The Latest Word On Trends And Developments In Aerospace And Defense
Hill Hustle. Pentagon budget deliberations are kicking into high gear in Congress. The Senate is set to start debating the FY ’10 defense authorization bill today and continue hashing out amendments all week. After the bill passes, a Senate-House conference committee will convene to negotiate one final bill. The House Appropriations Defense subcommittee is scheduled to mark up its version of the defense appropriations bill on Thursday, before a full House Appropriations Committee markup next week. The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee, whose Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) also chairs the full committee, is expected to mark up its version of the bill shortly after its House counterpart. Only four weeks, including this week, remain before the four-week congressional recess that starts Aug. 8.
…Inouye Tanker Talk. Inouye is said to be leaning against compelling the Pentagon to split the Air Force refueling tanker contract between Boeing and a Northrop Grumman-EADS team. He is concerned, sources say, about the level of support for a split buy and the potential added cost of buying and sustaining two versions of the aircraft. The senator, though, as of last Friday was still seeking more data from the Pentagon on the matter. The SAC-D requested an assessment of a tanker dual buy from the Pentagon, and received some information three weeks ago. However, committee staff was not satisfied that the Pentagon provided enough data. Bloomberg reported last Thursday that Inouye now opposes a tanker dual buy and said in an interview that his view evolved since he made earlier comments that he hadn’t made a decision.
…Japanese F-22. HAC-D Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) is following Inouye’s lead in meeting with Japanese officials about possibly changing U.S. law to allow Japan to buy a simplified version of Lockheed Martin’s F-22 stealth fighter. Murtha met with the Japanese ambassador and defense attach� last Friday to gauge Japan’s interest and financial readiness to buy the aircraft with a tenuous future regarding Pentagon purchases. “The meeting went well, and Chairman Murtha said that he is going to have a meeting with the Air Force and the Japanese officials to sit down and discuss the issue,” Murtha’s spokesman Matt Mazonkey says.
Business Is Booming. The EADS advanced aerial refueling boom system featured on Northrop Grumman’s KC-45 offering for the U.S. Air Force aerial refueling tanker competition has demonstrated nighttime operational capabilities during a multi-contact mission with an F-16 fighter aircraft, the company says. This validation confirmed the performance of the boom’s vision system and was carried out as part of the final qualification phase for the EADS A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport, on which the Northrop Grumman KC-45 is based. The EADS boom system has performed more than 400 contacts with receiver aircraft that range from the F-16 to the E-3F AWACS and Australian KC-30A. Follow-on activities will include additional boom and hose-and-drogue contacts with a variety of small and large receiver aircraft from the French, Portuguese, and Spanish air forces, according to an EADS press statement. Continued flight testing and final validations of the Cobham 905E hose-and-drogue refueling pods will lead to military certification of the platform, the company says. The A330 has been selected as the refueling tanker of the Australian, U.K., Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates air forces, with Australia first in line to receive the aircraft next year.
Hawk-eyed. Northrop Grumman received a $75 million contract on 30 June for long-lead funding to start building two RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 30 and four Block 40 unmanned air vehicles for the U.S. Air Force. The Block 30s are equipped with signals and image intelligence sensors, while the Block 40 is expected to be the first platform to receive the Northrop Grumman/Raytheon multi-platform radar technology insertion program (MP-RTIP) sensor, according to a joint press statement. The new sensor will allow the Global Hawk system to perform wide area surveillance of stealthy targets, such as small cruise missiles. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman on 25 June unveiled the first of 15 Block 40 Global Hawks already under contract. The event took place at its Palmdale, Calif., production facility. The first Block 40 aircraft will begin flight testing during July and will later be used to support operational evaluation of the MP-RTIP payload, according to Northrop Grumman.
Another Decade. Boeing received a 10-year, $750 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to maintain the B-52 Stratofortress. The deal replaces Boeing’s current B-52 fleet support agreement. Boeing will support software, communications, avionics and electrical upgrades, according to the company. The funding comes after Boeing recently introduced the Combat Network Communications Technology (CONECT) to the bomber. The modification gives the airplane a digital communications infrastructure that allows it to communicate with the Air Force’s digital communications network.
The Cost of Being Open. “If you are going to upgrade the Aegis combat system on surface ships, it [will] cost a lot of money. It was GFE…government furnished computers, and the hardware was integrated with the software,” Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources (N8), tells Defense Daily in a recent interview. “If you want to rapidly upgrade combat capability, you have to disaggregate the hardware and software, and we realized that. We are doing the mid- life on Aegis ships and we don’t want to have to do another mid life three-quarters of the way through the service life of the ship because it cost, again, a huge amount of money.” The first effort under the open architecture (OA) approach is the USS Bunker Hill (CG-52). McCullough notes the cruiser completed initial trials and went through her combat system certification in mid June. That effort, separating the hard from the software on Bunker Hill, is known as ACB ’08. “While we haven’t totally opened the Aegis system in ACB ’08, we’ve made significant strides in it,” he acknowledges. “This will be the first test of that process. And when we get to ACB ’12, the whole system will be open and that goes into ships in FY ’12.”
