The Latest Word On Trends And Developments In Aerospace And Defense
SAC-D Shuffle. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) turns down the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee (SAC-D), a spot Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) could take. Durbin’s office has not responded to queries, but he appears to be next in line for the gavel of the powerful Pentagon budget-setting panel. Leahy holds the most seniority on the subcommittee, following the death last month of former SAC-D Chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). The Vermont senator, though, says in a Jan. 9 statement he will remain chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s state and foreign operations subcommittee. He notes he will be the most- senior member of the full committee and will “play an even more active role in the full scope of the committee’s work.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) falls in line after Leahy on the SAC-D, but his office says he will stay as chairman of the labor subcommittee. Durbin follows Harkin in seniority, and after him is Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the new chairman of the full committee.
Outlays Away. Pentagon investment outlays, for procurement and research contracts, fall 13 percent from December 2011 to December 2012, the Treasury Department reports Jan. 11. That’s a drop from $18.1 billion to $15.8 billion. Byron Callan, director of Capital Alpha Partners LLC in Washington, says in a note to investors that the new data does not support the assertion that the Pentagon rushed to spend funds before the so-called fiscal cliff of year-end budget quandaries. Yet he notes “we have seen other commentary that contract awards were healthy in Dec.” According to Callan, for the Army the investment outlays fell from $4.4 billion in the end of 2012 to $3.1 billion last month. The Navy’s figure went down from $5.9 billion to $5.2 billion, and the Air Force’s dipped from $5.3 billion to $5.2 billion. And the defense-wide outlays for such spending dropped from $2.5 billion to $2.2 billion between the two Decembers.
Debt Dance. Senate Democrats call on President Barack Obama to act “without congressional approval” to raise the nation’s debt limit. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Durbin, and Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) say in a Jan. 11 letter to Obama that they fear Republicans will refuse to raise the debt ceiling or move “unilaterally to pass a debt limit extension only as part of unbalanced or unreasonable legislation.” They tell the president they “believe you must be willing to take any lawful steps to ensure that America does not break its promises and trigger a global economic crisis–without congressional approval, if necessary.” They say they support Obama’s “view that an extension of the debt limit is not something for which Democrats should have to negotiate.” The Senate Democratic leaders stand by their support for a plan to cut the federal deficit that is “balanced between smart cuts and revenues from the wealthiest Americans.” They slam Republicans for “threatening to bring on an economic catastrophe unless Democrats make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”
Rockefeller Out. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) announces on Jan. 11 he will not run for reelection next year. He chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the Coast Guard and NASA, and has been an active participant in the battle to pass cybersecuirty legislation on Capitol Hill. He co-sponsored the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, the unsuccessful bill crafted by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and retired Connecticut Independent senator Joseph Lieberman, which was controversial because it would have created voluntary cybersecurity guidelines for companies to follow. Rockefeller says during his remaining time in the Senate he will continue to work on “exposing consumer abuses and government waste and putting a stop to them.” He has been a supporter of capping defense contractors’ salaries.
Hewson Trimming. Lockheed Martin last week consolidates some of its corporate support functions, a move the company says “is expected to reduce costs and will encourage closer collaboration across the corporate functions in support of our business strategy.” The consolidation coincides with the ascension of Marillyn Hewson as the company’s new president and CEO. Politico reported that the consolidation will result in about 50 jobs being cut.
TSA Seeks Private Screeners. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to solicit bids for companies to perform screening operations at two airports, one of which currently uses federal screeners. Orlando-Sanford International Airport in Florida was approved last year for entry into the privatized screener program, called the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). The airport currently relies on TSA Officers to screen passengers and their bags. The second airport, San Francisco International, currently uses screeners provided by Covenant Aviation Security under the SPP program.
…Sacramento Opts to Stay In. The Sacramento, Calif., county government last January voted to allow the city’s airport, Sacramento International, to opt out of using federal screeners in favor of private security screeners under the SPP program. TSA approved that request last summer. While the agency’s pre-solicitation last week for SPP contracts includes the Sacramento airport, the county government has decided to stick with the TSA screeners following a nearly year-long lobbying effort by the American Federation of Government Employees asking county leaders to rescind their previous vote.
