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|US Strategic Command, Norway sign agreement to share space services, data
|2017-04-14 23:04:23
Offutt AFB NB (AFNS) Apr 10, 2017 - US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) entered into an agreement with the Norwegian Ministry of Defense and Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries to share space situational awareness (SSA) services and information.
The arrangement will enhance awareness within the space domain and increase the safety of spaceflight operations. It was formalized in a memorandum of understanding signed by U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Clinton E. Crosier, the USSTRATCOM director of plans and policy, April 4, 2017, at the 33rd Annual Space Symposium, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Norwegian Army Maj. Gen. Odd-Harald Hagen, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense Department of Defense Policy and Long-Term Planning director general, and Arne Benjaminsen, Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries Research and Innovation Department director general, March 1, in Oslo, Norway.
"Maintaining freedom of navigation as an international norm is best approached via coalitions formed through an intersection of interests," said Crosier. "Space situational agreements are a prime example of this, helping to strengthen our alliances while at the same time increasing our resiliency."
"This situational space awareness memorandum of understanding is an important milestone for Norway's development as an active and responsible space nation in the High North and Arctic," said Hagen." This represents a practical and symbolic evidence of the strong relationship and continuing development between our two nations."
Norway joins 12 nations (the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, Israel, Spain, Germany, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium), two intergovernmental organizations (the European Space Agency and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) and more than 60 commercial satellite owner/operator/launchers already participating in SSA data-sharing agreements with USSTRATCOM.
"Besides defending this nation against all threats, we also have to protect the space environment so it is available to current and future generations everywhere," said U.S. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, the USSTRATCOM commander. "One of the ways we do that is through space situational awareness - to understand what is going on in space - so that our space systems can continue to provide national, military, civil, scientific and economic benefits to the global community."
SSA data-sharing agreements enhance multinational space cooperation and streamline the process for USSTRATCOM partners to request specific information gathered by USSTRATCOM's Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The information is crucial for launch support, satellite maneuver planning, support for on-orbit anomalies, electromagnetic interference reporting and investigation, satellite decommissioning activities and on-orbit conjunction assessments.
"We have worked hard over the last couple of years to make the case that we want space to be a domain that is available for everyone to use," said Crosier. "But to do that we need to understand what is going on in space and the best way to do that is through transparency - to share information - because just like in the air, land or sea domain, we are stronger when we operate together."
One of nine DoD unified combatant commands, USSTRATCOM has global strategic missions, assigned through the Unified Command Plan. They include strategic deterrence, space operations, cyberspace operations, joint electronic warfare, global strike, missile defense, intelligence, and analysis and targeting.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Европейское космическое агентство
|This 100-year-old explosion completely dwarfs the 'mother of all bombs' blast
|2017-04-14 02:04:00
On April 13, the US military dropped the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal on an ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan.
Nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs" (but officially called the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb), the 30-foot-long munition allegedly crushed a network of caves, tunnels, and bunkers dug into a remote mountainside.
The strike was akin to setting off about 11 tons of TNT — a school bus' weight worth of explosives.
However, the attack pales in comparison to an accidental explosion that rocked a coastal town nearly three decades before the first atomic bomb.
On the morning of December 6, 1917, a ship detonated in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, unleashing a blast equivalent to about 3,000 tons of TNT.
The resulting shockwave instantly killed more than 1,000 people, threw a cargo ship like a bath toy, and created a 50-foot-tall tidal wave.
This is the incredible and horrifying story of the Halifax Explosion: the largest human-made, non-nuclear blast in history.
By December 1917, World War I had been raging for three years. Halifax, located on Canada's east coast, served as an important port for shipping troops and supplies to Europe.
On December 6, a Norwegian cargo ship, the SS Imo, was departing Halifax on its way to New York. The ship was en route from the Netherlands to ferry supplies back to a war-ravaged Belgium.
