COLD WEATHER: As the winter season begins in Afghanistan, the U.S. military may soon have the opportunity to apply some of its cold weather training tactics. In addition to the impact of cold weather on soldiers, military officials have to consider how equipment will operate in cold climates and at high altitudes, military officials say. The military is very concerned about the affects of a wet and cold environment on weapons, says Lt. Col. Terry Lambert, commandant of the Army National Guard Mountain Warfare School.
A steering committee of the Defense Industry Initiative, a consortium of the largest U.S. defense contractors, recently affirmed the commitment of its member companies to abide by a code of business ethics guiding procurement and contracting practices.
NASA is partnering with engineers at Boeing and UCLA to help aircraft mimic a practice migratory birds have perfected over millions of years - flying in formation to reduce drag and conserve energy. Autonomous Formation Flight (AFF), if proven, could eventually enable fuel savings as high as $2 million per large commercial transport aircraft per year, according to AFF Project Manager Gerard Schkolnik of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.
C-130J-30 ROLLOUT: The first stretch version of the C-130J was recently delivered to Quonset, Rhode Island, according to Air Force officials, and two more stretch versions will be ready for delivery in December. Earlier this year, congressmen from Rhode Island secured approximately $9 million in coveted military construction funds to renovate the Air National Guard's hangar at Quonset Point in anticipation of receiving the new C-130Js. The stretch version - designated the C-130J-30 - is 15 feet longer than the standard C-130J, providing about one-third more cargo room.
SOLAR WIND: NASA's Genesis spacecraft is expected to begin its mission to collect samples of the solar wind by early next month, according to the aerospace agency. Genesis was to begin its five-loop "halo" orbit around the L1 solar libration point between the Earth and the sun on Nov. 16. It will collect samples of the solar wind, or ion particles ejected from the outer layer of the sun (DAILY, July 12). On Nov. 30, it will open its sample return capsule, and a few days later will open its inner canister, extend its collector arrays and begin collecting the ions.
OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND: One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's central goals is for Russia to become a member of NATO and be an active participant in shaping defense policy for Europe. That probably won't happen soon, says a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but there's plenty of opportunity for Russia, the U.S. and NATO countries to cooperate on specific military issues. "Talk of Russia joining NATO is at best, many years away," says Antony Blinken, senior fellow in the CSIS International Security Program.
Congress has approved a $27 million reduction in the Bush Administration's $289.5 million fiscal 2002 request for geostationary spacecraft and launching for the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
BOEING SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS' DIRECTV-4S, built for DIRECTV Inc., is scheduled for launch Nov. 26 on an Ariane 44LP rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. DIRECTV-4S is a Boeing 601HP satellite, the 61st Boeing 601 spacecraft to be launched. It will be stationed with other DIRECTV satellites at 101 degrees west longitude and is designed to provide the company's digital satellite television service with more than 300 channels of additional capacity.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says he is working closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget to ensure adequate funding for homeland security in the fiscal year 2003 budget and, if necessary, will ask for "early supplemental" funding even before the main budget bill is passed. "You will see this [FY 2003] budget reflect the work of the homeland security office," he said. His office will have "a multi-year budget that cuts across all agencies," he said.
NASA negotiated two modifications to the Space Flight Operations Contract with United Space Alliance, resolving issues from work already done and providing for tasks planned during 2002. The modifications add $189 million to the value of the SFOC contract, which provides for day-to-day shuttle operations. The first modification bundles several credits and costs incurred during fiscal 2001, most from maintenance work on the shuttle Columbia. The second modification enhances sustaining engineering work for the shuttle program in 2002.
ALCATEL SPACE will provide operations and maintenance services for French space agency CNES' control stations at its Aussaguel site near Toulouse, in southwest France. The contract covers 12 stations, including the 2-gigahertz station for the satellite tracking network and the stations for the Jason and Stentor satellites. Alcatel space has operated ground systems for CNES, the European Space Agency, Eumetsat, Arianespace and DLR, the German space agency, for the past 12 years.
HARRIS CORP. of Melbourne, Fla., is providing software to help scientists and engineers create the first high-resolution, image-based digital elevation models of Mars. The models, developed using images collected by the Mars Global Surveyor, will be used for detailed studies of surface features and to locate potential sites for future missions. The Harris software uses algorithms to process pairs of images and extract elevation data. The software is based on image processing technology the company developed for the U.S.
