NEW DELHI - The Indian Air Force has decided to ground at least 20 Type 69 MiG-21 trainer aircraft following a MiG-21 crash last week in which both crewmembers were killed. The service has lost more than 220 aircraft in the last ten years, the majority of which were MiGs. An Air Force source confirmed that the trainer has been grounded, adding that these aircraft were bought from Ukraine in the last six to seven years. He also disclosed that the aircraft in which the two crewmembers were killed was bought second-hand from Ukraine three years ago.
CAE will upgrade two combat mission simulators for the U.S. Army's AH-64A attack helicopters under a $9.5 million contract the company announced July 21. The upgrade includes the CAE Medallion-S visual system and new instructor operator stations, the company said. One simulator, at the Western Army Aviation Training Center, Marana, Ariz., is scheduled to be ready in September 2004. The other, at Fort Campbell, Ky., is set to be operational for training in January 2005.
A July 21 panel of space industry experts agreed that NASA's Orbital Space Plane (OSP) must be capable of evolving beyond only serving the needs of the International Space Station (ISS) if it is to be a worthwhile and sustainable investment. The OSP is intended to provide crew return from the ISS as early as 2008, and crew transfer up to orbit shortly thereafter. NASA has offered an OSP cost estimate of $2.4 billion for FY '03 to FY '07, although the agency has said that number is a placeholder and will be revised as development progresses.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) is recommending that the defense secretary direct the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program office to ensure that international supplier planning takes full account of the possible risks of transferring technology out of the United States. A large number of export authorizations must be processed to ensure that prospective suppliers from the eight international JSF partner countries have the opportunity to compete for key contracts and subcontracts on schedule, the GAO said in a report released July 21.
The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has awarded a $288 million contract modification to the National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) to design and build a fourth ship in the Dry Cargo/Ammunition Ship (T-AKE) class. NASSCO is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics Corp. Work will be performed at NASSCO's facility in San Diego and is expected to be completed by December 2006. The award is an option on a $709 million contract awarded to NASSCO in October 2001 for the design and construction of the first two ships in the class.
International Launch Services successfully launched the Rainbow 1 satellite from Cape Canaveral, Fla., July 17, marking the third flight for the Atlas V rocket since its debut last August. Liftoff took place at 7:45 p.m. EDT, with separation of the satellite occurring an hour and 40 minutes later. The Atlas V was fitted with two solid rocket motors and an enlarged five-meter-diameter fairing to accommodate Rainbow 1's antenna array.
BAE Systems North America is negotiating with the U.S. Army's lead systems integrator team for work on the Future Combat Systems program, company officials said July 18. The Army and its lead systems integrator (LSI) team of the Boeing Co. and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) selected BAE Systems and 14 other contractors on July 10 to begin developing the initial systems for the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program (DAILY, July 11). Other contractors will be named later this summer.
NUKE FUNDING: The Bush Administration's fiscal 2004 budget request for nuclear weapons research is getting a mixed reception from Congress. The House-passed version of the FY '04 energy and water appropriations bill cuts $10 million from the $15 million request for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and denies the $6 million request for advanced concepts work. House members seem reluctant to put a lot of money into new nuclear weapons programs until the Energy Department revamps its Cold War-era nuclear weapons complex.
With an eye toward future crewed vehicles such as the Orbital Space Plane (OSP), NASA has released its first agency-wide policy document specifying top-level requirements for human-rating its space flight systems. The new document will serve as a blueprint "for providing the maximum reasonable assurance [that] the design and operations of future human space flight systems present minimum risk to the flight crew and occupants," according to NASA.
SUBCOMMITTEE APPROVAL: The House Appropriation's defense subcommittee approved a Defense Department plan to lease 100 Boeing 767-200 tankers, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) said July 18. "I look forward to the prompt approval in the other [defense] committees so we can proceed with the production of these tankers," Dicks said.
ARMY ROADMAP: The Army's evolving Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is spurring the service to revise its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) roadmap, according to Lt. Gen. John Riggs, director of the Objective Force Task Force at Army headquarters. "The Army put together a UAV roadmap, submitted it to Congress in April '03, and it's currently under revision," Riggs says. "The reason it's under revision is I don't think we took fully into consideration the impact that Future Combat Systems would have on the Army's total unmanned systems programs.
