AGREEMENT: Honeywell has signed a strategic supplier agreement with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. to establish a long-term business relationship that will be more efficient and reduce costs, Honeywell said. The companies will coordinate technology and best business practices on Lockheed Martin aircraft programs such as the C-130, F-16, F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, according to Honeywell.
FAA HEAD: The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing Sept. 3 on President Bush's nomination of Marion Blakey to be FAA administrator. Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who chairs the panel's aviation subcommittee, will conduct the hearing.
DELIVERY: The Boeing Co. delivered the 90th C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, the company said Aug. 30. The aircraft was delivered at a ceremony near the C-17 assembly plant in Long Beach, Calif. The Air Force recently signed a $9.7 billion contract with Boeing to produce 60 additional C-17s (DAILY, Aug. 16), extending Long Beach production through 2008.
NOT BUYING ENOUGH: E.C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, says the rising cost of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle will be offset by increasing the production rate. "It's expensive because we're not buying very many of them," he says. The Pentagon needs to increase the production rate to get the cost down, he says, echoing the argument made by Northrop Grumman, which produces the high-flying reconnaissance UAV for the Air Force.
Sept. 5 -- U.S. Naval Institute presents the Marine Corps Association and Naval Institute Forum 2002 - Transformation: Time to Walk the Talk? For more information contact Carolyn Schwenk at (410) 295-1058. Sept. 5 - 6 -- Euroconsult presents World Summit for Satellite Financing. Hotel Inter-Continental, Paris. For more information visit www.euroconsult.com or call +33 1 49 23 75 30.
PAYLOAD CONTRACT: NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., has awarded Boeing Space Operations Co. of Titusville, Fla., its Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services (CAPPS) contract, a follow-on to payload work Boeing has performed since 1987. The contract has a four-year basic period of performance worth $332 million, and includes two three-year options that could boost its total value to $810 million, according to NASA.
Most space analysts see no clear frontrunner in the competition between Lockheed Martin and TRW to build NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), although some say they think Lockheed Martin may have more to lose. The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, NGST is scheduled to begin fabrication in early 2005 and launch in 2010, at an estimated cost of half a billion dollars. The near-infrared telescope is designed to detect the first bright astronomical objects to appear after the Big Bang (DAILY, Aug. 20).
GEN AFTER NEXT: The space-based observatory to be launched after the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) could be similar in configuration but pushed more into the far-infrared wavelengths, according to NGST Project Manager Bernard Seery. Although no decisions have been made, "there definitely is a small group talking about what comes next," Seery says. "There are a couple of concepts floating around - one is called SAFIR [Single Aperture Far Infrared], and the other is called FAIR [Filled Aperture Infrared].
Raytheon Co. has realigned its government and defense business structure to form seven new businesses, the company announced Aug. 30. The businesses were formed by combining units of the former Electronic Systems and Command, Control, Communication and Information Systems, Raytheon said. The new businesses are: * Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), which will provide air and missile defense and naval and maritime warfighting systems; * Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS);
MIXED MISSIONS: Financially troubled Spacehab Inc. could see a sharp upturn in business if NASA decides to pursue more missions to the International Space Station that include research along with station logistical support, says Shelley Harrison, company chairman and CEO. "In recent meetings that we've had with NASA, we're getting more and more confident that we're becoming part of the main line of commitment for missions to the station," he says.
BREAKING NEW GROUND: The Defense Department's new Biological Defense Homeland Security Initiative, announced last week, marks a new direction for the department, says senior DOD analyst Paul Bergeron. "A lot of [research in defending civilian populations from chemical and biological attack] is not the kind of work we've been doing in the Defense Department," says Bergeron, who works in the Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
Funding decisions for missile defense, Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transports are among the issues Congress will face when it returns from its August recess. Lawmakers have several aerospace-related bills to finish, including the fiscal 2003 defense authorization and appropriations bills, the FY '03 intelligence authorization bill and the FY '03 VA-HUD-NASA appropriations bill.