Source: NASA Safety Center
At the same time, the SS Mont Blanc was bound to return to France carrying a host of highly explosive materials: 2,367 tons of picric acid, 62 tons of guncotton, 250 tons of TNT, and 246 tons of benzol in barrels below decks.
Source: NASA Safety Center
See the rest of the story at Business Insider Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США
|Defending US Space Assets from Foreign Attacks
|2017-03-29 21:03:42
Rendering of the SBIRS GEO spacecraft, part of the U.S.' infrared space surveillance system. Photo: Lockheed Martin.
Last December, Russia spooked military officials with the successful flight test of a new Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile, the PL-19 Nudol. At the time, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials expressed concern that the U.S.' own anti-satellite capabilities were not up to par, as the test was a grim reminder that foreign powers continue to develop new strategic weapons systems. Now, the Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force are collaborating to revamp the U.S.' approach to space defense in hopes of maintaining the country's long-standing position of military superiority.
According to Elbridge Colby, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), preparing U.S. space assets to defend against foreign attack was not a priority until recently. "This relative neglect was not a product of malign intent or foolishness," he wrote in a January 2016 report. "U.S. space assets enjoyed a degree of sanctuary for many years due to the significant technical challenges to being able to strike at or interfere with satellites." For satellite operators, this meant that expending capital to defend space assets "often seemed unnecessary and wasteful," and they chose instead to focus on maximizing performance and efficiency.
Furthermore, throughout the Cold War, the United States government felt assured that the Soviet Union would be hesitant to attack U.S. space architecture, as the Soviets feared a breakout of total nuclear war between the two superpowers. As Todd Harrison, director of the aerospace security project and defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) put it, "Deterrence held in space because nuclear deterrence held on Earth."
Nowadays, the military relies heavily upon satellites for everything from basic communications to GPS to precision-guided weapons. So the United States is in a vulnerable position, operating outdated satellites that are mostly undefended and unprotected, originally built with the mindset that space was a sanctuary. "That's not true anymore," Harrison said in an interview with Via Satellite.
He pointed out that foreign powers have recognized this vulnerability and have started to develop "more sophisticated counterspace capabilities that would deny us the use of our space assets" in response.
Back in 2007, China made waves after it blew up one of its own defunct satellites in orbit with a missile launched from Beijing. Familiar feelings of unease spread through the defense community after Russia's most recent flight test in December. However, Harrison argues that kinetic weapons such as ASAT missiles aren't really the biggest threat. "Things that blow up and produce debris are attention-grabbing, but it's a bit of a red herring," he said. Rather, Harrison is more concerned with the influx of inexpensive non-kinetic weapons — like GPS jammers, which can be difficult to defend against, "especially if they operate intermittently… or if they're operating in a noisy environment where there are lots of other emitters," he said.
While most GPS jammers only affect a small radius, Harrison says it's not difficult to ramp up the power and jam progressively larger areas. "It's publicly known, for example, that North Korea is using high-powered GPS jammers along their periphery. If you try to use a smartbomb reliant on GPS signal to know where it is, once the bomb enters that affected jamming area, it will lose its position," he said.
Not only are non-kinetic weapons like these relatively easy to use, their low cost has allowed them to proliferate in countries around the world, Harrison said. There have even been cited examples of insurgents using jammers to interfere with U.S. satellite communications in Iraq and Syria. "This is coming from a ragtag group of insurgents that aren't technologically sophisticated, don't have deep pockets, and don't have training or technical expertise," he said.
Dazzling is another low-cost form of non-kinetic weaponry, where an enemy blinds an imagery satellite by pointing a laser up at it from the ground. "If you're in a dark room and someone suddenly turns on a flashlight in your face, you're not going to be able to see anything. And if the flashlight is strong enough, it might permanently damage your eyes. You can do the same thing to a satellite," Harrison said.
