COMPETING RESOLUTIONS: House members expect to go to conference with the Senate as early as Tuesday on their competing versions of the fiscal 2005 budget resolution. They could complete the conference and vote on the non-binding resolution, which is aimed at guiding spending policy, by the end of the week. The Department of Defense has requested $401.7 billion for FY '05. The Senate Budget Committee trimmed $7 billion from its version of the resolution but the House committee did not agree, saying the defense request should not be cut.
RESPONSIVE LAUNCH: The U.S. Air Force has narrowed the field to nine competing contractors in its effort to develop an operationally responsive small launch vehicle, according to Air Force Undersecretary for Space Peter Teets. The new launch vehicle is being designed to launch 1,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit for less than $10 million, "and do it in a matter of days and hours, not months, weeks, or years," Teets says.
S&T: The U.S. Department of Defense increased the amount for hypersonics research in the fiscal 2005 budget request primarily to support the Single Engine Demonstration (SED), says Ronald Sega, director of defense research and engineering. The SED will integrate the Air Force's Hypersonic Technology (HyTech) engine with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency air vehicle technology (DAILY, March 22).
NEW DELHI - Russia has assured India that work on the first of three upgraded Ilyushin Il-38 anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft scheduled for delivery to the Indian navy will be completed within six months. Work will begin on the aircraft in the next two months, a navy official said. The upgrades include the installation of Ilyushin Design Bureau's new Sea Dragon mission system. The remaining two aircraft will be completed next year.
Sikorsky is laying off approximately 100 employees who had been working on the Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program, the company announced March 25. About 700 Sikorsky employees were working on Comanche before the Army's cancellation of the program last month (DAILY, Feb. 24). Two hundred of those employees already have been reassigned to other efforts within the company, according to Sikorsky President Steve Finger.
Funding basic research and science and technology is important to enable the development of future military capabilities, Department of Defense science and technology (S&T) officials said March 25 at a House hearing. The fiscal 2005 budget request for basic research is $1.3 billion. The DOD request for science and technology (S&T) in fiscal 2005 is $10.6 billion, an increase of about 1.5 percent increase over the fiscal 2004 budget request, said Ronald Sega, director of DOD Defense Research and Engineering.
The U.S. Air Force does not plan to make many of the billions of dollars in improvements to the F/A-22 Raptor that the General Accounting Office recently suggested were planned to enhance the Lockheed Martin aircraft's ability to attack ground targets, according to two service officials.
Over the next 10 years, the Eurofighter team is expected to surpass U.S. companies in sales of "fighter/attack/jet trainer aircraft," says a recently released market analysis by a defense research group, Forecast International (FI). Lockheed Martin will lead the field in terms of unit production, but the analysis sees the Eurofighter team overtaking the U.S. company in value of production before the end of the forecast period. This projection assumes the multinational Typhoon requirement is not cut back.
A team of defense experts should review tactical air funding requirements over the next two decades to try to prevent continued budget shortfalls, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said March 25.
The U.S. Air Force is negotiating with Boeing to lay the legal groundwork necessary to lift the sanctions levied against the company for ethical misconduct, according to Peter Teets, Air Force undersecretary for space.
DENVER, Colo. - Industry is sorting out how to handle the architectures that will be key to interoperabilty in network-centric warfare - whether they should be owned by industry or by the government, according to attendees at a conference here. One group says industry should own the architectures, another says they should be owned by the government.
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) announced March 25 that is has founded a Russian subsidiary that will promote cooperation with that country's aerospace industry. One of the goals of the new venture will be to increase the amount of subcontracting work performed by Russian companies for Airbus, according to EADS Russia President and CEO Vadim Vlasov.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee's readiness subcommittee asked whether a round of base closures in 2005 is justified, a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld certified to Congress that a new round of military base closures could save billions by 2011. "Ultimately, we must be able to answer the question: Is 2005 the right time for another round of base closures? Should Congress consider delaying or even canceling the next BRAC round?" Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) asked in his opening statement.
J-UCAS DROP: As expected, Boeing's X-45 Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems X-45A technology demonstrator has dropped a 250-pound inert Small Diameter Bomb. The vehicle released an unguided SDB while flying at 35,000 feet over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The drop of a guided munition is expected next month (DAILY, March 22).
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Czech aircraft producer Aero Vodochody is to pay the Czech ministry of defense almost $28 million in penalties for the late delivery of L-159 fighters to the Czech air force. Defense spokesman Ladislav Sticha told The DAILY March 22 that the fines were agreed upon after an arbitration hearing. The air force received the last batch of 72 ordered aircraft last fall, at least 18 months after the original deadline set in a contract signed in 1997.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - U.S. Army aviation will need more spare parts, diagnostic equipment and other tools to sustain the high readiness rates it will need to have in future years, a service official said March 25.
A Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture and the U.S. Army will work out a design review and testing schedule for the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS) over the next few months, according to representatives of the industry team. The two companies announced March 22 that their NetFires Limited Liability Co. has been awarded a $1.1 billion contract to develop NLOS-LS, formerly known as NetFires (DAILY, March 23).
A radar scatterometer that studies wind movements over oceans is again sending data, three years after the ERS-2 satellite carrying it began experiencing problems with its stabilizing gyros, the European Space Agency said.
A quote in the Feb. 27 Aerospace Daily article headlined "Industrial base decline is cause for concern" was incorrectly attributed. It should have been attributed to Rear Adm. Rand Fisher, director of naval space technology programs.
The U.S. Navy's decision to delay the prime contract award in the VXX presidential helicopter program could threaten the jobs of former Comanche employees that Sikorsky had hoped to reassign to the VXX, according to the company. The Navy announced March 23 that it is delaying the contract award, originally expected in the spring, to allow for more risk reduction work (DAILY, March 23).
It is important for the U.S. Department of Defense to continue to invest in non-nuclear strategic defense capabilities, said witnesses at a March 24 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee. DOD needs to enhance its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to find hidden targets, which could be camouflaged or protected by robust air defenses, said Navy Adm. James Ellis, commander, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM).
The start of a key testing phase for the F/A-22 Raptor was delayed about a month to allow more time for software testing, maintenance planning and training, an Air Force official told a Senate panel March 24. Separately, the Air Force announced it has reached a tentative deal with Lockheed Martin for the purchase of another batch of F/A-22s.
