The U.S. Army was able to supply all fighting units during the Iraq war, although not before some units had reached the last of their food and ammunition supplies, senior Army officials said May 19. To avoid resupply problems in the future, the Army plans to speed the deployment of the Blue Force Tracking System, although the timelines still have to be determined, said Brig. Gen Jerome Johnson, director of plans, operations and readiness for the Army's Office of Logistics.
SHIPPED: Orbital Sciences Corp. has shipped the BSAT-2c communications satellite to the European space launch complex in Kourou, French Guiana, for a planned June launch, the company said. The satellite is the third the company has built for Japan's Broadcasting Satellite Systems Corp.
The U.S. Defense Department's top acquisition official will lead a 10-member expert panel focused on reorganizing the way the Pentagon buys weapons after he retires later this week.
Legislation intended to improve the safety of helicopter operations in the Gulf of Mexico has cleared the House Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee and is scheduled to be marked up by the full committee on May 21.
SATELLITE OFFICE: DigitalGlobe, the Longmont, Colo.-based provider of satellite imagery, is setting up an office in Washington, D.C., to handle legislative and executive branch matters. The office will be run by Dawn Sienicki, who has been executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Space Enterprise Council. Sienicki's replacement at the council has not been named.
The first issue of what became Aerospace Daily was published 40 years ago, on May 20, 1963. There have been many changes in defense and aerospace along the way, and we've covered them, big and small. I started working for The Daily in 1967 and I'm still at it, so I've seen these changes up close. I was editor from 1995 to 2001, and now live in Colorado Springs. I file several stories a week on defense and space for our Washington, D.C.-based publication.
NEW DELHI - Leading engine manufacturers, including General Electric Aircraft Engines of the U.S., Turbomeca of France and Rolls-Royce of the United Kingdom, are competing to supply engines for India's intermediate jet trainer, HJT-36. An HJT-36 prototpye tested by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) last month was equipped with Turbomeca's Larzac 04H20 engine.
A $92 million effort to produce a long-awaited smart fuze for the U.S. Air Force's penetrator weapons faces another delay after design and production problems foiled a recent series of qualification tests, The DAILY has learned. The FMU-159A/B Hard Target Smart Fuze (HTSF), designed by Alliant Techsystems, would be used to sense voids and layers of hardened and deeply buried targets, allowing a penetrator warhead to detonate at a programmed point, such as a specific floor in an underground bunker.
The U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plan to award 23 contracts by winter for the building and testing of Future Combat Systems (FCS) prototypes. The awarding of the contracts, which are valued at $14.9 billion, is part of the systems development and demonstration (SDD) phase of the FCS program.
Pratt & Whitney will produce 240 F117-PW-100 engines for Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft under a $1.4 billion U.S. Air Force contract, the company said May 19. The contract covers engines, spares and support services to be delivered in 2004-2007. Each C-17 is powered by four F117-PW-100 engines, which are military variants of the company's PW2000 engine that powers the Boeing 757.
PRAGUE - Czech arms trader Pamco International has signed a contract to sell 17 Aero Vodochody-built L-39 Albatros jet trainers to Algeria, a company source said. The deal, first reported in the Czech weekly business magazine Euro, is said to be worth $20-$30 million. The L-39s, which have not been used, have been in storage for more than 10 years. Pamco would not comment on the deal, although an official at the company said a contract has been signed "but not yet realized."
The House Armed Services Committee has slashed the Pentagon's $126 million fiscal 2004 budget request for the Deployable Joint Command and Control System (DJC2) by almost three-quarters, saying it supports the program but believes it needs to slow down.
The U.S. Navy is considering shifting resources from the Atlantic Fleet to the Pacific Fleet to counter potential threats that may arise in Asia, according to a senior Navy officer. The plan is being reviewed by Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations (CNO) and other fleet command officers, Adm. Robert Natter, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, said May 16.
