3DELRR. The Air Force could award its long-anticipated contract for its Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) as early as Oct. 6, a source tells Defense Daily. 3DELRR is the Air Force’s future main air defense radar, designed to detect and track hostile aircraft and missiles. It will replace the TPS-75 radar. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are bidding for 3DELRR, which is expected to be worth around $1.3 billion.
Fifth JHSV launched. Austal USA, the maker of the Navy’s Joint High Speed Vessels, launched the fifth copy of the vessel this past week at its yard in Mobile Ala., Naval Sea Systems Command says. The future USNS Trenton (JHSV-5) will now prepare for tests and trials ahead of delivery to Military Sealift Command next spring, NAVSEA says. “The JHSV program is benefitting from serial production,” says Capt. Henry Stevens, Strategic and Theater Sealift Program Manager, Program Executive Office, Ships. “Because of program maturity, design stability and a dedicated team of engineers and shipbuilders, we are launching this ship only seven months following the laying of her keel.” The JHSV are designed to rapidly move personnel and equipment in theater. They will be manned by 22 people
Back to the Fleet. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has returned the USS Springfield (SSN-761), a Los Angeles-class attack sub, back to the fleet one day ahead of schedule and $3 million under budget, NAVSEA says. The ship underwent a the equivalent of 24,000 man days of maintenance during the availability, which took place at Sub Base New London in Groton, Conn. “Portsmouth prides itself on first-time quality, and it couldn’t have been more evident than the work completed during this maintenance period,” Project Superintendent Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Luteran says. “The project team’s performance during the docking period enabled us to undock one week early and ride that success into the end game of the availability, returning Springfield to the fleet sooner than expected.”
New C4 for LCAC. The Navy is developing a new command, control, communications, computers & navigation suite for the amphibious fleet of Marine Crops landing craft known as LCAC, and recently completed critical design review for the new system. The new suite employs a modular and open scalable approach to improve sustainability and reduce procurement costs. “The critical design review is an important milestone,” says Senior Software Engineer Lisa Nowalk of Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD). “This technical review assessed the system final design and established the initial product baseline.”
Need Stable Funding. To make the Army’s vision of the soldier and squad as a system, it would help to have stable funding, says Maj. Gen. Robert Dyess, director of Force Development in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff G-8. What he hears from industry is that they can’t do long range planning because they can’t get a long range fiscal forecast. This leads to making up multiple POMs, ranging from a potentially large budget to a small one, Dyess says at a CSIS briefing Oct.2. When members of Congress ask him what they can do to help, he says he replies, “You can take sequestration off the books.” For the soldier enterprise, Dyess says,” “this portfolio looks at least steady with slight increases across the POM starting in ‘16, where we are in resourcing.” Meanwhile, the enterprise is becoming more integrated for efficiencies, for example, in PEO Soldier, which overseas almost everything the soldier wears or carries.
Router Partners. Raytheon and Poland’s TELDAT partner to develop and produce advanced militarized routers for the Patriot Air and Missile Defense system. TELDAT engineers and technicians will design, integrate and qualify this key communications networking technology for Patriot. Under the initial contract, the engineering teams from each company can begin design work and trade studies. “This effort demonstrates our continuous commitment to establish engineering and technology programs in Poland and to collaborate with Polish industry,” says Daniel Crowley, president, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems. “In addition, by producing this militarized router, TELDAT will have access to an export market among established users worldwide–an opportunity unique to the Patriot system.” Henryk Kruszynski, CEO of TELDAT, says “This contract is further proof of our engineering expertise that is leveraged by partners around the world.” Raytheon continues to pursue opportunities with Polish industry in preparation for the next generation missile-defense WISLA program.
License Agreement. Honeywell Aerospace signs a licensing agreement with India’s Tata Power Strategic Engineering Division (SED), so it can produce Honeywell’s Tactical Advanced Land Inertial Navigator, or TALIN, in India. This Honeywell-patented technology enables vehicles and artillery to navigate very precisely, even where GPS satellite guidance is not available, to increase troop safety and maximize mission success. Rahul Chaudhry, CEO, Tata Power SED Aya, says, “We are proud to have completed this technology sharing arrangement, which will offer the Indian Armed Forces a state-of-the-art inertial navigation technology, made in India and with local product support.”
Quick Change. The day after completing his tour as NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen opens a consultancy, Rasmussen Global, in Denmark, to give strategic advice to governments, organizations and corporations. The increasingly complex world, Rasmussen says, calls for “deep strategic thinking as well as broad public engagement.” His goal is to facilitate both. The firm advises clients on a wide range of issues such as international security, transatlantic relations, the European Union, and emerging markets.
CBP UAS Operations. Customs and Border Protection’s unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) fly more than 80 percent of their flight hours along border and coastal areas of the United States, according to a review of the flight program by the GAO. It says that CBP’s UAS operations are limited by its own policies and procedures and by Federal Aviation Administration requirements, and are consistent with Department of Homeland Security authorities. GAO says that between FY ’11 and April 2014, 57 percent of flight hours were on the Southwest border, 18 percent along the Northern border, 7 percent on the Southeast border, 9 percent in non-operational areas for training and disaster missions as permitted by FAA Certificates of Authorization, and 9 percent in other airspace. CBP owns nine Predator UAS.
Cyber Sharing Okayed. The Justice Department says it won’t challenge a proposal by cyber security firm CyberPoint International LLC to offer its cyber intelligence data-sharing software called TruSTAR, which allows users to share various threat, incident and attack data to develop solutions. The department says that its decision is in line with an antitrust policy statement it issued along with the Federal Trade Commission in April that antitrust concerns are not an impediment to the legitimate sharing of cyber security threat data within the private sector. TruSTAR allows members using the platform to share incident reports anonymously.