Of course, there are ways to defend against these types of attacks. To avoid dazzling, satellite operators can install filters to block out specific wavelengths, or a fast-acting lens cover that can snap shut in an instant. The U.S. military also has a constellation of satellites specifically designed to circumnavigate jammers. "But these aren't foolproof defenses," Harrison said.
Over the next few years, Harrison expects the United States could see an increase in acts of aggression. Where things get sticky is these attacks might be incremental and perhaps ambiguous to the general public. "If someone were to dazzle one of our spy satellites, they wouldn't know if their attack was successful. We would know … but [military officials] certainly wouldn't want to make that information public. So how do you respond to that?" Harrison queried.
Unlike the naval forces, which have hundreds of years of tradition and custom guiding the way foreign bodies interact at sea, there are no such norms in space. The Outer Space Treaty in particular, signed by 105 countries including China and Russia, doesn't explicitly prohibit placing weapons in orbit. Not only is it difficult to gauge exactly what counts as a hostile act, then, it's also tricky to mount a response without betraying the secrets of one's own defensive capabilities.
According to reporter Kris Osborn of Scout Warrior, the Air Force and the Pentagon plan to invest $5.5 billion over the next five years as part of their efforts to improve the defense of U.S. space architecture. But Harrison is concerned policymakers are moving too slowly, and thinks it may take another decade before we see real applications such as orbiting more capable military satellites. "What's worrisome is we might not have a decade," he said.
The post Defending US Space Assets from Foreign Attacks appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Система Space Based Infrared System, Навигационная система США
|Military satcom RFI expected in next few weeks, Air Force announces
|2017-03-24 01:03:33
ARLINGTON, Va. – The Air Force is putting out a request for information within the coming weeks on satellite communications capabilities in the commercial sector, the service announced March 23.
The Air Force is currently working on an "analysis of alternatives" to study how it will meet the military's evolving satellite communications needs in coming years. The RFI is the only one currently planned for the length of the so-called Wideband AoA, though the Defense Department will hold quarterly roundtable meetings with industry leadership, said Air Force Col. George Nagy, a co-leader of the AoA and part of the office of principal DoD space adviser.
"We know that the pace of commercial satcom development has been very rapid in the last several years," Nagy said during a media roundtable at the Pentagon here. "The purpose of the RFI really is to make sure we capture, particularly from a technology standpoint, those potential enabling technologies that should be considered in whatever vein for the wideband enterprise."
The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California will publish the official RFI, Nagy said.
The most recent military communications satellite, Wideband Global Satcom 9, launched March 17. The launch of WGS-10 is planned for 2019. The AoA – currently funded for $7.8 million — is studying what comes next. It officially started in December, and is expected to run 12 to 18 months, Nagy said.
Norman Yarbrough, at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, said that all options are currently on the table, "whether industry would completely own the process and we would just accept the terminals and incorporate them into our weapons systems, to something like the other end of the spectrum, like we have WGS today where we basically own everything."
"We're looking at every model conceivable in between," said Yarbrough, co-leader of the analysis. "The good news from an AoA perspective, from an industry, from a warfighter perspective, is the AoA's too early to have ruled out anything
The RFI will also consider "contractual mechanisms that might be unique to a particular company or organization that might give us a more high value to meet our warfighter demands," he said.
Air Force officials will also evaluate the information private companies submit based on survivability and resiliency of space systems, and how well they could integrate with ground- and air-based communications, Yarbrough said.
The AoA is an opportunity for the Air Force to evaluate its communication systems outside of the high demand that nearly 15 years of continuous war have placed on sitcom, Nagy said.
"Commercial satcom is an important part of what DoD does on the wideband enterprise today," he said. "Much of that was driven by circumstance after 9/11 where it drove us to do things that might not have been planned prior to that. Now we're at an inflection point, a place where we can go ahead and more deliberately look at the functional capabilities that the wideband enterprise requires, what the appropriate mix of capabilities is to include commercial and international partners."Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Opportunity
|Lockheed Martin CEO: Trump 'absolutely' helped cut F-35's cost
|2017-03-22 07:03:23
Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson said that President Donald Trump "absolutely" made a difference in the savings and timelines for production of the fifth-generation fighter jet, the F-35 Lightning II.
