COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The new U.S. Strategic Command, officially established Oct. 1 at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., will be given responsibility for emerging missions, possibly including global strike with non-nuclear ballistic missiles, according to Rear Adm. James D. McArthur Jr.
The House of Representatives passed a bill Oct. 1 that would establish awards to encourage amateur astronomers to discover and track potentially dangerous asteroids in near-Earth orbits. The Charles "Pete" Conrad Astronomy Awards Act (H.R. 5303) authorizes NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to establish the awards program through a contract with the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
AWARD: Aviation Week & Space Technology has given its 2002 Quality Center Award to the team building the F/A-22 Raptor fighter for successfully executing the program within tight budget constraints, Lockheed Martin said Oct. 2.
LOS ANGELES - Lockheed Martin Corp. would have developed the F/A-22 Raptor differently had it known in previous years what it knows now about supplier management, a senior Lockheed program official said Oct. 2. Many of the lessons about supplier management the company learned over the past 11 years had to be learned the hard way, Bob Rearden, vice president and general manager of the F/A-22 program, told an audience at Aviation Week's Aerospace Expo conference here.
CONVERSATIONAL: I/NET INC. of Kalamazoo, Mich., will continue to develop its "conversational interface" technology under a Phase 2 contract from NASA, the company said. Conversational interface allows users to interact with computers by speaking naturally, according to the company. I/NET said the contract, awarded under the federal small business innovation research program, could generate up to $600,000 in revenue over the next two years.
Stung by a series of high-profile procurement setbacks, Australia's Ministry of Defense (MOD) is cleaning up its acquisition process and beefing up financial penalties for companies that fail to deliver, says the country's top military official.
The aerospace industry will benefit from provisions in the fiscal 2003 foreign relations authorization bill that President Bush has signed into law, a representative of the Aerospace Industries Association said Oct. 1. Christopher Lombardi, manager of international affairs at AIA, called the provisions "changes we've been advocating for a while."
Space Shuttle Atlantis is due to launch Oct. 2 between 1 and 5 p.m. CDT, according to NASA, marking the shuttle's return to flight after the entire fleet was grounded due to cracks in fuel flow lines. Those cracks have been repaired by welding (DAILY, Aug. 5) and Atlantis was found flightworthy after a recent review. Weather forecasts call for a 60 percent chance of favorable launch weather for the mission, which is to deliver the Boeing-built Starboard One (S1) truss to the International Space Station.
The Senate Armed Services Committee Oct. 1 approved the appointment of Navy Adm. James Ellis to remain head of U.S. Strategic Command after its merger with U.S. Space Command. The committee also approved the appointment of Lt. Gen. Michael Hagee as Marine Corps commandant and general; Marine Corps Gen. James Jones as commander of U.S. European Command; Charles Abell as deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness; and Navy Rear Adm. Thomas Hall (ret.) as assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs.
MOSCOW - RSC Energia, Russia's prime contractor for its International Space Station work, is continuing to say its financial situation is so dire that the station's crew should be removed until Energia can regain its fiscal footing and continue building Soyuz crew return vehicles. Echoing statements made last week, RSC Energia head Yuri Semyonov said Oct. 1 that his company is $32 million in debt, precluding it from getting further credit.
DELAY: Hurricane Lili has prompted NASA to bump the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from Oct. 2 to Oct. 3 at the earliest, the aerospace agency said. NASA managers will meet Oct. 2 to assess Lili's track and determine the best launch date. Atlantis will fly STS-112, the 15th shuttle mission to visit the International Space Station, and will carry the Boeing-built Starboard One truss segment (see story on Page 7).
Defense Department plans to possibly withhold payment on defense contracts to Boeing and General Dynamics as part of the long-running dispute over the A-12 Avenger aircraft are "yet another attempt to knuckle us into settlement submission," Boeing's top lawyer wrote in a letter to the Navy Sept. 30. "Boeing is not involved here and the government knows that," Douglas G. Bain, Boeing's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in a letter to Thomas F. Kranz, the acting general counsel for the Navy. A copy of the letter was provided to The DAILY.
The Pennsylvania Army National Guard is investigating an accident that occurred last week in which the swash plate on the aft rotor of one of its CH-47D Chinook helicopters failed during a ground test, according to Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM).
The Department of Defense has made some improvements in preparing U.S. military forces to face chemical and biological weapon attacks, but the General Accounting Office has "continuing concerns" about its progress in that area, a GAO official told members of Congress Oct. 1. DOD may face a shortage of chemical protective suits that will increase "dramatically" through 2007, Raymond J. Decker, director of defense capabilities and management for GAO, said in testimony prepared for the Government Reform Committee's subcommittee on national security.
HUNGARY REQUEST: Hungary has requested 160 AIM-9M-8/9 Sidewinder missiles and related equipment that could be worth up to $55 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified Congress Sept. 30. The prime contractor for the sale would be Raytheon Systems Corp. of Tucson, Ariz., DSCA said.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The biggest challenge facing U.S. Northern Command is coordination, according to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also said NORTHCOM, officially established here Oct. 1, can be a "driver" to help ensure a rapid flow of information.
MOSCOW - The Russian Satellite Communication Co. (RSCC), the country's satellite systems operator, plans to transition its national Culture TV channel to a digital broadcasting format. Culture TV programs will be broadcast to regional distribution centers using the Express-A1R satellite that became operational Aug. 15. RSCC said it plans to transition all state TV broadcasting to digital signals by around 2005, using improved Express-AM satellites scheduled to be launched before then.
IRIDIUM SATELLITE has signed up Satcom Direct as a service partner for its satellite communications, the company said. Satcom Direct plans to tailor Iridium's mobile satellite communications for the aviation, maritime, land-mobile and government users, the company said.
Lt. Gen. Michael Hagee, nominee for Marine Corps commandant, has told lawmakers his forces need more naval fire support for land attacks. "We currently have an acute shortage of naval fire support to meet the demands of forcible entry," Hagee wrote in response to a written question from the Senate Armed Services Committee, which held a hearing on his nomination Sept. 27.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - U.S. Northern Command, officially established here Oct. 1, will be successful if it can deter, prevent or defeat any attack on the United States, according to Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, the NORTHCOM commander. The plan echoes the pre-emptive approach laid out in President Bush's National Security Strategy, issued last month.
NASA has released the first set of data produced by its Mars Odyssey spacecraft, and will make it available to research scientists through a new online distribution system, the aerospace agency said Oct. 1. The information includes the first six weeks of mapping data, through the end of March, and observations made on the spacecraft's way to Mars, NASA said. New data will be released to the science community every three months. The Odyssey information is available at http://starbrite.jpl.nasa.gov/pds/.
