ABIS RFP Out For Now. The Army says that it has no plans in the “immediate term” to issue a Request for Proposals later this fiscal year for another upgrade to the Defense Department’s authoritative biometric database, the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS). The service is currently conducting a round of customer tests to check on fixes put in place over the past six months to ensure that previous upgrades to the ABIS system are working as expected. Problems surfaced last summer with the initial set of upgrades. The Army Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems and the DoD Biometrics Program Management office says that the Army leadership is conducting an analysis of alternatives that will result in adjustments to the previous acquisition schedules. The current version of ABIS is 1.0, which the Army had hoped to convert to the 1.2 version last summer, providing greater storage and search capabilities.
P-8 in Singapore. The U.S. Navy highlighted the P-8A Poseidon at the Singapore Airshow that was to wrap up over the weekend. The Boeing-built P8As are the Navy’s newest aircraft for maritime patrol and are replacing the Lockheed Martin P-3 Orions. Six of the Poseidons have been deployed with the Navy’s VP-16 War Eagles Squadron in Japan. The group decided to showcase the new aircraft at the annual airshow in Singapore. “We came to show the Navy’s commitment to regional partners and allies, and to highlight the Navy’s newest long-range anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft,” says Cmdr. Dan Papp, executive officer of VP-16. The P-8As are based on Boeing’ 737 commercial airframe.
LCS New Date. The keel-laying ceremony for the future Littoral Combat Ship USS Sioux City (LCS-11) that was supposed to have taken place this week was postponed to Wednesday. The ceremony was delayed because of poor weather. Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the Freedom variant of the ship class, will hold the ceremony at partner Marinette Marine’s shipyard in Marinette, Wis. The ship’s sponsor is Mary Winnefeld, the wife of the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. James Winnefeld.
Future Cyber Collaboration. The Cybersecurity Framework released by the Obama administration is intended to be a “living document” in order to adapt to lessons learned by users and new and improved standards and best practices for security information networks. The framework also identifies a number of areas for future collaboration based on stakeholder inputs the past year. “To be effective in addressing these areas, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) will work with stakeholders to identify primary challenges, solicit input to address those identified needs, and collaboratively develop and execute action plans for addressing them,” says a roadmap accompanying the framework.
…Specific Areas. Areas that will be the subject of future collaboration as part of the framework include authentication, automated indicator sharing, conformity assessment, cyber security workforce, data analytics, federal agency cyber security alignment, international impacts and alignment, supply chain risk management, and technical privacy standards. The nine-page roadmap cites a Verizon report in 2012 that shows 76 percent of network intrusions exploited weak or stolen credentials. The roadmap says that passwords can be augmented with other protections such as tokens and biometrics.
Grand Cyber Challenge. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will host a Proposer’s Day on Feb. 18 for its next Grand Cyber Challenge, which is essentially a cyber defense tournament in which top computer security experts test their skill in head-to-head “capture the flag” contests. In the final event, automated Cyber Reasoning Systems will compete against each other in real-time. The overall objective of the program is “to identify effective, integrated automation of cyber reasoning tasks.”
Lobbying For Support. Talks of the Navy considering decommissioning the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) instead of refueling it in 2016 sparked concern among industry, so the Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition sought out House Armed Services Committee vice chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) for help. In a Feb. 10 letter, the group wrote, “While recent media reports suggest that funding for the [RCOH] has been resolved, we remain concerned that funding may be reduced or eliminated in the future budgets. Considering your legislative priority to overhaul the defense acquisition process, we believe you share our concern that a disruption to the carrier maintenance program would create inefficiencies, increase cost in the maintenance of carriers and jeopardize an already fragile defense industrial base.” The president’s budget request, expected to be released March 4, will indicate the Navy’s most up-to-date plans for the carrier.
Dredging Away. African nations are heavily engaged with the Army Corps of Engineers, which had some $33 million worth of projects on the continent in 2012-2013, says Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, Chief of Engineers and Commanding General, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. For example, he says in a recent roundtable, Nigerian engineer force leaders are having dredging difficulties and those leaders visited the United States earlier this year. Working with the State Department, AFRICOM and Nigeria, the Corps brought Nigerian leaders on dredge boats working in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and visited other sites. One of the things they’re trying to do, Bostick says is to build within the Nigerian army a capability like the Corps of Engineers. Similarly Angola has been interested in such a capability.
…Living Spaces. Corps of Engineers research and development lab
s have worked with West Point to design a different kind of living hut, Bostick says. The Army has been building Barracks Huts, or B Huts, the same way since World War II. This new hut will be energy efficient. “One of our goals is to test it in Africa sometime this year,” Bostick says. The hut now is being tested in the United States. It’s easy to put up, he says, taking fewer than 10 people to erect the structure that a platoon to live in.
Saving Money. The U.K. National Audit Office says the cost of 10 of the MoD’s biggest equipment programs has fallen over the past year due to better financial management, preventing delays and cost hikes. The Major Projects Report 2013 says during 2012-13 there was an 88 percent reduction in overall delays compared to the year before and the only major project with a significant cost increase of more than $1 billion was for Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. And that rise was announced the year before. The report also notes a $43 million savings on the new Astute-class submarines. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond says there’s more work to be done, and he is “confident we can build upon the huge progress that has been made in the last 12 months to undo years of mismanagement and ensure we deliver equipment on time and on budget.”