Lockheed Martin recently conducted a successful boost test vehicle (BTV-1) demonstration of technology related to the company's NetFires Loitering Attack Missile (LAM), the company announced Nov. 20. The test was the second in a series of increasingly difficult tests aimed at achieving a vertically launched family of canistered missiles for wide area search, automatic target recognition, networked/coordinated attack and precision strike, according to Lockheed Martin.
BOEING SATELLITE SYSTEMS will operate and control the Spaceway satellites it is building for Hughes Network Systems under a new agreement. Boeing will provide station keeping for Spaceway satellites from a company Space and Communications Services Operations Control Center in Houston. Two Spaceway teleport locations will be sited near Denver and Los Angeles. The Spaceway network is slated to begin North American operations in 2003 (DAILY, Sept. 26). The satellites will provide bandwidth-on-demand and will operate in the high-bandwidth, high-speed Ka-band.
UCAV SKILLS: While managing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) will probably not require pilot training per se, the task will draw on numerous other areas of expertise existing within the services, according to Boeing's Navy UCAV Program Manager Bill Buschelle (DAILY, Nov. 21). "Certainly it's a management function - management and oversight - [combined with] the ability to interject human judgment wherever it's appropriate to do so," says Buschelle.
HEAD UP: El-Op Electro-optics Industries will supply Lockheed Martin with head-up displays for Israeli Air Force F-16I aircraft, an order that could be worth more than $7 million. The company is a subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd. of Haifa, Israel.
India's senior nuclear scientist declared at a press conference that India possesses both fusion and fission nuclear bombs that are "ready for deployment." A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who recently left office as principal science adviser to the government, said at a press conference that "every weapon is made ... not for storing but for deployment." He said India's nuclear weapons are "well positioned and well placed."
NATO AWACS: NORAD's cooperation with NATO on the NATO AWACS now patrolling U.S. skies is being guided by standing agreements and procedures that are similar to those governing the cooperation between the U.S. and Canada on defense of North American airspace. The difference, says Col. Marke Gibson, NORAD's vice director of operations, is that "we don't have NATO officers here within the command." The five NATO planes are a "tremendous" help, Gibson says. "They're contributing.
AEHF JOB: Lockheed Martin and TRW, proceeding to the next phase of work on the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite program without former teammate Boeing (DAILY, Nov. 20), plan to receive funding as follows between now and fiscal year 2007, according to the Air Force: $502 million in FY '02; $769 million in FY '03; $552 million in FY '04; $487 million in FY '05; $269 million in FY '06, and $119 million in FY '07. The team's work on the System Development and Demonstration contract will begin "immediately," the Air Force says.
SGI has completed installation of a 1,024-processor SGI Origin 3800 supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and a 512-processor SGI Origin 3800 supercomputer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The computers will help NASA evaluate the effects of natural and human activities on the global climate. NASA will use the computers to portray the current climate and simulate future global warming scenarios, providing a firmer basis for policy decisions, according to SGI, of Mountain View, Calif.
Almost two months after the release of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and over a month into the current military campaign in Afghanistan, defense analysts and officials seem no closer to a consensus on the future of the military's B-2 bomber force than they were at the start of the Bush Administration.
ISS ACCOUNTING: NASA plans to tap reserve accounts to absorb a $75 million cut that Congress has approved for the Bush Administration's fiscal 2002 request for the International Space Station, according to agency spokeswoman Kirsten Larson. Using the rainy day funds will spare ISS but limit NASA's ability to handle unexpected problems that arise, Larson said.
A successful Nov. 20 test of the Air Force/Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) clears the way for the program to proceed to a decision on low rate initial production. In the test, at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., the stealthy cruise missile hit its target after release from an F-16 flying at 15,000 feet and .8 Mach, according to Terry Little of the Air Force's Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
The newly enacted aviation security act authorizes $50 million a year for research, development, testing and evaluation of various aviation security technologies, including "aircraft hardening materials." The funding, which is authorized from fiscal year 2002 to 2006, will be channeled through the Transportation Security Administration, a new agency that the law sets up within the Transportation Department. Congress will still have to pass an annual appropriation to provide the money.
NASA is preparing to launch two earth science satellites - the joint U.S./French oceanography satellite Jason-1, as well as the TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics) satellite - from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. aboard a Delta II rocket Dec. 7. Jason 1, which was designed as a follow-on to the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, will monitor world ocean circulation, study the interaction of the oceans with the atmosphere, improve climate predictions, and observe events like El Nino.