"He helped accelerate that along, and I think he put a sharper focus on price and how we drive the price down," Hewson said in a media brief cited by DoD Buzz. "He absolutely did contribute to us getting to closure on that."
Trump originally criticized the program in December on Twitter, alleging "tremendous cost and cost overruns." The president's words sent Lockheed's shares tumbling 5% immediately after he tweeted.
The Pentagon's latest order includes 90 F-35s — 55 for the US and 35 for international partners — which is estimated to cost $8.5 billion, about a $728 million cost-reduction compared to the previous batch.
Trump has since given speeches where he took credit for the cuts in the F-35's price. "To save taxpayer dollars, I've already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government, saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes," said Trump during a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner on Tuesday night.
Critics pointed out that the program's costs would have been lowered regardless of Trump's involvement. "He's not responsible for the savings, they were already in the pipeline long before he came on the scene," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, in a Politifact report published last month.
The Pentagon is negotiating the next batch of F-35s — 120 of them — which are estimated to cost more than $10 billion, according to The Hill. Hewson says that Trump hasn't been involved in the negotiations, but said Lockheed Martin was "working well" with officials from the US Defense Department to reach a deal by 2017.
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NOW WATCH: Watch Trump surprise the first White House tour groupПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Lockheed Martin
|Пушка для самолета, или самолет для пушки? Штурмовик A-10 Thunderbolt II
|2017-03-15 10:03:56
текст judgesuhov
О рождении, жизни и «клинической» смерти американского штурмовика А-10 Тандерболт-2
После завершения ракетной эйфории шестидесятых и вьетнамского урока - подход и к «авиационной поддержке сухопутных войск» изменился и у нас и у них.
И если советский Су-25 разрабатывался в инициативном порядке... то американские военные, оказавшись прозорливее, учредили программу перспективного штурмовика A-X (Attack, Experimental - штурмовой, экспериментальный).
Наметившееся к концу 60-х годов советское танковое превосходство (Т-62 со 115-мм орудиями, Т-64 и БМП-1, прикрытые ЗСУ-23-4 «Шилка») надо было чем-то парировать и потому штурмовик получился преимущественно «противотанковым».
6 марта 1967 года запросы на проектирование перспективного штурмовика были направлены в 21 американскую авиастроительную фирму.
Видимо, вдохновившись концепцией советского «летающего танка» Ил-2, американские военные хотели видеть над полем боя живучую бронированную машину и требовали: скорость не менее 650 км/ч, высокую маневренность на малой высоте, возможность базирования на грунтовых аэродромах, наличие мощного пушечного вооружения (типа шестиствольной 20-мм пушки М61 «Вулкан») и большого числа узлов внешней подвески. В дальнейшем требования по скорости были еще более ужесточены (до 740 км/ч), что практически исключило из конкурса проекты самолетов с турбовинтовыми двигателями.
К 1970 году определились с «главным калибром» нового штурмовика. Им стала 30-миллиметровая семиствольная пушка GAU-8. Оценить габариты этой «дуры» можете ниже:
7х30-мм авиапушка General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger
О пушке GAU-8/A Avenger подробнее здесь.
Но, коротко:
Масса GAU-8 составляет 281 кг, всей пушечной установки — 1830 кг (включая систему подачи патронов и барабан с полным боекомплектом, вес которого - 933,4 кг). Длина пушки — 2900 мм, длина стволов — 2229 мм.
Боекомплект насчитывает 1350 патронов калибра 30х173 мм с алюминиевой гильзой..