May 19 - 22 -- 2003 Global Demilitarization Symposium & Exhibition, John Ascuaga's Nugget, Sparks, Nev. Contact Tim Becker at (703) 247-2573, fax (703) 522-1885, email [email protected] or go to www.ndia.org. June 2 - 4 -- 3rd Annual National Symposium and Exhibition on Terrorism Preparedness & Response, "Enhancing the Capabilities of First Responders." Contact Simone L. Baldwin at (703) 247-2596, email [email protected] or go to www.ndia.org.
SUCCESSFUL REVIEW: Senior Army and industry officials are expected to announce this week that the Future Combat Systems program will move into the systems development and demonstration phase (SDD), albeit with additional oversight given the complexity of the program. The announcement will coincide with the release of the Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM), which specifies how the program will move forward. One likely stipulation is that the program should undergo a review by the Defense Authorization Board in November 2004 and each year thereafter.
U.S. Air Force officials are weighing a proposal from an industry source to elevate the status of the E-10A's command and control capability in Air Force criteria for evaluating offers by contractors, according to acquisition documents posted May 16. The Air Force's decision could be announced by the end of the month as part of its final version of a request for proposals on the Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2) contract, a key subsystem for the E-10A Multi-sensor Command and Control Aircraft (MC2A).
NETFIRES VENTURE: Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. have formed a limited liability company called NetFires to develop different portions of the Non-Line of Sight - Launch System, also called NetFires. The program consists of a Loitering Attack Missile (LAM), a Precision Attack Missile (PAM) and an autonomous Container Launch Unit.
MOSCOW - A failure in a descent control system instrument is the most likely reason for the off-target landing of a Soyuz capsule returning from the International Space Station May 3, according to an official of Soyuz-builder RSC Energia. Nikolai Zelenschikov, the first deputy general designer for the company, said RSC Energia has been studying the capsule since May 7 to understand what happened and try to keep it from happening on the next Soyuz return from the station.
Launching its most significant transformational effort to date, the National Guard Bureau is proposing a sweeping restructuring of its headquarters system, reducing 162 headquarters units to 54. The proposal, outlined May 16 by NGB chief Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, is not a finished product. Although Blum controls the NGB's annual budget, he acknowledged that he needs the cooperation of 54 adjutants general, who administer Guard forces in each state, three U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, to execute the proposal.
PRAGUE - India should be not put off from buying the Aero Vodochody-built L-159, despite a high number of breakdowns in the aircraft being introduced into the Czech air force, the Czech army's chief of staff told The DAILY. As of last week, only 17 of the 60 L-159s delivered to the Czech air force were capable of flying (DAILY, May 14). The aircraft are experiencing a defect every 3.68 flying hours, well below the contract agreement of one defect per 10 flying hours.
EXPOSURE: Exposure during the war in Iraq has had a huge positive impact on high-resolution commercial satellite imagery providers Digital Globe and Space Imaging, according Digital Globe President and CEO Herb Satterlee. Both companies regularly provided imagery to major television news outlets during Operation Iraqi Freedom. "I think Space Imaging and Digital Globe, for the first time, became widely recognized by the average American and probably the average news watcher around the planet," Satterlee says.
JOINT DECLARATION: After an interruption caused by the U.S.-led war against Iraq, governments on both sides of the Atlantic should return to defining roles for crisis management and defense structures, says a joint declaration signed last week by 18 former U.S. cabinet officials and lawmakers, including four former defense secretaries. The governments also should continue reforming the export control process on arms shipments, the declaration says. It proposes creating a set of allied policies that divide responsibilities between the European Union (EU) and the U.S.
The U.S. Navy's fleet of aging, heavily used EP-3 signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft soon may face a "crisis" because they are wearing out, according to a congressional panel. The Navy has just 12 EP-3s, which have been flying for an average of 29 years. Demand for the SIGINT aircraft always has been high and has intensified since the war on terrorism began in 2001.
