MIL/AERO, DESIGN WINS
By: dl

Raytheon announced this month that it will tap Mercury Computer Systems to provide the storage subsystem for a technology refresh of the AN/TPY-2 radar, which is part of the DOD’s Ballistic Missile Defense System. According to Mercury, the rugged, high-speed data storage and recording subsystem it will provide to the Raytheon National & Theater Security Programs division is “critical to long-range, multi-function radar surveillance” provided by the mobile, multi-function AN/TPY-2, whose task is to search out, acquire, track, and discriminate ballistic missile threats from non-threats.

In addition to hardware and software, Mercury will also provide qualification and integration services for its own and third-party components, as well as software modifications. The company says that per Raytheon’s requirements, it will provide “a technology refresh specially architected to be as close to the original system configuration as possible.” 

www.mc.com/mediacenter/pressrelease.aspx?id=13474

MIL/AERO
By: dl

Northrop Grumman capped off last month with the early delivery of pods to the U.S. Navy for its Airborne Laser Mine Detection System. “The Northrop Grumman contractor team and our Navy partners are working hard to get these systems into the fleet as quickly as possible,” said Dan Chang, vice president of Northrop Grumman Maritime and Tactical Systems. ” According to Northrop, ALMDS and the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System are “critical tools with demonstrated technologies for getting our warfighters out of minefields. These two programs are key to the fielding of the entire mine detection and destruction capability to our warfighters.”

Northrop Grumman attributes early delivery to the “teamwork of its customer teammates and supplier base.” These include Areté Associates, which makes the receiver sensor assembly; Cutting Edge Optronics, which makes the high-powered laser transmitter; and Curtiss Wright, which makes the central electronics chassis. 

www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=189942

By: dl

Last week, Northrop Grumman announced that it has snagged a $577-million contract with the U.S. Army to design and develop an IBCS (integrated air and missile defense battle command system) over the next five years. IBCS, says the company, is based on a “non-proprietary, open architecture approach that establishes a network-centric system-of-systems solution for integrating sensors, weapons, and battle management command, control, communications and intelligence systems (C4ISR).” Its goal is to “integrate current and future air and missile defense systems to allow warfighters to use any sensor and any weapon to achieve mission objectives in a true open-architecture environment.”

Amoing the systems that will come under the IBCS umbrella are the Patriot, Surface-Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (SLAMRAAM), Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS), Improved Sentinel radar, and possibly Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS). Northrop Grumman partners in the program include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Harris, Schafer, nLogic Inc., Numerica, Applied Data Trends, Colsa, Space and Missile Defense Technologies, Cohesion Force, Millennium Engineering and Integration, RhinoCorp and Tobyhanna Army Depot.

www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=181672

By: dl

Helicopter Association International reports that Concurrent Technologies Corp. has selected CAE for an 11-month “demonstration/validation initiative to demonstrate the benefits of applying Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance (MFOQA) concepts to the full-flight simulator training environment for accident prevention and mishap reduction.” The U.S. Defense Safety Oversight Council is providing funding for this initiative through the National Defense Center for Energy and Environment.

The article cites Everett Smith, leader for MFOQA and safety technologies, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Readiness Programming and Assessment , as saying that the initiative has “significant potential” to improve flight safety. Moreover, it says, “Smith foresees the potential transitioning of the technology to not only C-40 operations in the United States Air Force but also across the Department of Defense.”

Mike Poole, CAE Flightscape executive director and chief investigator, is also cited to the effect that the results of the program ”should provide benefit to the commercial aviation training community as well.”

www.rotor.com/Default.aspx?tabid=510&newsid905=62749

By: dl

The U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) has selected Concurrent Technologies Corporation as the prime vendor for the Acquisition, Logistics and Administrative Domain of its Commercial Enterprise Omnibus Support Services program, a win worth an estimated $500 million.

MARCORSYSCOM’s mission, according to Concurrent, is to serve as the “principal agent for equipping the operating forces to accomplish their warfighting mission…[outfitting] Marines with literally everything they drive, shoot, and wear.” The company’s role will include program management, modeling and simulation, logistics training, supply chain management, training services and course development, acquisition logistics, and complex business assessments.

ctc.com/news/2009/09dec09_pr.cfm

By: dl

Military & Aerospace Electronics reports that Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has tapped Aitech Defense Systems Inc. to supply board-level components for the instrument avionics flight computer and command telemetry computer of the Ares I launch vehicle, specifically a CompactPCI SBC and Gbit Ethernet PMC.

MAE cites Randall Coffey, Ball Aerospace ARES IAU program manager, to the effect that “Using Aitech’s components has allowed the program to advance several notches up the technology scale and will save significant amounts of development costs.”

mae.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARTCL&PUBLICATION_ID=32&ARTICLE_ID=371668&C=ProAp&dcmp=rss

By: dl

The American Forces Press Service cites Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III as saying that “Pentagon officials are working to halt spiraling costs in the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter aircraft program, while ensuring competition for a new refueling tanker remains fair to all contenders.” According to the Service, the DOD is “exploring ways to get the [F-35] contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp., to share in the cost of scheduling delays.” The principals in the “contentious aerial tanker competition,” in turn, are Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co. What’s at stake here is a contract for 179 tankers to replace “the aging KC-135R Stratotanker fleet” and worth an estimated $35 billion. 

www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123180426

MIL/AERO
By: dl

The Wall St. Journal reports that Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq have successfully tapped into unencrypted live video feeds from Predator drones by using “$26 off-the-shelf software.” According to the Journal, evidence of the problem emerged as early as late 2008, and now, “Senior military and intelligence officials said the U.S. was working to encrypt all of its drone video feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but said it wasn’t yet clear if the problem had been completely resolved.”

“The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas,” according to the WSJ. “They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington’s growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html?mod=yhoofront

By: dl

Bittware announced that it has received “a large production order” from Northrop Grumman for its hybrid (FPGA + DSP) GT-3U-cPCI signal processing board. The board is being integrated into the U.S. Army’s STARLite (Small Tactical Airborne Radar) system, a synthetic aperture radar for finding moving ground targets that Bittware says provides “unprecedented situational awareness and target coordination for surveillance and protection of ground-based forces.” The system creates a single high-resolution image from multiple radar images, “with more detail than any prior system,” says Bittware, “ providing forces with an unprecedented view of their surrounding areas.”

www.bittware.com/media/press/pr.cfm?id=49

DESIGN WINS
By: dl

P-8A Poseidon: designed for the long haul

This month, Boeing gave the nod to Parvus for display systems for the P-8A Poseidon aircraft (www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/p8a/index.html). Parvus will be providing two display systems in particular for this versatile long-range aircraft : the FTD (Flight Test Display) and the ICCP (Instrumentation Crew station Control Panel).

Developed for the U.S. Navy, the long-range P-8A is tasked with an ambitious range of missions, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in “broad-area, maritime and littoral operations,” according to Parvus. P-8A test flights are slated to kick off this Fall, with “initial operational capability” (i.e. real flights) scheduled for 2013. 

www.parvus.com/News/newsdetails/09-10-13/Boeing_Contracts_with_Parvus_to_Supply_Display_Systems_for_P-8A_Poseidon.aspx