Боекомплект пушки состоит из патронов с бронебойным подкалиберным снарядом с сердечником из обедненного урана PGU-14/B (масса снаряда 395 г, начальная скорость снаряда — 1013 м/c), и патронов с ОФЗ снарядом PGU-13/B (массой 378 г, начальная скорость - 1020 м/с). Патроны чередуются в соотношении четыре PGU-14/B к одному PGU-13/B.
Изначально пушка имела изменяемую скорострельность 2100 / 4200 выстрелов в минуту. Позже максимальное значение скорострельности 4200 в/мин ограничили значением 3900 в/мин [5]. На практике продолжительность огня пушки ограничена одно- или двухсекундным залпом (во избежание перегрева стволов и для увеличения их срока службы), с последующим минутным перерывом для охлаждения.
Срок службы блока стволов составляет 21 тыс. выстрелов. Цикл стрельбы начинается с раскрутки блока стволов от двух гидравлических приводов, питающихся от гидросистемы самолёта.
Система подачи патронов GAU-8/A беззвеньевая для уменьшения веса. Стреляные гильзы не выбрасываются наружу, а собираются обратно в барабан, чтобы не повредить обшивку самолёта во время стрельбы.
Интересно - сколько весит одна гильза? Патрон со снарядом PGU-13/B весит - 681 г, а сам снаряд при этом - 378 г... Если гильза весит, к примеру, грамм 250, то общий вес стреляных гильз перевалит за 330 кг. Немало для самолета. Какая-то странная «борьба за вес».
В финал конкурса вышли два проекта: YA-9A от «Нортроп» и YA-10A от «Фэрчайлд-Рипаблик».
Первый полет штурмовиков состоялся 10 мая 1972 г. - YA-10A и 30 мая 1972 г. - YA-9A.
Fairchild YA-10
Пока доводилась до ума монструозная GAU-8 (являющаяся одной из самых мощных авиационных артиллерийских систем) - на самолеты установили 20-миллиметровые шестиствольные пушки М61 «Вулкан».
Northrop YA-9A
В итоге, хотя YF-9A показал более высокую маневренность и разгонные характеристики, победу присудили YA-10A, как более технологичному и простому в обслуживании а так же, как имеющему лучшую топливную экономичность. Злые языки говорят, что не последнюю роль в выборе сыграло лобби, но так ли сильно было лобби или все же военные сознательно пожертвовали скоростью и маневренностью в угоду экономии (топлива и человекочасов) - остается загадкой.
Советские военные по имеющимся данным - считали более перспективным A-9.
Живучесть машины показали равную. Американцы их обстреливали из трофейных «Шилок», захваченных во время арабо-израильской войны. По их утверждению - задача стойкости штурмовика к поражению 23-мм снарядами советских зениток была решена.
В сентябре 1974 года взлетел YA-10A уже с GAU-8/A.
Испытания показали, что танки Т-62 успешно поражались в верхнюю и боковую проекции на дальности до 1200 м, попадания снарядов вызывали возгорание топлива и взрыв боеприпасов.
При этом точность стрельбы у семиствольного «Мстителя» получилась выше чем у М61 «Вулкан» (5 мрад. против 8 мрад.). При стрельбе на дальность 1220 м, 80 процентов всех снарядов попадали в круг радиусом 6,1 м.
В октябре 1975 года взлетел первый серийный А-10А. А с марта 1976 года самолеты стали поступать в ВВС, на авиабазу «Девис-Монтен» (да-да, это та самая, где расположено «самолетное кладбище»).
Серийное производство А-10 продолжалось до 1984 года. Серия составила 713 самолетов (6 предсерийных и 707 серийных).
Вся программа «простого и дешевого» обошлась в 4,44 млрд.$, а стоимость одной машины с учетом затрат на запасные части и обучение персонала составила 6,3 млн.$ в ценах 1978 г.
Есть и другие данные о стоимости: 7,3 млн.$ по курсу 1981 года (что приближалось к стоимости сверхзвукового истребителя третьего поколения). Вики так же дает цены: 4,1 млн.$ в ценах 1977 года, или 16,25 млн.$ в ценах 2016 года.
