce power supplies and RF components used on the AN/APX-113 identification- friend-or-foe system on the F-16 aircraft. The work will be carried out by Signal Technology's ST Olektron and ST Microwave (Arizona) subsidiaries. ST Olektron also manufactures RF components for Hazeltine's AN/APX-111 IFF system used on the F/A-18 aircraft. Signal Technology Corp.
A study of the non-U.S. market for electronic warfare systems projects a $1.5 billion growth by 2001, and says it will be driven by demand in Asia and the Middle East.
The recently elected Chirac government is studying defense cuts that may wind up forcing France out of the Future Large Airlifter program it has championed for years, which could in turn cause the eight- nation program to collapse.
SANDERS, Nashua, N.H., has delivered the first 6-1/4 by 6-1/4 inch cockpit display it is producing for the F-22 fighter. The advanced demonstration model of the display, delivered to Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems in Marietta, Ga., will be installed in a simulator for testing with other cockpit hardware and software, said Sanders, a Lockheed Martin company.
The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Defense Dept. to set up an office for non-lethal systems and technologies and has authorized $37.2 million in its fiscal 1996 bill to do so. The program would be managed by DOD's Office of Strategic and Tactical Systems of the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Technology, "which has demonstrated a commitment to systemization and fielding of mature [non- lethal weapons] technologies," says the SASC report, which was issued last week.
The House Appropriations Committee wants the Defense Dept. to stop robbing funds from the Army's RAH-66 Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter program and get the development program back on track. "The Committee is extremely frustrated at DOD's lack of commitment to the Comanche program and believes this program should be accelerated in the subsequent budget requests," HAC wrote in its fiscal 1996 appropriations bill.
Blaming the Defense Dept. for worsening many of its own readiness problems, the House Appropriations Committee is proposing several restrictions on continued Pentagon participation in humanitarian, refugee, peacekeeping and disaster assistance. "The Committee is increasingly concerned with the use of U.S. armed forces and Department of Defense resources in what the DOD now euphemistically refers to as 'operations other than war,'" HAC wrote in its fiscal 1996 appropriations bill.
NASA managers remained optimistic yesterday that the Space Shuttle launch schedule can be maintained almost as planned in the face of an anomaly on the past two flights that raised safety questions about the Redesigned Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM). A government-industry team is scheduled to report its finding on the anomalies in a teleconference with Shuttle program officials today at 3 p.m. EDT.
