RENEWED SPIRIT: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover "Spirit" is regaining functionality and NASA is confident it will be able to conduct scientific investigations even as NASA engineers continue nursing it back to health. "We know we still have some engineering work to do, but we think we understand the problem well enough to do science in parallel with that work," says Jennifer Trosper, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. On Jan. 28, Spirit took and transmitted its first picture since succumbing to a computer failure on Jan. 21 (DAILY, Jan.
STRONGER TIES: Strengthening their ties in space cooperation, India and Brazil have signed an agreement calling for more joint space-related activity, including space and atmospheric research and gathering remote-sensing data. Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha and Brazilian External Relations Minister Celeo Amorim signed the agreement last week, which follows on a memorandum of agreement for space cooperation signed by the two countries in 2002.
The Army is requesting an increase of $2.7 billion in its budget for fiscal year 2005, to $98.5 billion, compared with the $95.8 billion appropriated for the current fiscal year. Neither of these figures account for supplemental appropriations approved for fiscal year 2004, or any potential supplemental to be requested in fiscal year 2005. The proposed budget does not include funding to be used in connection with the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
COOPERATION: Lockheed Martin has signed a memorandum of understanding with Poland's Przemyslowy Instytut Telekomunikacji (PIT) defense electronics company to cooperate on missile defense projects. The companies will focus initially on radar technologies, Lockheed Martin said.
TRANSMISSION: The NRF and NATO's Allied Command Transformation also will help to serve as "a transmission belt for the latest technology, the latest doctrine, the latest thinking on defense," de Hoop Scheffer says. "We cannot let technology divide us. We cannot afford a world where the U.S. is forced to act alone simply for technical reasons. That would make U.S. unilateralism in military affairs inevitable, and I guarantee you that that is not healthy for this country, for NATO, or for international relations," he says.
The U.S. Department of Defense's fiscal 2005 budget request, released Feb. 2, focuses billions of dollars on military hardware integral to the DOD's transformation plan and includes funding for a new generation of Navy ships, tactical aircraft, communication systems and space-based radar. "We are under fire. We are still in a war on terrorism," a senior defense official said at an embargoed briefing Jan. 30. "Everything has to account for that situation."
The U.S. Department of Defense expects to have approximately 50 "horizontal fusion" network-centric warfare (NCW) initiatives underway in 2005, according to John Osterholz, DOD's director for architecture and interoperability. "Horizontal fusion" refers to the fusion of tactical data from multiple sources. The word "horizontal" refers to reaching across traditionally stovepiped organizations, while "fusion" refers to the process and applications that allow the network-centric merging of information.
SMALL BUSINESS: Small businesses increasingly are becoming more involved in teaming with prime contractors on U.S. Defense Department acquisition programs, say industry executives. "With two procurements I was recently involved in, the Navy specified that contractors respond with a subcontractor development plan, and a percentage of that would go to small businesses," says Graham Alderson, EG&G Technical Services' submarine combat systems program manager.
House and Senate committees plan to hold hearings this week to begin moving the Bush Administration's fiscal 2005 defense budget through Congress. Michael E. O'Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, predicted it will be fairly easy for DOD to get its spending proposal through Congress.
Opportunities to compete for defense contracts are increasing due the U.S. Department of Defense's newly adopted evolutionary acquisition (EA) processes, industry executives said last week. "Let's say the Navy wants to have a long-term partnership with industry, but doesn't want a sole-source environment," Graham Alderson, program manager for submarine combat systems at Gaithersburg, Md.,-based EG&G Technical Services, said as an example.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Some of the American military systems being developed and used overseas in the war on terrorism should be adapted for use in the homeland, according to Gen. Ralph "Ed" Eberhart, commander of Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. The list, he said in response to a question at a conference here, would include "almost everything that we've used for the away game - how could we use it in the home game?" Future Imagery Architecture
SHARING: Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Newport News sector and General Dynamics' Electric Boat division will share an $8.4 billion multi-year buy of five Virginia-class submarines for the U.S. Navy, the companies said. The contract replaces an earlier block-by agreement.
The Navy's total budget request for fiscal 2005 is $119.4 billion, a $3.9 billion increase from fiscal 2004 if the 2004 supplemental isn't factored in, a senior Department of the Navy budget official said Jan. 30 in a Pentagon press briefing. Including $5.3 billion in supplemental funding, the fiscal 2004 budget is $120.8 billion. DoD doesn't plan to ask for more supplemental funding until 2005, said a senior DoD budget official.
Cost growth of more than 50 percent has put the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program in violation of the Nunn-McCurdy act, according to Air Force budget officials. Lockheed Martin's Atlas V and Boeing's Delta IV rocket families originally were envisioned as serving both commercial and government customers. In the absence of a strong commercial market, however, Air Force officials have warned that EELV costs to the government will increase (DAILY, Nov. 19, 2003).
MOSCOW - Yuri Koptev, director of Rosaviakosmos, the Russian aviation and space agency, said his agency has requested documentation from NASA on President Bush's new plan to go back to the moon and on to Mars. Russia could submit proposals for the program as early as this month, Koptev said, and will promote its extensive space experience. However, Koptev said the president's schedule and initial $12 billion budget for the program (DAILY, Jan. 15) could be unrealistic, although the mission itself is "very attractive."
NATO CHIEF: Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee held a closed executive session meeting Jan. 29 with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, according to a committee spokesman. It was their first opportunity to meet him and they discussed "current issues facing NATO," the spokesman said.
PRAGUE - The Czech ministry of defense is looking for "serious offers" for 47 L-159 light combat aircraft it says the Czech military does not require. Ministry officials told The DAILY Jan. 29 that the aircraft would be heavily discounted because they have been used by the air force. The Czech state ordered 72 L-159s in the late 1990s but officials now say they believe only 24 are needed following cutbacks imposed on the military budget.
SEARCH AND RESCUE: General Dynamics C4 Systems will provide 650 AN/PRC-112G HOOK2TM combat search and rescue radios to Greece-based TEOTEC S.A. for use by Greece's air force. The value of the contract was not disclosed but it includes an option for 300 additional radios, the company said Jan. 28. The radios provide two-way messaging and Global Positioning System location capabilities.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Electronic versions of Aerospace Daily dated Feb. 2 will not be sent out until shortly after 9 a.m. on Feb. 2, so that we can include a special section detailing the U.S. Department of Defense's fiscal year 2005 budget request, which is embargoed until then. Print subscribers will receive the special section as part of the Feb. 3 issue.
A House panel has scheduled a March 9 hearing to scrutinize the effectiveness of U.S. and international export controls on cruise missile and unmanned aerial vehicle technology, according to a congressional source. The hearing by the House Government Reform Committee's national security subcommittee is expected to examine the findings of the General Accounting Office, which has been studying the cruise missile/UAV issue at the request of the subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.).
At the request of NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, former Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) Chairman Hal Gehman will offer a "second opinion" on O'Keefe's decision to cancel the fourth and final scheduled space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During a press roundtable in Washington Jan. 29, O'Keefe said he expects an "expeditious" response from Gehman, although no deadline has been set.