Validating Performance And Reliability. The Army and Raytheon say they successfully fired 30 GPS-guided Excalibur Ib projectiles during an extensive First Article Test series at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. This test series validates performance and reliability of the Excalibur Ib production configuration, and moves the program toward full-rate production. “Excalibur gives the warfighter a pinpoint precision tool to eliminate enemy threats and is the only combat-proven 155mm precision-guided projectile in the world today,” says Lt. Col. Josh Walsh, Army Excalibur program manager. “This weapon continues to prove itself in testing but, more importantly, it continues to prove itself on the battlefield.” During the testing, gunners fired Excalibur Ib projectiles from the Paladin and M777 howitzers to various targets at ranges from 7 to 38 kilometers. Average miss distance for the 30 projectiles was 1.6 meters.
…And There’s More. Raytheon says it also funded a program to augment its combat-proven 155 mm GPS-guided projectile with a laser spot tracker, giving the weapon a dual-mode GPS/LST guidance capability. The company says it plans a live-fire demonstration of the “Excalibur-S” in early 2014. Laser guidance will mitigate target location errors and support attack of mobile targets, and can ensure precision effects when GPS is either degraded or denied.
Supporting Services. DynCorp International (DI) says it was awarded a contract with a one-year base and four, one-year options for a total value of $8.5 million from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command-Pacific (NAVFAC-Pacific) to provide operations support services in Cambodia. “We are honored that NAVFAC-Pacific has chosen DI to serve in Cambodia,” says George Krivo, senior vice president, DynLogistics. “We are excited to expand our footprint in the Asia Pacific region.” DI will provide various support services to the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) while conducting humanitarian assistance construction projects located at various provinces in Cambodia.
Kuwait C-17. Boeing on Feb. 13 delivers Kuwait’s first C-17, according to a company statement. Boeing will also support Kuwait’s C-17 fleet through the C-17 integrated sustainment program, a performance-based logistics program. Boeing has delivered 260 C-17s, including 223 to the U.S. Air Force and a total of 37 to Kuwait, Australia, Canada, India, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the 12-member Strategic Airlift Capability initiative of NATO and Partnership for Peace nations.
NG EGI Contract. The Air Force awards Northrop Grumman a contract worth potentially $200 million for purchase and sustainment of the company’s embedded global positioning/inertial navigation systems (EGI), according to a company statement. Under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract, Northrop Grumman’s suite of fiber-optic gyro-based navigation systems are available for the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Navy as well as international customers. Northrop Grumman will also provide platform integration, modernization, flight test and technical support, training, depot repair and spares for its EGI. The contract provides for ordering of equipment and/or services through December 2018. Foreign military sales, including a first order in support of EGI sales to Iraq and Thailand, are also provided for under the contract. A couple of Northrop Grumman’s embedded Global Positioning System/inertial navigation systems include the LN-251 and LN-260.
Boeing Commercial Crew. Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) in December completes a hardware design review and software safety test, bringing it closer to launching the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft, according to a company statement. Boeing recently completed a critical design review (CDR) for the system’s launch vehicle adapter (LVA), which connects the CST-100 to the Atlas V rocket manufactured by United Launch Alliance (ULA). The CDR, which includes wind tunnel tests verifying flight stability, confirms that the LVA design is suitable for production. Boeing spokeswoman Kelly Kaplan says the company this month completes its pilot-in-the-loop milestone test. Separately, the Atlas V rocket’s emergency detection system, which communicates with the capsule and initiates emergency procedures, if needed, passes its evaluation. These two milestones are part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with Boeing and next in line for the program is a software review this spring and the more comprehensive integrated CDR this summer. Boeing says it is on track to meet all of its CCiCap milestones in 2014. ULA is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Multi-Mission Q-400. L-3 Mission Integration is teaming with Bombardier Aerospace, Marshall Aerospace and Cascade Aerospace to produce a multi-mission extended range platform for maritime patrol and surveillance operations based on Bombardier’s Q-400 commercial aircraft, according to a L-3 statement. This L-3-modified version offers a solution for multi-mission maritime and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. L-3 is serving as prime contractor.
Rolls Royce T56 Series 3.5… A ground test on a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) P-3 engine finds a 13 percent reduction in fuel use due to Rolls-Royce’s T56 Series 3.5 engine enhancement package, according to a company spokesman. The T56 Series 3.5 engine specification for fuel use is 7.9 percent, company spokesman George McLaren tells Defense Daily Feb. 11. The T56 engine will now be tested flight tested on a NOAA P-3 Orion four-engine turboprop aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin. Rolls-Royce says the T56 Series 3.5 program, designed for the P-3 and the Air Force’s C-130 fleets, will improve fuel efficiency, reduce maintenance costs, increase reliability and enhance performance.
…More 3.5. Rolls-Royce says Congress approves $15.7 million in funding in the fiscal year 2014 omnibus spending bill to begin updating Air Force and Air National Guard C-130H aircraft with the company’s T56 Series 3.5 engine enhancement package. As part of $100.2 million for Air Force upgrades for C-130 aircraft, Congress also appropriates $26 million for C-130 propulsion system propeller upgrades. The C-130 is developed by Lockheed Martin.