The Army has picked two companies for initial work on Objective Force Warrior (OFW), a program to make the individual soldier overwhelmingly effective on future battlefields. General Dynamics' Eagle Enterprise Inc. of Westminster, Md., and Exponent Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., were chosen for the concept development phase of OFW, intended to give the soldier of 2010 dramatic improvements in lethality, survivability and agility. The two companies were chosen over Raytheon Co.'s Tactical Systems business unit.
Three months after its return to flight, one V-22 aircraft is undergoing extensive line clearance testing in preparation for September flight testing, while a second aircraft is set to join the test program. "To date the MV-22 aircraft has logged nearly 35 hours and 15 flights since returning to flight at Patuxent River, Md., on May 29," Gidge Dady, a spokeswoman for the program, wrote in response to written questions.
EXPORTS TO CHINA: Beijing's Aug. 25 announcement of new, and allegedly tougher, regulations on missile exports came as welcome news in Washington, but U.S. officials say there are no plans to renew licensing of satellite exports to China. "This is potentially an important step," Richard Boucher, the chief spokesman for the State Department, says about China's announcement.
VECTORING UCAV-N: The Navy is considering installing thrust vectoring into future versions of the Naval unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV-N), according to VECTOR Program Manager Jennifer Young. Using thrust vectoring to perform extremely short takeoff and landings (ESTOL), future naval aircraft could land on carriers at slower speeds and wouldn't have to dump as many unexpended munitions before landing, according to the Navy. "Some of the UCAV-N people ...
The Navy wants to more than double its annual spending on aircraft purchases by fiscal 2009 but cut its planned buys of F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft for the next few years, according to a document obtained by The DAILY. An Aug. 22 draft of the Navy's FY '04 budget proposal calls for spending $17.2 billion in FY '09 to buy new and remanufactured aircraft, up from $8.2 billion in the FY '03 budget request, which Congress is now considering. The number of aircraft procured would rise from 83 in FY '03 to 273 in FY '09.
NEW DELHI - Indian officials are disputing statements from Rosoboronexport, the Russian arms export agency, that they have bought substandard spares for the Indian air force's fleet of MiG-21 aircraft, which could be a factor in the aircraft's high accident rate in India. Rosoboronexport Director General Andrei Belyaninov said in Moscow Aug. 27 that India has been buying numerous secondhand MiG spares and equipment from the former Soviet republics, parts he said are passed off as new.
After Northrop Grumman's decision to withdraw a protest it launched earlier this year, the Air Force is set to move ahead with a contract to TRW Inc. for management and sustainment services to the Air Force Weather Agency. The contract, potentially worth $119 million, is set to kick off in September, according to TRW. "We are just about to start performing on the contract, hopefully next week," Al Ronn, TRW's program manager, told The DAILY Aug. 29.
The X-31A thrust-vectoring aircraft program will provide crucial data for the Navy in its assessment of whether extremely short takeoff and landing (ESTOL) will be feasible on aircraft carriers, according to X-31 A VECTOR Program Manager Jennifer Young. Using thrust vectoring to allow ESTOL, future aircraft could land on carriers at significantly slower speeds, lessening fatigue on their airframes and landing gear.
NASA's acceptance of 23-year old pop star Lance Bass for training in Houston does not represent a change in policy regarding space tourism and commercialization, according to Chief Astronaut Charles Precourt. Bass is tentatively scheduled to occupy the third seat on the Soyuz 5 taxi mission when it blasts off to the International Space Station (ISS) Oct. 28, along with Commander Sergei Zalyotin and Flight Engineer Frank DeWinne. The purpose of the flight is to deliver a fresh Soyuz to the station to serve as an emergency return vehicle.
COUNTERMEASURES SALE: BAE Systems North America completed the sale of its expendable defensive countermeasures business to Esterline Technologies for $67.5 million in cash, the company said Aug. 29. The company said it sold the chaff and flare business because it is focusing on systems integration, not providing components.
