Still No GCV Decision. As the Army approaches the end of the technology development phase for its Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program, it still cannot say for certain whether it will proceed on schedule or not. “Any decisions regarding the path forward on Ground Combat Vehicle are, I think, pending at this point the overall budget picture,” Brig. Gen. David Bassett, program executive officer for ground combat systems, says Oct. 23 at the Association of the United States Army 2013 annual meeting and exposition. “But the message I would have for you is, we’ve taken full advantage in terms of moving our technology forward, increasing the level of maturity of those kinds of advanced designs, and really understanding all of the design factors that will be the vehicle of the future.” Bassett says the three must-haves for GCV are mobility, lethality and transportability, which contractors General Dynamics and BAE Systems have done “exceptionally well done.”
Prudent Purchasing. Army acquisition executive Heidi Shyu says at AUSA 2013 that sequestration and funding the government with continuing resolutions instead of full budgets had “decimated” any effort to follow the Better Buying Power 2.0 concept for smarter acquisition. She says the Army is still doing what it can to adhere to BBP’s underlying principles. “When we look at a contract, we look at a program that’s moving forward, the [program manager] is supposed to look at not just what the program’s supposed to cost, the PM is expected to identify what the program should cost. The delta is efficiency that can be gained by doing things more smartly. … Do we have the right type of contract to incentivize the contractor to meet the schedule, to meet the performance, to meet the reliability? So all of those are the things we continue to do even smack in the middle of the swirl of fiscal uncertainty.”
Sequestration Talks. Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee, says in an Oct. 23 hearing that he didn’t want to compromise on sequestration and give the Department of Defense more flexibility in implementing budget cuts. Rather, he wants to find a way to get rid of the cuts altogether and asked his witnesses–acquisition officials from all four services–that it was the depth of the cuts, not the inflexibility, that was causing harm to the military. “When we talk of lifting sequestration, people who are discussing it want, generally, offsets to occur so that sequestration can be removed from the Department of Defense,” he says. “If we say flexibility is what’s needed, you’re stuck with the lower number that’s going to cause you to be incapable of achieving a lot of your goals…I don’t want, in your very clear statements of its effects being damaging because of its inflexibility, I don’t want to conclude that the answer is, we’ll just provide flexibility and we don’t have to provide additional dollars to the Department of Defense.”
HASC To Examine Asia-Pacific Pivot. House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) and committee member Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) will kick off the “Asia-Pacific Oversight Series” after months of planning. The series will last four months and will include full committee and subcommittee hearings, roundtables with Asian ambassadors and media events to highlight congressional oversight during the Obama administration’s economic, diplomatic and military rebalance to the Pacific, according to a statement from Forbes’ office. Earlier in the day, Forbes will participate in a discussion with the American Enterprise Institute on Congress’ role in the rebalance.
Preliminary Results. ATK says its operating earnings will be at least 31 percent higher with sales slightly higher in its second quarter. Operating earnings are expected to be between $145 million and $155 million versus $110.6 million a year ago while sales are expected to be between $1.1 billion and $1.1 billion versus just below $1.1 billion a year ago. The company issued the preliminary results in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of an announcement for the pricing of a notes offering it is using to help finance its pending acquisition of Bushnell. J.P. Morgan defense analyst Joseph Nadol says that the earnings and sales expectations are higher than his estimate.
…Actual Results. Rockwell Collins on Friday reported its fourth quarter and FY ’13 financial results, saying net income in the quarter rose 15 percent to $175 million, $1.28 earnings per share (EPS), from $152 million ($1.06 EPS) while sales were down a percent to just under $1.3 billion. Per share earnings were up 21 percent due to a lower share count stemming from the company’s stock repurchase program. The increase in profit was driven by the company’s commercial business while the decline in sales was due to weakness in its government work. For the year, sales were down 2 percent to $4.6 billion while net income rose 4 percent to $632 million ($4.58 EPS). In 2014, earnings are expected to be lower and sales flat to slightly down.
Three K-46 Tankers in Production. Boeing Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney says the third KC-46A aerial refueling tanker is in production for the Air Force. Boeing and the Air Force finalized the design for the KC-46A over the summer and began assembling the wing on the first aircraft in June. McNerney says on Boeing’s third quarter earnings call that there will be issues to “wrestle through” but that the design is in “good shape.” The greater risks are in the shift from design to production, in particular integration challenges as the aircraft come together, he says.
Pushing Boundaries. Despite its recent loss to Raytheon for the Navy’s new Air Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), Northrop Grumman Chairman, President and CEO Wes Bush says the company will remain aggressive in “pressing boundaries” where it “historically” not had a much of a footprint. The AMDR contract is potentially worth at least $1.6 billion to develop and install a new air and missile defense radar system on the Navy’s DDG-51 destroyers. Lockheed Martin, which also lost the bid but is protesting the result, currently supplies the AN/SPY-1 radar used in the Aegis combat systems for air and missile defense capabilities aboard the destroyers.
Cyber Challenge. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting proposals from teams that will develop and field autonomous cyber reasoning systems capable of comprehending and protecting software during a live exercise. Under the two-phase Cyber Grand Challenge: Automated Cyber Reasoning effort, DARPA expects to make multiple awards worth $750,000 for each phase. The agency’s Grand Challenge utilizes a series of competitions to test the abilities of a new generation of fully automated cyber defense systems.
Minuteman III Test. The Air Force reschedules a Minuteman III ICBM test launch originally scheduled for Oct. 23. No new date has been announced, according to Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) public affairs. The Air Force last successfully test launched a Minuteman III Sept. 26 with a previous test launch just four days earlier.
