A U.S. Apache helicopter fires rockets during a joint gunnery exercise. Pentagon investigators found Boeing overcharged the U.S. Army $13 million on spare helicopter parts. (Jung Yeon-Je / AFP via Getty Images)

1 Jul 2011 By MICHAEL HOFFMAN DefenseNews

U.S. Army officials prefer to focus on the decreased repair turnaround times at a maintenance depot where Pentagon investigators found Boeing overcharged the Army $13 million on spare helicopter parts, not on the $10 roller assemblies that cost the Army more than $1,600.

The Army's Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command bought the 18 parts highlighted in a recent Defense Department Inspector General's report, which made up the $13 million in overcharges. Soldiers and civilians used the parts at Corpus Christi Army Depot, Texas.

The DoD Inspector General's report highlighted extreme overcharges in comparing Boeing prices to those that would have been charged by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). In one case, Boeing charged the Army $71 for a straight pin that would have cost the service 4 cents from DLA. Boeing also charged $381.78 for a bolt retainer; DLA charges $6.77.

In all, the Army paid $23 million for the 18 sets of parts that should have cost the service $10 million, a 131 percent price hike, according to the full IG report, which was first released by the Project on Government Oversight.

However, the 18 parts highlighted in the report make up a small sliver of the 8,000 parts included in Boeing's contract with the Army, according to Dan O'Boyle, an Army spokesman. The price increase paid by the Army for the entirety of the contract is 17 percent, which was acceptable to service officials in order to cut down on back orders and keep up with increased maintenance needs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"It was recognized that using a material integrator would drive an estimated average material price increase of about 25 percent, based on lower parts quantities and immediate parts availability, but would be offset by the increase in parts availability and increased readiness," O'Boyle said in a statement.

Army officials credited Boeing with reducing back-ordered parts from 292 in 2004 down to 22, which led to an overall increase of readiness rates by 10 percent. Upon further inspection, O'Boyle said, the Army found that about 2,000 parts included in the contract are priced less than Army and DLA inventory prices.

The Corpus Christi Army Depot is a maintenance center used mainly for Army helicopters. Boeing builds the Army's AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and the CH-47 Chinook twin-rotor utility helicopter.

A previous Army audit of the initial contract could have caught the overcharges of the 18 parts, but the Army audit only covered "80 percent of the total dollars associated with the bill of material for this contract because of the magnitude of the parts involved," O'Boyle said.

A similar audit by the Defense Department Inspector General is taking place concerning purchases made for the same depot from Sikorsky Aircraft, according to the report.

The Defense Contract Audit Agency also is doing a full audit of actual costs expended on the contract, whereas the Defense Department IG "only sampled a portion of the contractor's expenditures," O'Boyle said in a statement.

"Given the wartime environment for Army aviation, more rotary aircraft today and flying six times above the peacetime flying hours, the critical support to these platforms could not have been achieved without this agreement," O'Boyle said in a statement.

After the Defense Department IG released its report, Boeing issued the Army a voluntary refund of $1.6 million for five types of parts, an Army official said.

"The handful of errors cited by the IG's initial report represents an extremely small part of our outstanding support to our U.S. Army customer," said Bob Algarotti, a Boeing spokesman. "Boeing voluntarily reimbursed the government for the items cited and already improved our process, which will prevent reoccurrence of these errors."

In the same Defense Department IG inspection that cited the 18 overcharged parts, inspectors found the Army had not used $339.7 million of inventory before buying the same parts from Boeing. The Army disputes that figure, saying $48.1 million is "actually excess at this point," O'Boyle said.

In response, the Army will use the Enterprise Resource Planning system to ensure that inventory is more visible. Army Materiel Command has "implemented a policy requiring the use of all on-hand inventory before the purchase of any additional material on performance-based contracts," O'Boyle said.

July 1, 2011 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: Bell Helicopter; issued June 30, 2011)

FORT WORTH, TEXAS --- Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company and the U.S. Army Armed Scout Helicopter program office announced today the delivery of the first OH-58 “A2D” wartime replacement cabin for OH-58 “Kiowa Warrior” platform to the Army. The cabin is being delivered 30 days ahead of the contract schedule.