…A Better DDG. “Once you get to a commercial hardware system and you define the interface standards between various segments of the combat systems, if you want to upgrade a tracking algorithm you can go out and compete that with anybody who writes software code as long as they can make the interface standards,” McCullough explains. “We believe you can upgrade it for substantially less cost than if you have to upgrade the whole combat system in a fell swoop. That’s what will enable us to put this advanced capability in the restart of the DDG line. Everybody says the DDG-51s are 70s technology. I tell you DDG-113 will have the latest technology we ever put in a surface combatant, so it won’t have the same combat system as DDG-112 did, it will have ACB ’12 in it. We are doing the same thing with SSDS, which is the combat system for carriers and big deck amphibs. We are going through the same process with that. And we want to take that into our C4I systems as well.”
Navy Accepts True Aegis Ship. Earlier this month, the Navy officially accepted delivery of the future guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG-108) from General Dynamics-Bath Iron Works, the service says. The Wayne E. Meyer is the 56th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and carries the 100th Aegis Combat System. DDG-108 completed a combined Builder’s and Acceptance super trial June 12 after spending four days at sea off the coast of Maine, the Navy says. DDG 108, the new destroyer, honors retired Rear Adm. Wayne Meyer, who led the development of the Aegis combat system for the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers. In 1963, Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth chose Meyer to lead a special task force for surface guided missiles. The future Wayne E. Meyer is scheduled to be commissioned this fall in Philadelphia, Pa., the Navy adds.
Slick Move Saves Fuel. New underwater hull coatings applied to the USS Cole (DDG-67) are projected to save more than $180,000 in fuel costs per year, the Navy says.. The new coatings, applied during a planned maintenance availability period in Norfolk, Va., will help reduce marine bio-fouling, build-ups of tubeworms, mussels, barnacles and other shell organisms on the ship’s hull, according to NAVSEA’s Fleet Readiness Research & Development Program (FRR&DP). Marine fouling is a chronic and costly problem for Navy ships, the service says. The new process uses a silicone-based, non-toxic fouling-release coating system that provides a very smooth, slick, low friction surface. Settling marine organisms like barnacles, tunicates and algae can’t attach themselves firmly to the slick surface. Those that do attach do so weakly and are usually washed away when ships are underway or are removed during regularly scheduled pierside hull inspections and cleanings, the Navy adds. Work on the Cole was part of FRR&DP’s Underwater Hull Coatings initiative, which aims to apply new anti-fouling hull coatings on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers. Once fully implemented on the 70-plus active ships across the two classes, the program could potentially deliver fuel consumption cost avoidances of more than $12.6 million per year, based on fuel oil prices of $100 per barrel. The Cole left dry dock June 26 and is scheduled to rejoin the fleet in August.
A Ship And Batteries. Saft signs two contracts totaling more than $1 million with DRS Technologies to supply its lithium-ion (Li-ion) energy storage systems for the Integrated Fight Through Power (IFTP) system for the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyers, Saft says. “Given the Navy’s stringent battery requirements, the introduction of our Li-ion technology into the DDG-1000 platform marks a huge milestone for Saft,” says Thomas Alcide, Saft Specialty Battery Group General Manager. The two rechargeable Li-ion batteries will support key functions within the IFTP system, which sustains the destroyers’ Integrated Power Systems (IPS) and provides the means for conversion and distribution of the ships’ service power to various shipboard weapons and sensor systems, as well as various auxiliary systems.
…Support. Saft will develop 12 batteries using VL 34P cells for each destroyer with custom electronics, housing and an integrated charger to support the IFTP’s Load Center breakers, giving them the ability to shut down electronically, even when there is no power. Under the second contract, Saft will provide 22 batteries, also based on VL 34P cells, for each ship for the IFTP’s Housekeeping Power Supply (HKPS). The batteries will supply onboard back-up power, carrying the destroyers’ loads until they can be shut down.
Top Rating. A Lockheed Martin business unit earns a top rating for the quality and maturity of its processes for developing and managing highly complex technology systems. The company’s Information Systems & Global Services-Intelligence product line achieves a Maturity Level 5 rating during its recent appraisal against the Capability Maturity Model r Integration for Development, or CMMI-DEV. “Our customers rely on us to deliver highly advanced information technology systems that are both innovative and rock-solid reliable,” Mike Thomas, president of IS&GS-Intelligence, says. “Meeting that challenge starts with a mature and disciplined set of processes that help us manage all of the moving pieces in a major system development program.”
Javelin Support. The Army selects the Raytheon-Lockheed Martin Javelin Joint Venture under a five-year, $298.6 million contract to provide life-cycle contract support for the Javelin anti-tank missile and command launch unit. “The Javelin Joint Venture is focused on our customer needs throughout the product life cycle,” Duane Gooden, Raytheon’s Javelin program director and president of the Javelin Joint Venture, says in a statement. “We are extending the lifetime of our products through upgrades, while supporting the warfighter with training services and technical support.” Javelin is a man-portable, fire-and-forget, medium-range missile system. The compact, lightweight missile is designed for one- soldier operations in all environments.