Joint STARS Award. The Air Force awards Northrop Grumman a $43 million initial contract for the E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS), an airborne command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) platform, according to a Defense Department statement. Air Force spokesman Ed Gulick says the initial contract will procure prime mission equipment diminishing manufacturing sources (PME DMS) kits for seven aircraft, program management support and modifications for all trainers, laboratories and ground support equipment. Gulick says there are options to support kits and the installation of those kits to the remainder of the fleet over the three additional contract years, plus associated program management support, but that it is impossible to estimate what the precise value of the total contract will be as it is dependent on options exercised and the schedule. DoD’s Oct. 21 announcement said the firm-fixed-price, fixed-price-incentive-firm and cost-plus-fixed fee type indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract was worth $414.5 million.
Beechcraft Mexico T-6C+. Beechcraft signs a follow-on contract with the Mexican Air Force (FAM) for six additional T-6C+ trainers, according to a company statement. The order follows an initial order of six T-6C+ from the FAM in January 2012. The aircraft will be delivered to an advanced training base in Mexico’s northern region in late 2013 after required export licenses are obtained. A second contract is underway to include two years of parts support and the placement of field service representatives who will provide technical expertise and training to FAM maintenance personnel. The T-6C+, an enhanced version of the T-6 military trainer, is capable of carrying external stores and delivering practice weapons for training purposes.
Boeing India C-17. India’s fourth Boeing C-17 Globemaster III departs from Long Beach, Calif., Oct. 19, keeping the company on track to deliver a total of five advanced airlifters to the country this year, according to a company statement. Boeing will deliver five more C-17s to India in 2014 to complete the contract. The company will also build 15 more C-17s for customers outside the United States before ceasing production in the fourth quarter of 2015. Boeing has delivered 258 C-17s, including 223 to the Air Force.
SDB II Test Flights. Raytheon and the Air Force conclude a series of test flights with the Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB) culminating in direct hits on targets moving at operationally representative speeds, according to a Raytheon statement. Earlier supporting tests were performed in a multitude of different environments and scenarios, key to maturing seeker algorithms and validating the weapon’s aerodynamic performance, the company says. All test flights helped reinforce the system’s capability to satisfy a critical need, Raytheon says. John O’Brien, SDB II program director for Raytheon, says in a statement the test successes are the latest demonstrating the company’s readiness to progress the SDB II program to the system verification review and Milestone C.
Orbital COTS. Orbital Sciences completes its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) joint research and development initiative with NASA as its Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft reenters earth’s atmosphere from the International Space Station (ISS) Oct. 23, according to a company statement. Cygnus unberthed from the ISS Oct. 22 following a 23-day stay at the station. Orbital says it is now ready to begin regularly scheduled resupply flights to the ISS later this year as part of a $1.9 billion Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. Orbital says in its Twitter feed its first CRS launch date could be in December.
Pennywise Scrapping. The Navy’s first super-carrier, the USS Forrestal (AVT-59), has been contracted to All Star Brown Metals for dismantling and recycling at a cost one cent, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) says. The Navy awarded the contract last week to the Brownsville, Texas company, which proposed the penny cost assuming it will profit from the sale of recycled material from the ship, NAVSEA says. The conventionally powered Forrestal was decommissioned in 1993 after more than 38 years of service. The Navy originally sought to donate the ship for use as a museum or memorial but received no “viable” applications and therefore proceeded with the plans to scrap it.
Targeting FLIR. The Navy issued a request for information last week regarding the potential development of a follow-on targeting FLIR, or TFLIR, that could be deployed on F/A-18 fighters or EA-18 electronic attack aircraft. The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is seeking to learn about potential price, delivery and capabilities and as of now does not intend to award a contract. “The NEXGENFLIR shall provide the capability to designate air-to-surface targets and will provide this capability to the end of the F/A-18 projected service life,” NAVAIR says. “Enhanced capabilities over legacy systems will include improved resolution and recognition ranges, improved tracking, aided target recognition, laser ranging/designation and integral datalink. Information provided via this request will be used to evaluate and assess the feasibility of a NEXGENFLIR pod to replace the current TFLIR, for an initial operational capability in the 2022 timeframe.”
New Award. Lockheed Martin, Army PEO Aviation and the Apache Program Management Office say they recently received the 2013 Secretary of Defense Performance Based Logistics Award for the Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor on the AH-64D/E Apache attack helicopter. The team receives the sub-system level PBL award, one of three awards given annually to recognize government/industry teams that demonstrate outstanding achievements in providing soldiers with exceptional operational capability. The team was also chosen for this award in 2011.
Competitive Advantage. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno has a complex series of priorities as the land force moves from a period of conflict to one of peace. “One of our greatest competitive advantages is development of our leaders,” says Odierno at the Eisenhower Luncheon at AUSA. He’s calling on industry to help provide the analytic tools to help soldiers learn better, and develop tools to understand the complexities of the contemporary security environment so leaders can make better, more informed decisions. The force Odierno is building now must be globally responsive, be able to rapidly deploy and fight and win “whenever and wherever” it is sent.
… Bottom Line. “The Army always has and always will play a significant role in our joint force,” Odierno says. “We can’t afford to stand still.” No matter the size of the budget or the politics, Odierno says the American people expect soldiers to be ready for security challenges. The institutional reforms of today will help prepare the force to fight and win tomorrow, he adds. What he expects is a “globally responsive regionally engaged” force.