"The Kiowa Warrior continues to be a combat multiplier in the Joint Operations Area,” said COL Robert Grigsby, Army’s Armed Scout Helicopter project manager. “This cabin is the first of many that are needed to address years of hard use and attrition."

The “A2D” conversion program is an Army initiative to replace war time losses suffered by the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. This conversion program takes an existing “A” model OH-58 and upgrades them to “D” model. The Cabin will now be shipped to Corpus Christi Army Depot to repopulate it with avionics and dynamic components so it can be returned to the fleet to support the warfighter.

“We are very proud to be delivering the first of our ‘A2D’ wartime replacement cabins to the Army a full month ahead of contract schedule,” said Amy Tedford, from Bell Helicopter program office. “This conversion program is critical in getting the Kiowa Warrior back to its authorized acquisition objective, allowing the aircraft to continue its job as the scout attack work horse.”

“This cabin is the first one delivered for our ‘A2D’ contract with the U.S. Army, which calls for an additional 18 cabin conversions,” said Jim Schultz, Director for Army Programs and Fielded Systems at Bell Helicopter. “The remaining A2D conversions will take place at our Military Assembly Center in Amarillo, Texas where we have established a “hot” production line. Bell Helicopter is also working our U.S. Army customer’s potential requirement to replace wartime losses with “new metal” cabins, reducing overall fleet age.”

With more than 750,000 fleet combat hours, the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior is a combat- proven aircraft that is safe, rugged and reliable, maintaining the highest operational tempo and readiness rate of any Army helicopter operating in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bell Helicopter, a wholly owned subsidiary of Textron Inc., is an industry-leading producer of commercial and military, manned and unmanned vertical lift aircraft and the pioneer of the revolutionary tilt rotor aircraft. Globally recognized for world-class customer service, innovation and superior quality, Bell's global workforce serves customers flying Bell aircraft in more than 120 countries.

Artist's impression of the MLP concept. (Illustration: General Dynamics NASSCO)

July 1, 2011 defpro.com

SAN DIEGO | General Dynamics NASSCO announced today that it has received a $60 million contract from the U.S. Navy to purchase long-lead materials for the construction of a third Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) ship. NASSCO is already under contract to build two MLP ships. With this new contract, NASSCO will place orders for the ship's engines and other components that have significant manufacturing lead times. A contract that fully funds construction of the third MLP ship is expected to be awarded by early next year. General Dynamics NASSCO is a business unit of General Dynamics.

"With the first MLP ship now under construction, we are pleased to be selected to build another MLP," said Frederick J. Harris, president of General Dynamics NASSCO. "This contract demonstrates the U.S. Navy's confidence in our ability to build and deliver a high-quality ship on schedule."

The MLP is a new class of auxiliary ship for the Navy. Once delivered, MLP ships will join the three Maritime Prepositioning Force squadrons that are strategically located around the world to enable rapid response in a crisis. MLP ships will be 233 meters (765 feet) in length and 50 meters (164 feet) in beam, with a design draft of 12 meters (29 feet). The deadweight tonnage is in excess of 60,000 metric tons.

July 1st, 2011 By US Navy DEFENCE TALK

Flown by test pilot Lt. Cmdr. Eric "Magic" Buus, F-35C test aircraft CF-2 lands at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey June 25.

CF-2 and the F-35 integrated test team from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. are at the NAVAIR facility in Lakehurst for the first jet blast deflector (JBD) testing, in preparation for carrier shipboard testing in 2013.

The team is at the JBD test facility to evaluate deck heating, JBD panel cooling, and vibro-acoustic, thermal, and hot-gas ingestion environments.

The F-35C is the carrier variant of the three-service Joint Strike Fighter, and has larger wing surfaces and reinforced landing gear to perform in the demanding carrier environment.

The F-35C and F-35B are undergoing test and evaluation at NAS Patuxent River prior to eventual delivery to the fleet.

