COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A study of payloads to be completed in late April or early May will feed into an analysis of alternatives of operationally responsive spacelift, said Col. Pamela L. Stewart, who is directing the spacelift study for Air Force Space Command. Payloads that can begin working quickly once in orbit are just as important as new rockets that can be launched faster, Stewart said March 27 in a telephone press conference from Peterson Air Force Base here.
MUOS TEAM: Boeing will join the Lockheed Martin-General Dynamics team competing for the U.S. Navy's Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), the company said March 31. MUOS is a next-generation satellite system intended to replace the Navy's UHF Follow-On fleet. The Navy is scheduled to select a final design for MUOS in 2004.
In mid-April, the Global Positioning System (GPS) program office will provide Peter Teets, the Air Force undersecretary for space, a package of options for accelerating the GPS III program, according to GPS Program Manager Col. Wesley Ballenger. To help fund other priorities, the Air Force decided earlier this year to delay the award of the GPS III prime contract and cut off all funding in FY '04, in anticipation of quickly ramping up the program later for a scheduled 2012 first launch.
CPI Aerostructures, a maker of aerostructure components for the C-5A Galaxy, T-38 Talon and E-3 Sentry aircraft, said 2002 revenues rose nearly 37 percent over 2001 partly because of higher contract awards. Revenue for the year totaled nearly $24 million, compared with about $15 million in 2001. Net income for 2002, which included an $800,000 tax benefit, totaled $4.4 million, compared with a loss of $11.6 million in 2001. The gains partly were due to the closure of the company's Kolar machining business.
The House Financial Services Committee approved a four-year reauthorization of the Defense Production Act (DPA) on March 26, six days after the committee's technology subcommittee took similar action (DAILY, March 25). The DPA authorizes financial incentives and other tools to ensure U.S. industry produces adequate supplies for the military. The Senate Banking Committee is expected to begin considering DPA reauthorization legislation sometime after the April 14-25 congressional recess (DAILY, March 26).
NEW DELHI - Israel and Russia have resolved a dispute over payments for upgrading Russian aircraft that India wants to use for airborne early warning (AEW), sources here said. Israel has agreed to pay royalties to Russia to upgrade Indian Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft with Israel's Phalcon radar. India plans to buy two or three of the radars.
The Army could use more blue force tracking devices to improve the service's ability to keep track of friendly forces on the battlefield, according to an Army general.
LONDON - Britain's Ministry of Defence (MOD) will gain a new chief for its Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) on May 1, when Vice Adm. Sir Peter Spencer of the Royal Navy takes over from long-serving Sir Robert Walmsley, also a former Vice Adm., who is retiring. Spencer will become chief executive as well as leader of the DPA, according to a March 28 announcement.
AWARD: The Missile Defense Agency announced late March 31 it has awarded concept design contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for the kinetic energy interceptor (KEI) program, which seeks to develop a land- and sea-based capability to shoot down ballistic missiles in their boost phase. Each contract is worth $10 million and will last for eight months. The selection of a single team to be the prime contractor is expected in early 2004. Lockheed Martin's team includes Boeing Co., while Northrop Grumman is paired with Raytheon Co.
Several technologies envisioned for deployment with the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program were tested successfully in a recent "simulated demonstrations" at Fort Knox, Ky., according to company officials involved with the program. Called Capstone, the simulation was conducted by nearly 50 soldiers from across the Army's command structure.
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee is proposing to accelerate funding for NASA efforts to develop technology aimed at improving civilian aviation security and safety.
A new research project led by the U.S. Air Force seeks to develop an integrated solution to the cockpit problem of spatial disorientation, cited as the leading cause of serious accidents for both military and general aviation pilots.
AGING TANKERS: KC-135 tankers rank among the U.S. Air Force's oldest platforms, but aircrews in the Iraqi theater have been astonished by how the airframes are holding up despite a hectic operational pace. "They seem to fly better when they're flown a lot," says Staff Sgt. Matthew York, a KC-135 boom operator for the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing based in the region. "Whatever bugs they have seem to work themselves out." But the grueling operational pace and the exposure to highly corrosive sand in the region are expected to exacerbate the "aging aircraft" problem.
SUPPLEMENTAL ACTION: Congress seems to be on track for speedy approval of the Bush Administration's request for a $75 billion supplemental appropriations bill, including $3.7 billion for munitions (DAILY, March 26). The House Appropriations Committee plans to vote on the legislation April 1, just a week after lawmakers received the Administration's proposal. The Senate Appropriations Committee tentatively is scheduled to consider the request April 1.
NATO EXPANSION: Seven former Warsaw Pact nations seeking to join NATO are staunch "Atlanticists" and are poised to make a small but strategically useful contributions to the alliance, says Douglas J. Feith, the Defense Department's undersecretary of defense for policy. NATO has invited Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to join the alliance. The organization expects each to offer a niche military capability, particularly in airlift, chemical and biological detection and human intelligence, Feith says.
ESTOL IN APRIL: The X-31A flight test program expects to conduct the first automated, thrust-vectored extremely short takeoff and landing (ESTOL) maneuver on a real runway by the end of April, according to Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). On March 22 the program completed the final flight of its "up-and-away" test phase, which was devoted to conducting ESTOL landings on a simulated runway at 5,000 feet altitude (DAILY, Nov. 21, 2002).
Congress should consider requiring the Bush Administration to put together a long-term plan for the acquisition of unmanned aerial vehicles by non-military agencies, according to Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). The Defense Department recently released its own congressionally mandated roadmap on UAVs (DAILY, March 18), and Weldon said March 26 that a similar document for civilian UAVs may be useful. The DOD document is supposed to guide the military's development and use of UAVs and unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) for the next 25 years.
U.S. Navy minesweepers heading toward the Persian Gulf are running on engines developed by a niche Italian engine maker. The company, Isotta Fraschini, based in Bari, Italy, designs and manufactures non-magnetic diesel engines for minesweepers serving in navies around the world. Minesweeping ships need non-magnetic engines to avoid detonating magnetic influence mines. Magnetic influence mines detonate after sensing a change in the surrounding magnetic field caused by the iron in a passing ship's hull.
U.S. Air Force officials plan to open bidding in early August for a contract potentially worth $1 billion to overhaul the military's mission planning systems, but a critical software bug identified in early tests remains unresolved. Called the Joint Mission Planning System (JMPS), the contract includes fielding a baseline system by the end of fiscal 2004, plus software upgrades and maintenance work for up to 15 years, said Bill Nelson, director of the Mission Planning program office at the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass.
NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are working out the details of an agreement in which NIMA routinely will use its satellites to take pictures of the space shuttle in orbit without receiving a formal request from the aerospace agency. The new agreement is part of the fallout from NASA's decision not to ask NIMA to image the shuttle Columbia in orbit to look for signs of possible damage that may have resulted from a foam insulation impact shortly after launch on Jan. 16.
Three more people have been tapped to join a congressionally mandated commission charged with assessing the threat to satellites, aircraft and other systems from a high-altitude nuclear detonation. The appointees are: Air Force Gen. Richard Lawson (ret.), former deputy commander of U.S. European Command; Joan Woodard, executive vice president and deputy director of Sandia National Laboratories, and John Foster, former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Nearly a decade after the first C-17s entered service, the U.S. Air Force heavy airlifters have completed the first combat insertion of paratroopers in the aircraft program's history. A flight of 15 C-17s flying in formation inserted the 173rd Airborne Brigade, with nearly 1,000 paratroopers and their equipment, into the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq on the night of March 26, opening up a small second front on the ground, Air Force officials said.