ATK Weather Study. The Air Force awards ATK a contract worth an unspecified amount to study Network-Centric Small Satellites as an element of the service’s Space and Missile Command’s Weather Satellite Follow-On Activities program, according to a Jan. 7 company statement. Air Force spokeswoman Carla Rose-Pryor says the contract value is $5.9 million. The study provides comprehensive insight into the capabilities and characteristics of a 21st century weather data service that can systematically augment the legacy Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). It focuses on two aspects of such a mission system: net-centric architectures and small, agile and cost-effective heritage spacecraft buses that can be used to support a variety of future weather payloads.
Cross Match SDK. Cross Match Technologies releases two new versions of its Mobile Essentials SDK that integrates its Verifier Mw wireless handheld fingerprint scanner with Android and Blackberry smartphones, according to a company statement. Designed for single-handed use by an officer, the Verifier Mw is the first FBI-certified FAP 30 mobile fingerprint scanner on the market. The company’s Verifier line of fingerprint scanners includes the Verifier Mw, which is suited for mobile Rapid ID implementations. The new versions of the SDK provide agencies utilizing cellular phone-based Rapid ID and field identification applications the ability to leverage the Verifier Mw’s capabilities. A company spokesman says Cross Match focused on Android and Blackberry, and not iPhone, capabilities because “among law enforcement, the use of these devices in the field was much greater than the iPhone.”
GeoEye Stereo Imagery. GeoEye receives an order worth six-figures from India for stereo imagery from the high-resolution GeoEye-1 satellite to support development of India’s freight railway corridor, according to a company statement. GeoEye says this is the first sale of its stereo imagery products, which the company describes as three-dimensional viewing and feature recognition for a number of engineering applications, including three-dimensional feature extraction. India will receive GeoEye-1’s 50-centemeter stereo imagery products, the highest resolution satellite imagery commercially available worldwide. RITES, an India governmental enterprise, made the purchase for the planning, design and alignment of two high-speed transportation corridors.
KC-46A Basing Candidates. The Air Force finalizes candidates to host the KC-46A next-generation aerial refueling tanker, according to a service statement. Altus AFB, Okla.; Fairchild AFB, Wash.; Grand Forks AFB, N.D.; and McConnell AFB, Kan.; are the finalists for the first active duty-led KC-46A main operating base (MOB). Forbes Air Guard Station (AGS), Kan.; Joint-Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.; Pease AGS, N.H.; Pittsburgh International Airport AGS, Pa.; and Rickenbacker AGS, Ohio, are the candidate bases for the Air National Guard-led KC-46A MOB. The candidates for the formal training unit are Altus AFB, Okla.; and McConnell AFB, Kan. The KC-46A replaces the legacy KC-135 tanker.
USAF/Boeing F-15. The Air Force and Boeing reach a $1 million settlement in September over the in-flight breakup of an F-15C in 2007, according to the Defense Department Inspector General’s April 1-Sept. 30, 2012, semi-annual report to Congress released Dec. 10. The settlement stems from allegations Boeing supplied improperly sized “longeron,” or a thin strip of material to which the skin of an aircraft is fastened, causing the in-flight breakup of an F-15C. The pilot was able to eject and sustained non-life threatening injuries, but the aircraft was completely destroyed. The settlement requires Boeing to provide the Air Force with $1 million worth of longerons delivered under a no-cost purchase order. The development was first reported by Bloomberg.
ECSS Lessons. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley assures taxpayers Friday the service learned lessons from its Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) mishandling, where the Air Force canceled the logistics management program after failing to produce any significant military capability, despite spending $1 billion. Donley says the Air Force has other enterprise resource programs related to new budget systems and new personnel systems that are making progress and are coming along. “We simply lost confidence in the ability of that program and that contractor to deliver on what was intended,” Donley says. “It’s unfortunate we had to go a few years into it before doing that, but we expended time, resources and effort to adjust the program to see if it would be recoverable…That did not work.” CSC was ECSS contractor. ECSS was an effort to globally view, standardize and manage logistics resources to help close process gaps and use enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to more efficiently manage logistics like end items, materiel and people.
EURO HAWK. Partners Northrop Grumman and EADS Deutschland subsidiary Cassidian carried out the first full system test flight Friday of EURO HAWK, which is based on the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. Cassidian provided the signals intelligence sensor package on the high flying, long endurance aircraft designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) mission. The EURO HAWK demonstrator aircraft will undergo several more flights for evaluation before for the German Defense Ministry decides whether to purchase four operational aircraft, Northrop Grumman spokeswoman Cyndi Wegerbauer says. The decision could take place later this year. The EURO HAWK flight took place out of Manching Air Base in southern Germany and lasted six hours.