Jun 30, 2011 By Amy Butler, Robert Wall, Guy Norris, Jen DiMascio- aviation week and space technology

There is nothing that concentrates the mind like the prospect of a hanging. This quip came to mind for U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn when asked whether the Lockheed Martin F-35B was still on “probation.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in January that if performance of the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) version of the F-35—the most expensive of the three variants—does not improve, he would propose terminating it in two years.

Gates also withheld $614 million in award fee on the development, and the Pentagon has restructured the contract to tie Lockheed Martin’s future earnings to specific milestones, not subjective incentives.

Since then, senior Pentagon officials seem to be softening their rhetoric about the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), with the top brass and administration officials highlighting a turnaround in the once-lagging flight-test program. The JSF program office and contractor are “paying great attention to achieving milestones,” Lynn said at Le Bourget last week. But Lockheed Martin has by no means earned its way off the gallows yet.

Five milestones—each carrying a financial incentive—are slated to be met in 2011. With the company earning $7 million of $35 million in available award fee in 2010, the pressure is on this year to regain credibility with customers and stock­holders. The majority of these events culminate in the fall, USAF Maj. Gen. C.D. Moore, deputy F-35 program manager, tells Aviation Week. They are:

•Conducting F-35B shipboard trials.

•Executing catapult launch and trap landing testing.

• Start of training with the 1B software.

•Release of Block 2 software for flight testing.

•Static-model trials for the F-35C carrier version.

While these items will likely remain open until late in the year, groundwork is being laid now. “This [year] will be a better return” for the company, says Tom Burbage, executive vice president for JSF, although he describes the development margins as low.

In preparation for training readiness, program managers have set up an unconventional operational utility evaluation (OUE) using six F-35As (AFs 8-13). The outcome of this OUE, conducted by Air Force and Navy flight-test experts, will determine the willingness of the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) to approve the beginning of formal training operations, says Moore.

Service test experts typically conduct formal operational evaluations prior to the production phase. However, Moore says the JSF program office expects feedback on performance, maintenance and reliability during the two-month OUE. Four pilots are slated to participate.

Leading up to the OUE, AF-6 and -7—two production F-35As—will execute a series of “maturity” flights through August. They will operate with the Block 1A software, which includes the basic mission avionics suite.

Though not a “go-to-war” configuration, the 1A software will be used for initial training, says Moore. These maturity flights are crucial to obtaining the first of two flight clearances needed for the OUE.

In the meantime, deliveries of the F-35As to Eglin AFB, Fla., are near. AF-8 and -9 are ready to deliver to Eglin in “days,” Moore says. AF-10-13 will follow in the next few months. AF-10 and -11 may conduct their first flights this week, AF-12’s is slated for later this month and AF-13 is expected to make its maiden flight in July, Moore says.

For the next roughly two months, while awaiting clearance to enter the OUE, officials at Eglin will be refining and verifying the technical data as well as conducting “day-in-the-life” exercises. This will also be a period for maintainers to work directly with the aircraft in advance of the OUE.

During the maturity flights for AF-6 and -7, testers at Edwards AFB, Calif., will be “putting them through the training syllabus” that will be taught at the base’s schoolhouse.

In addition, the software path must continue in order for Lockheed Martin to perform financially on the program. The 1B package—which will include multi-level security for international partners to participate—is slated for release late this year; it also includes initial, subsonic maneuvering.

What was once Block 2 software has been broken into two increments. Block 2A is for “advanced training” and includes initial legacy data link operations, countermeasures and offboard data fusion; it is needed for the Wasp ship activities, say Lockheed Martin officials.

The Marine Corps hopes to declare initial operational capability with the next increment, 2B, in late 2014 or early 2015. It includes full operation of the legacy data link and the new advanced data link, subsonic ship deployment activities and limited use of some internal weapons.

Block 3 is also broken into two increments. The first, 3BI (for initial), will support international activities, “austere site” capabilities and initial shipboard Navy operations as well as the full suite of internal weapons. With the 3I, the aircraft can travel outside the U.S., says Burbage. The “advanced warfighting” Block 3 includes improved sensor fusion, embedded training, the external gun and automated countermeasures, as well as full ship and Navy operations.

