PAC-3 TEST: Lockheed Martin's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile successfully destroyed an incoming ballistic missile in a March 4 test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M, the company said. Two PAC-3s were "ripple fired" against a missile simulating a Scud missile in the test.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Northrop Grumman is awaiting formal approval from the U.S. Army to produce 33 Viper Strike munitions for deployment to Iraq, according to a company official. "The Army's in the process right now of completing the operational needs statement" for the deployment, Northrop Grumman Viper Strike Director John Miller said at a March 4 briefing at the Association of the United States Army's winter symposium here. General Richard Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff, G-3, is expected to sign the statement "any day now," Miller said.
The U.S. Department of Defense is not doing enough to ensure private contractors hired to work on sensitive government projects are adequately protecting classified information, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a report released March 3. The report found that the Defense Security Service (DSS), the entity within DOD responsible for investigating security breaches, was not moving aggressively enough to investigate violations.
AEROSPACE PRODUCTS INTERNATIONAL, Memphis Paul J. Fanelli has joined the company as senior vice president and chief operating officer. ANALEX, Alexandria, Va. C. Thomas Faulders III, the chairman and CEO of LCC International Inc., has been elected to the board of directors and will serve on the audit committee. BAE SYSTEMS NORTH AMERICA, Rockville, Md. Paul W. "Whit" Cobb Jr. has been appointed vice president, deputy general counsel. BOEING, Chicago
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The teams led by Lockheed Martin and Boeing-Northrop Grumman that are competing to build the Joint Common Missile (JCM) are investing their own money on advance risk reduction work as they await a contractor downselect in late April, according to company officials. The JCM is to replace the Hellfire and Maverick missile and fly on multiple aircraft, including the AH-64 Apache and AH-1Z Super Cobra helicopters as well as the Navy and Marine Corps' F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. A team led by Raytheon also is competing to build the JCM.
MOSCOW - The Russian state commission on radio frequencies has simplified the procedure for using very small aperture terminal (VSAT) communications satellite ground stations. The new procedure eliminates a lot of the paperwork that potential VSAT users needed before working with Express or Yamal satellites. The clearance process for using two-kilowatt Ku-band VSAT terminals now will take about 20 days, instead of about 200. The change is for Express and Yamal networks only.
U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) is gearing up for its fourth multinational experimentation exercise (MNE), which will simulate stabilization operations in Afghanistan, according to the MNE director. The exercise could be held in July 2005 or in February or March 2006, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ed Whalen told The DAILY.
TANKER WORK: Boeing has selected Pratt & Whitney as the baseline engine source for its 767 Global Tanker Transport Aircraft Programs, the company said March 3. P&W's PW4062 engine will be the standard production engine for future domestic and international tanker programs, Boeing said.
To protect the shipbuilding industrial base, the U.S. Navy has decided to fine-tune its DD(X) program plans, Navy officials said March 3 at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The Navy is expected this week to send to Congress a detailed report on the surface combatant industrial base. One issue is easing the transition for the shipbuilding industrial base between the DDG fleet and the future DD(X) fleet, which includes filling in a gap in fiscal 2006 when the Navy is not scheduled to procure a major surface combatant.
Defeating enemies who may use newly developed U.S. warfare technology against American forces over the next decade is a top military concern, an Army research and development official told Senate lawmakers March 3. "We may have the greatest technology but the next day the bad guy learns how to use it against us," Brig. Gen. Charles A. Cartwright, deputy commanding general for systems-of-systems integration for the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command, told Senate Armed Services Committee members.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency hopes to launch as many as half a dozen satellites by 2012 to test a space-based Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) system, agency documents show. "By 2011-2012, our space-based test bed will have a thin constellation of three to six spacecraft on orbit," MDA wrote in a recently unveiled "justification" of its fiscal 2005 budget request.
The U.S. Air Force is ramping up its pursuit of a new long-range bomber, forming two offices to study the matter and accelerating the planned fielding of a next-generation system by as much as a dozen years.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Lockheed Martin's Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank (LOSAT) missile system will finish developmental testing at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., next week, to be followed by five weeks of Army testing and a low-rate initial production (LRIP) decision in June, according to a company official.
Aviation electronics maker Rockwell Collins predicts that its defense market will continue to grow, President and CEO Clay Jones said March 3 at the Bear Stearns Commercial Aerospace and Defense Conference in New York.
Boeing is predicting a $200 billion market for network-centric warfare (NCW) systems from 2003 through 2013, according to Roger Roberts, senior vice president at Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. The company arrived at that estimate by tallying DOD contract awards from the past few years as well as expected awards in programs such as the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), the Air Force's Transformational Communications MILSATCOM (TCM) effort, and the Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE), among others.
The U.S. Air Force has made a slight increase in the number of F/A-22 Raptors it plans to buy, reflecting cost savings identified last year, according to documents and a service spokeswoman. Documents recently prepared for Congress to explain the Bush Administration's fiscal 2005 budget request show that the "current program estimate supports procurement of 277" F/A-22s, up from the 276 figure the Air Force had previously presented as its purchase target.
NASA's new Office of Exploration Systems (Code T) will apply lessons learned from U.S. Defense Department acquisition programs to the development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and other space technologies, according to Rear Adm. Craig Steidle.
GOODRICH CORP. will supply a high-temperature, composite flaperon control surface to be tested on Boeing's X-37 reusable launch vehicle under a contract from NASA's Langley Research Center. The flaperon helps steer the vehicle, Goodrich said. The work is expected to be worth $1.4 million in revenue over the next two years.
