Oct. 14 - 16 -- Call For Papers, Precision Strike Technology Symposium 2003, The Kossiakoff Conference Center, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Laboratory, Laurel, Md. Abstracts due by Friday, June 6, 2003. To send abstracts, email [email protected], fax (301) 475-9367 or contact Leslie Mueller at (301) 475-6513. Oct. 15 - 17 -- Interoperability Technology Summit, 3-Day Conference & Exhibition, Doubletree Hotel Crystal City, Arlington, Va. For more information visit www.idga.org
Northrop Grumman announced Oct. 9 that it stands to lose about $300 million in 2004 sales as a result of the U.S. Navy's decision to delay the planned refueling and overhaul of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) by one year, to November 2005.
BANDWIDTH HUNGER: The military must develop more self-control over its never-ending hunger for increased communications bandwidth, according to Lt. Gen. William Wallace, who commanded the U.S. Army's Fifth Corps during the war in Iraq (DAILY, Oct. 9). "Regardless of how much bandwidth we provide, we will figure out a way to want more," Wallace says. "We've got to figure out a way to be more disciplined in the way that we use bandwidth.
UPGRADING: DRS Technologies will provide system electronics and interfaces for upgrading U.S. Air Force MH-53J Pave Low III helicopters to the MH-53M Pave Low IV configuration, the company said Oct. 10. The work is being done under a $4.8 million contract from Modern Technologies Corp.
RESPONSE: NATO will inaugurate its new NATO Response Force Oct. 15 in Brunssum, the Netherlands, when Gen. James Jones, supreme allied commander, Europe, hands the NRF flag to the Joint Operational Commander, Gen. Sir Jack Deverell, the alliance says. NATO is forming the force to respond quickly to security problems and to help beef up the alliance's military capabilities (DAILY, Oct. 7). The force is scheduled to reach full capability by the fall of 2006, when it is to be ready to deploy in five days, and sustain itself for 30 days, NATO says.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Mid-sized defense companies could grow more than large companies in coming years due to the increasing importance of new product development, according to senior aerospace and defense analyst Byron Callan of Merrill Lynch. "While cycles of demand will be the main near-term determinant of revenue in commercial aerospace and defense, we strongly believe that new product development will be a critical differentiating factor among the companies we follow," he says.
TRANSFORMATION ASSESSMENT: Rep. William "Mac" Thornberry (R-Texas), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, plans to give a speech Oct. 15 assessing the Bush Administration's efforts to transform the military. Thornberry's address, which will take place at the Heritage Foundation, is entitled, "Ready for the Missions of the 21st Century?"
SUPPLEMENTAL DEBATE: The full House and Senate are expected to consider their versions of the $87 billion fiscal 2004 supplemental appropriations bill during the week of Oct. 13-17. Among the matters that could come up during those debates is a proposed amendment by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) that would provide $655 million to install anti-missile devices on the 300 aircraft in the Civil Reserve Aviation Fleet (CRAF) (DAILY, Oct. 1).
SPOTTING MOONS: The European Space Agency is planning Eddington, a space telescope with a precision photometer that it predicts not only could find planets outside our solar system, but could detect moons orbiting those planets. Eddington, named after astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, is scheduled to launch in 2008 and will seek planets by detecting the drop in light when a planet passes in front of its parent star.
IDIOTIC: Current export control restrictions on U.S. satellite equipment are "idiotic," according to Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board. "The restrictions on the export of satellite technology are idiotic. They are in the process of destroying an American industry and it's an important American industry," Perle says. Loral Space & Communications is one company that has suffered from the restrictions, he says.
NASA has awarded the Mission Operations and Mission Services (MOMS) contract to a team led by Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc. (HTSI) of Columbia, Md., the aerospace agency said last week. The five-year contract, which includes two one-year options, could be worth up to $900 million. HTSI will support NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., for spacecraft flight operations; mission data collection and distribution; and other work.
Changes are needed in the way funding is allocated for new research and development projects, a group of industry executives and independent analysts said Oct. 9. "It seems to me that the best way to invest research funding is for the government to have as little say as possible about how it will be spent," said Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board.
IRAQ BOUND: The U.S. Army's new Stryker vehicles are being shipped to Iraq for their first operational assignment, where they will support 3,600 soldiers from I Corps' 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the Army says. The troops will begin their assignment in Iraq in the next few weeks. The vehicles, from the Fort Lewis, Wash.-based Stryker Brigade Combat team, began rolling onto ships Oct. 9 for transport to Iraq.
HUMAN FACTORS: The U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and NASA plan to adopt the FAA's newly revised human factors guide, according to the FAA. Entitled, "Human Factors Design Standard," the new guide replaces and expands on the agency's 1996 guide. It includes air traffic and airway facilities systems and provides a common source of FAA-specific ergonomic design requirements. The new guide includes more than 100 new rules and guidelines and has been reorganized based on information from users, the FAA says.
The NetFires program, which is developing non-line-of-sight fire for the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), is on track for an early 2004 contract award to begin the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase, according to Army and industry officials. The SDD contract award, likely to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, probably will be made in or around January, said Steve Altman, director of business development at NetFires LLC, the Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture that is designing the missiles and launcher for NetFires.
THE BOEING CO. will continue work on a digital topographic model of the Earth from radar data collected by the space shuttle Endeavour under follow-on orders from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) worth $9.2 million, the company said. The award, under NIMA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) program, brings the total contract award to more than $19 million, Boeing said. The SRTM mission flew on Endeavour in February 2000. The goal of the program is to produce digital topographic data for 80 percent of the Earth's land surface.
The House Appropriations Committee approved legislation Oct. 9 that critics portrayed as a back-door way to approve the Air Force's proposal to lease 100 Boeing KC-767A tanker aircraft.
ROCKET ORDER: General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products will produce Hydra-70 70mm rockets, motors and warheads for the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force until March 2006 under a $98.6 million order, the company said Oct. 9. The order extends deliveries on a contract awarded to the company in 1999. The rockets can be fired from Apache and Cobra helicopters, F-16s and other platforms, the company said.
In a possible first step toward eliminating the need for certain aircraft to carry fuel, NASA engineers have conducted the first flight of a laser-powered model airplane, the aerospace agency announced Oct. 9.
RADAR ENCLOSURES: Ducommun Technologies will build electromechanical enclosures for the F/A-18's APG73 radar under two contracts from Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems worth $6.5 million, the company said Oct. 9. The work is to be completed in 2005, and will be performed at the company's Phoenix and Fort Defiance, Ariz., facilities, Ducommun said.