The Block 3 software sensors fusion was tested in a virtual environment onboard the BAC-111 surrogate platform during recent Northern Edge exercises in Alaska, Moore says. He characterizes the performance as “good,” although work on the software is in its early stages. The tests included the use of the electro-optical/infrared capability and the distributed aperture system that provides the pilot with a 360-deg. view around the aircraft.

Before beginning the OUE, ground personnel at Eglin will be refining and verifying the technical data and procedures.

Pratt & Whitney, meanwhile, is working on fixes to Stovl thermal management problems; these were among the issues that prompted Gates to declare a probationary period for the variant.

The final low-rate initial-production (LRIP) Lot 4 aircraft will receive an interim fix to lengthen the lift-fan driveshaft, says Bennett Crosswell, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines. A new bellows coupling is needed to accommodate variations in length resulting from build tolerances, thermal and pressure growth, and maneuver deflection. Interim shim-spacers are being fitted to the shafts. The next lot will have a new production shaft with redesigned couplings. Mission tests begin this summer, says Crosswell. Deliveries are set for the second quarter of 2012.

Lockheed Martin is also adding extra insulation around the roll-post nozzle actuators for thermal management owing to leaky seals heating the actuator. Until this fix is on the aircraft, Stovl flight time is limited. The long-term fix will involve developing a redesigned actuator, which will be in production in 2012, says Crosswell.

Pratt is also addressing clutch drag and heating that occurs outside the Stovl envelope. Development of a clutch temperature sensor and passive cooling circuit will provide cooling air to the clutch in up-and-away flight when the forced-cooling fan used in Stovl mode is switched off. As a result, the temperature limit and baseline for flight tests will be increased by roughly 100F, or roughly 20%, says Crosswell, although the clutch temperature sensor remains a long-term solution.

Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, aviation commandant for the U.S. Marine Corps—the first customer—emphasizes that the test program is on track and a once-disjointed production approach is improving. “We are getting there,” he tells Aviation Week. “This [probation] is a time for us to get these fixes done.”

Despite its troubles, Burbage says, “we expect to complete that contract with a profit.” Last year, Lockheed Martin pushed hard against implementing a fixed-price contract in LRIP 4. Under the agreement, the Pentagon and Lockheed share the cost of an overrun up to 120% of the target price.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, are aggressively targeting the F-35’s cost with two measures offered last week to limit the Pentagon’s financial exposure. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, proposed imposing a probation on the program if LRIP 4 overruns target more than 10%. Under his plan, if overruns continue to the end of 2012, funding would be dedicated only to cancelation costs. His language was narrowly defeated in the committee.

In contrast, the panel endorsed language offered by Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that makes Lockheed Martin responsible for 100% of any overruns in LRIP 5, which has yet to be negotiated.

It is against this backdrop that Vice Adm. David Venlet, the Pentagon’s F-35 program manager, and Lockheed Martin are negotiating Lot 5. A major issue of contention is how to account for the Pentagon’s decision to cut F-35B builds to three from 17 in Lot 5.

Burbage argues that although many components are unique among the three F-35 variants, long-lead items for “B unique” parts have been bought and the line has been prepared for the higher rate. “The Pentagon looks at this, as it is our problem to deal with,” Burbage says, adding that the company is renegotiating with suppliers to minimize the financial impact.

The JSF program office, however, has little tolerance for a price increase. “LRIP 5 will be challenging in that we have . . . clear expectations of reduced cost,” says Moore. “We have a long ways ahead of us to negotiate.”

This spring, reports surfaced that Lockheed Martin’s initial LRIP 5 exceeded the price of LRIP 4, sparking consternation in government circles. “Whether it was higher or lower than the settlement on LRIP 4 is really immaterial, because the real issue is where do we settle on LRIP 5,” Burbage declares.

30 Jun 2011 By MICHAEL HOFFMAN and KATE BRANNEN DefenseNews

The Ground Combat Vehicle (gcv) program will receive another scrub by Defense Department officials in a Defense Acquisition Board Review scheduled for July 21.