MOSCOW - Russia's aviation and space agency, Rosaviakosmos, needs funding to complete Khrunichev Center's research module for the International Space Station, an agency official said last week. Cash flow problems have delayed work on the module, a problem made worse by the need to support the station while NASA's shuttle fleet remains grounded, said Alexander Kuznetsov, Rosaviakosmos' deputy general director.
The joint investigation by DOD and the Air Force into alleged misconduct by Boeing during the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) competition has resulted in a criminal indictment against two former Boeing managers, DOD announced July 18. Kenneth Branch, 64, and William Erskine, 43, have been charged with conspiracy to conceal and possess trade secrets by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, for the misuse of proprietary Lockheed Martin documents during bidding for Air Force EELV launch contracts.
Two weeks before bids are due to the U.S. Air Force, Boeing performed its "most complete test" yet in the competition to win the Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) competition, the company announced July 18. An F-15E dropped the 250-pound warhead, one of the Air Force's top munition development priorities, at the Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., test range in a successful flight, Boeing said.
MIG REVIEW: The crash of yet another Indian MiG-21 fighter has led the Indian defense ministry to begin reassessing the airworthiness of its MiG fleet. The July 15 crash, which killed the crew, has cast in doubt earlier military statements that the MiG-21 would remain a mainstay of India's air force (DAILY, June 27). The air force has lost six fighters in the last seven months to crashes, three of which were MiG-21s.
EGYPT REQUESTS: Egypt has asked to buy two C-130 Hercules-based airborne electronic intelligence (ELINT) systems for about $60 million and 414 AIM-9M-1/2 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and related equipment for about $50 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said July 17. The ELINT systems would give Egypt's air force the ability to build, maintain and update threat radar data, DSCA said in a notification to Congress. Lockheed Martin ISR Systems, Plano Microwave Inc. and Mission Research Corp. would be the principal contractors for that sale.
Industry teams led by General Dynamics, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin will submit preliminary designs for the Littoral Combat Ship. The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) made the announcement after the close of trading on July 17. Six industry teams competed for the design contracts, which were worth $9-10 million. Other teams were led by Northrop Grumman, Textron Systems and Titan Corp.
AGILE COMMUNICATIONS: Plans for the Force 21 Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force Tracking system include developing mobile and mounted versions that can be operated regardless of the communications system used, according to Army and contractor officials. The system currently is designed to work with certain digital radio and satellite systems.
SURFACE COMMUNICATIONS: Defense agencies around the world will spend an estimated $11 billion over the next decade to buy and upgrade some 57 surface communications systems, says Greg Giaquinto, research analyst with Forecast International/DMS. In a report entitled "The Market for Surface-based Communications Systems," Giaquinto says software applications are supplanting antennas and radio sets as the driving force of that market.
VIPER DEPLOYMENT: The U.S. Army is considering deploying the Viper Strike weapon system with its Hunter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as soon as possible, according to John Sundberg, deputy project manager at the Army's UAV Systems Project Office. Viper is a modified Brilliant Anti-armor (BAT) submunition featuring a semi-active laser seeker. "You laze a target like you do for ... a guided missile like a Hellfire, drop the BAT, and the BAT will go right to that spot," Sundberg says.
The Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) has validated a recent claim by the F/A-22 Raptor's contractor that the program's avionics stability record is greatly improving, a Pentagon memo released July 18 says. The board, now headed by Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of acquisition, technology and logistics, plans to review the program again in September before the F/A-22 enters initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E).
Congressional proposals to transfer the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) from the Army to the Missile Defense Agency would "significantly impact the technical performance, schedule and cost of both programs," the Defense Department is warning lawmakers. DOD recently transferred both anti-missile, anti-aircraft programs from MDA to the Army on the grounds that they are mature enough to be handled by the service that will operate them. But lawmakers disagree.
July 21 - 24 -- National Defense Industrial Association, National Experimentation, Testing, Training, and Technology (NET3) Conference & Exhibition, Rosen Centre Hotel, Orlando, Fla. For more information call Phyllis Edmonson at (703) 247-2588, fax (703) 522-1885, or go to www.ndia.org.