Questions have arisen about the Army's need for the GCV in the next seven years as specified by service officials. A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the funds from the canceled Future Combat Systems (FCS) program "were driving the events and activities of the program, versus a true capabilities gap," GAO's director of acquisition and sourcing management, Michael Sullivan, testified before Congress.

The review comes after a major Army leadership shakeup, with Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the upcoming retirement of Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli; and resignation of acquisition chief Malcolm O'Neill. The moves leave some wondering if the GCV program will maintain support at the service's highest levels of leadership.

Chiarelli had listed GCV as the Army's second-highest acquisition priority behind the Army's network.

The Defense Acquisition Board includes the four service secretaries, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other undersecretaries of defense.

Last August, the Army rescinded its original request for proposals after an internal review was done by the program's requirements and acquisition strategy. The Army issued revised requests with fewer requirements in November.

The second request for proposals dropped the cost target from the $18 million to $24 million of the first proposal to $9 million to $10 million per vehicle, Sullivan told Congress in March. However, the $10 million price tag could leave the GCV vulnerable to future budget cuts and put it at risk of suffering the same fate as the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, according to analysis by the Congressional Research Service.

source dailymail.co.uk

June 30, 2011 Daniel Goure, Ph.D. - Early Warning Blog, Lexington Institute – defpro.com

The relationship between the private defense industrial base and the Department of Defense can be as close as a long-standing marriage and as difficult as a war zone. Senior defense officials like to say over and over again that the department produces nothing and is dependent on the private sector for everything it uses, from weapons to ammunition to fuel. At the same time, there is a tendency in DoD to characterize the private sector as venal, motivated solely by profits, seeking to overcharge their government customers, engaged in organizational conflicts of interest and looking for way to jack up the costs of doing business.

The Obama Administration came into office determined to wrest control over the defense supply chain from the private sector. It immediately went on a campaign to insource a range of activities that had been performed credibly and at a fair price by the private sector. In some instances, where inherently governmental functions were involved, this made sense. But the administration, notably the Secretary of Defense, went much farther, asserting that the public industrial base could perform a range of activities cheaper than the private sector. Private defense companies that had been performing well and providing values on a range of contracts were suddenly accused of garnering excessive profits. In addition, the Department of Defense instituted a series of reforms in its acquisition procedures, such as limiting the use of cost reimbursable contracts in favor of fixed price contracts that would force the companies to absorb cost overruns. Recently, senior defense officials have spoken of the need for program managers, contracting officers and acquisition officials to maintain an “arms length” relationship with the private sector. The relationship between DoD and the private defense industrial base took on a decidedly adversarial tinge.

Yet, it is important for DoD officials at all levels to recognize that the private sector is not the enemy. Many defense companies, particularly the small businesses, are owned and operated by veterans; their workforces contain a large percentage of veterans and former government personnel. The private sector has done heroic work in support of the warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands deployed to theater to provide direct support; hundreds of private contractors, including Americans, have been killed and thousands injured. The number of these individuals with sons and daughters currently in the military and in combat is incalculable. Many of these individuals could make an equivalent wage with much less hassle in the non-defense private sector.

Even while making a negotiated profit on their work, the private defense companies have worked tirelessly to improve the ways support is provided to the warfighters. Companies such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and Raytheon to name just a few have been involved in support contracts based on the principles of performance-based logistics. Many of these contracts involve partnerships between the private sector and the depots and bases that make up the public defense industrial base. Such efforts have saved DoD billions of dollars while improving the availability of platforms and weapons systems. Over the past several years, logistic providers such as Supreme, Maersk Lines, APL, and Hapag-Lloyd organized a new distribution network for supplying U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the so-called Northern Distribution Network. It is amazing how responsive the “adversary” has been when DoD asks for something.

I spent the past two days at a defense suppliers’ conference sponsored by the Defense Logistics Agency. An awards ceremony was held at which more than twenty companies, many small, disadvantaged, minority and veteran-owned, were honored. Time and again the citations spoke of the way these companies bent over backwards, altered production schedules, acted in advance of a signed contract and in response to urgent requests from the field, to provide the warfighters critical support. The same behavior is commonplace for defense-oriented companies large and small. This is how the defense industrial base operates.

Too often senior defense officials make policy pronouncements with the best of intentions but without appreciating the way they will be interpreted and acted on at the working level. The drive for insourcing was meant to be a carefully assessed and calibrated effort to shift the balance of power between DoD management and the private sector. However, at the working level it was often interpreted as requiring a quota of insourced positions and activities, regardless of the actual merit or cost savings achieved. The idea of an “arms length” relationship between DoD officials and the private sector sounds good in theory. In practice, it can too easily be interpreted as a call for an adversarial relationship.

Jun 30, 2011 By Michael Fabey aerospace daily and defense report

Vice Adm. William McRaven – commander of the operation to kill Osama bin Laden and the man nominated to replace Adm. Eric Olson as chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command – is calling on Congress to provide more airlift and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets for the nation’s Special Operations Forces (SOF).

During a June 28 nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), McRaven said such “enablers” as ISR and fixed or rotary-wing aircraft are “critical” for SOF success in Afghanistan. He was in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan earlier this year before being named the operational commander of the Navy SEAL team raid that killed bin Laden. The SASC supported the nomination of McRaven to the command and the admiral’s rank.

As the Pentagon starts to withdraw troops from Afghanistan – and continues to wind down operations in Iraq – the need for SOF operations in those areas will likely become even more pronounced, McRaven says.

Questioned specifically by SASC members about operations in Afghanistan, McRaven stressed the importance of nighttime raids there. “Stopping night raids would be detrimental to special operations in Afghanistan,” he says. In a recent 12-month period, he said, 88% of the 2,000 SOF raids in that country were conducted at night.

While most of the SASC members’ questions concerned Afghanistan, McRaven noted the global presence of U.S. SOF operations, noting there are operators in 60 to 80 countries at any given time. The current hot spots, he says, are Yemen and Somalia. “We’re looking hard at them,” he says. The “shortfall” in SOF operations in those countries is manned and unmanned ISR.

Overall, he says, the nation’s ability to conduct or broaden SOF operations has been hampered by increased tempo and strain on resources. “We are not prepared to expand immediately worldwide,” he says. Indeed, SOF resources have been “fraying at the edges.”

30 juin 2011 par Remy Maucourt L’USINE NOUVELLE

Quelques mois seulement après la victoire de Boeing sur EADS, l'Américain annonce que les ravitailleurs de l'armée US coûteront plus cher que prévus. Boeing devra assumer ces surcoûts.

Après dix ans de lutte commerciale et judiciaire, Boeing a signé en février un contrat  avec le Pentagone pour la fourniture de 179 avions ravitailleurs. Le montant de ce contrat était de 4,4 milliards de dollars. Mais quatre mois après, il s'avère que la construction de ces avions coûtera bien plus.

En avril, Boeing a annoncé que 500 millions supplémentaires seraient nécessaires. Fin juin,  le constructeur a de nouveau annoncé des surcoûts, pour 300 millions de dollars. En quatre mois, le programme s'est allourdi de 800 millions de dollars.

Un prix plafond de 4,9 milliards de dollars a été décidé par le Pentagone. Les derniers 300 millions devront donc être pris en charge par Boeing, ainsi que tous les futurs dépassements.

Lors de la décision finale, l'offre de Boeing a été sélectionnée sur son prix. L'Américain proposait alors un montant 10% inférieur à celui d'EADS. Quelques mois plus tard, il apparaît que Boeing avait sous-estimé la facture, pour être sûr de l'emporter. Une pratique douteuse, qui pourrait coûter cher au constructeur.

Jun 30, 2011 By Gopal Ratnam and Tony Capaccio BLOOMBERG

The Senate Armed Services Committee has backed the Missile Defense Agency’s decision to suspend production of Raytheon Co. (RTN) “kill vehicles” that are designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles.

The panel, in its report on the Pentagon’s 2012 budget, said the MDA was right in “suspending further production” of the exoatmospheric kill vehicles, which are linked to two test failures of the primary U.S. missile defense system. The suspension should not be lifted until the agency “has verified through extensive testing that the problem has been successfully corrected,” it said.

In January, the MDA halted purchases of the so-called kill vehicles made by Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon. The spacecraft is designed to collide with enemy targets about 200 miles in space while traveling at about 15,000 miles an hour. MDA had bought 12 of 23 units on order before linking them to failures in the two tests, which were conducted in January 2010 and December 2010, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Raytheon is continuing production of “sub-assemblies and the product” except one component whose failure is under investigation, the company’s chief executive officer, Bill Swanson, said in an interview at the Paris Air Show last week. “That’s the portion that has stopped,” he said.

“The final assembly” of the kill vehicles “is the key item that has been halted,” MDA spokesman Richard Lehner said in an e-mail. “The production pause is in effect until the failure investigation” of the December 2010 test is complete, he said. The next intercept test is planned for 2012, he said.

Gates’s Comments

Even with test failures, the ground-based system works, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview with Bloomberg News today. The MDA is trying to make the system “ever more advanced,” said Gates, who leaves his job tomorrow. He will be succeeded by Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“I know the base capability of the ground-based interceptors in Alaska,” Gates said. “We have tested them time and again. So, what you’re seeing is trying to move the technology to the next level.” The setbacks from test failures “shouldn’t create in anybody’s mind a growing sense of unease with the program,” he said.

Test Failures

In reports accompanying the 2012 Pentagon budget authorization, defense committees in the House and the Senate said they were concerned about the failures of the two tests in 2010.

The House report said the unsuccessful tests raised doubts about the reliability and effectiveness of the deployed system and also “questions whether there are more systemic issues” within the ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense program. The House report also noted that the system, with interceptors located in Alaska and California, “is currently the only missile defense system that protects the United States homeland from long-range ballistic missile attacks.”

The entire system -- ground-based interceptors mounted with the kill vehicles, satellites, ground- and sea-based radar, and command and control operations -- is overseen by Chicago-based Boeing Co. (BA), which has held the contract since 1998.

The MDA is holding the first competition to pick a contractor that will manage the system, an order valued at as much as $10 billion. The agency on June 7 delayed a decision on the contract until November.

Boeing and its partner, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC), are competing against a team led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) that includes Raytheon.

June 30, 2011 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued June 29, 2011)

Force Protection Industries, Inc., Ladson, S.C., was awarded a $63,830,337 firm-fixed-price contract for 56 Buffalo A2 vehicles and 56 bar armor kits.

Work will be performed in Ladson, S.C., with an estimated completion date of Nov. 1, 2012. One bid was solicited with one bid received.

U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-08-C-0028).

June 30, 2011 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued June 29, 2011)

Oshkosh Corp., Oshkosh, Wis., was awarded a $218,685,646 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the procurement of 400 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle with underbody improvement kits.

Work will be performed in Oshkosh, Wis., with an estimated completion date of June 30, 2012. One bid was solicited, with one bid received.

The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-09-D-0111).

June 30, 2011: STRATEGY PAGE

Thirteen years after it was introduced, the U.S. RIM-162 ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles) is now available in a land based version. The U.S. Navy, and a dozen foreign customers already use ESSM on their warships, and several are interested in the land based model.

ESSM is a modified version of the standard Sea Sparrow shipboard anti-aircraft missile, which has been around since the late 1970s. Sea Sparrow was based on the Sparrow, a radar guided air-to-air missile first used in the 1950s. ESSM is basically a new missile, being different in shape and capabilities. ESSM can track and destroy high-speed anti-ship missiles and small, fast attack boats, as well as aircraft.

ESSM is 3.7 meters (12 feet) long, has a diameter of 254mm and weighs 280 kg (620 pounds). It carries a 39 kg (86 pound) blast fragmentation warhead, has a range of 50 kilometers, and a top speed of 4,210 kilometers an hour. Guidance is provided by the firing ships radar, which directs the missile to the general area of the target. At that point, the ESSM missile uses its own guidance system, which homes in on the ship's radar signals bouncing off the target. The land version will be able to use one of various ground based radars.

The ESSM on ships us usually stored, and fired, from a container holding four missiles. Each of these containers will fit into one VLS (Vertical Launch Systems) cell. Each ESSM costs less than $500,000.