Что получилось
В момент появления на свет А-10 значительно превосходил все прочие современные боевые самолеты по уровню защищенности (советский Су-25 начали эксплуатировать в 1981 году). Летчика и важнейшие узлы «бородавочника» от поражения стрелковым оружием вражеских войск и снарядов МЗА калибром 20-23 мм защищали в общей сложности 1309 кг брони.
Самолет выполнен по нормальной схеме и представляет собой свободно-несущий цельнометаллический низкоплан с прямоугольным трапецевидным крылом большой площади и двухкилевым хвостовым оперением.
Крыло большой площади обеспечивает хорошую маневренность на малой скорости над полем боя и одновременно дает возможность нести большое количество вооружения.
Фюзеляж типа полумонокок. Форма его носовой части и конфигурация фонаря обеспечивают летчику хороший обзор в направлении вперед-вниз и в сторону. К центральной части фюзеляжа при помощи специальных пилонов крепятся гондолы двигателей. Такое расположение силовой установки позволяет получать более равномерный поток воздуха на входе в двигатели при различных углах атаки. Выхлопные газы ТРД проходят над плоскостями стабилизатора между килями, что снижает заметность самолета в ИК-диапазоне. Кроме того, сами двигатели с высокой степенью двухконтурности также являются довольно «холодными», что также существенно уменьшает ИК-сигнатуру.
В одноместной закрытой кабине, находящейся далеко впереди крыла, установлено катапультируемое кресло, обеспечивающее покидание самолета при нулевых значениях скорости и высоты. Защита кабины от наземного огня включает пуленепробиваемое лобовое стекло и «ванну» из титановых бронелистов (скрепленных болтами), которая защищает летчика от поражения 23-мм снарядами. Живучесть самолета повышена также за счет установки бронезащиты систем управления и топливопроводов к двигателям, самозатягивающихся топливных баков. Заявлено, что даже при потере одного из килей или одной из консолей стабилизатора - обеспечивается возможность управления полетом. В системе управления элеронами, рулями высоты и рулями направления использованы гидроусилители (при резервной ручной системе). Для уменьшения уязвимости в системе управления применена резервированная тросовая проводка, при этом усилия на ручке управления регулируются посредством компенсаторов, управляемых летчиком.
Шасси - трехопорное с передней стойкой. Его база равна 5,25 м, а колея 5,4 м. Основные стойки - одноколесные, с давлением в пневматиках 4 кгс/см2, что позволяет использовать штурмовик с полевых аэродромов, имеющих травяное покрытие. Они крепятся к наружной части центроплана и убираются в специальные крыльевые гондолы поворотом вперед. При этом колеса на 1/3 выступают за обводы гондол, что облегчает аварийную посадку при убранном шасси. Носовая стойка, также имеющая одно колесо, из-за пушки GAU-8 смещена вправо от оси симметрии самолета на 0,4 м.
Холодная встреча
В ВВС США самолет поначалу встретили не очень и даже нарекли «Бородавочником» (Warthog), не помогла отсылка к легендарному «Тандерболту» (наши, к слову, его прозвали «Чертов крест»).
Вылезли проблемы при стрельбе из «главного калибра» - недогоревшие частицы пороха (из попадающих в двигатель пороховых газов) откладываются на лопатках вентилятора и компрессора двигателя. Установили, что тысяча выстрелов из пушки (а это меньше разового боекомплекта орудия) - снижает тягу двигателя на 1%, а общее снижение тяги с настрелом доходило до 10%. [2]
Для обеспечения более полного сгорания метательного состава внутри стволов (чтобы исключить догорание пороховых газов перед самолетом) к нему добавляется азотнокислый калий. Эта добавка либо вводится в метательный состав, либо в отдельном пластмассовом пакетике вкладывается в патрон.
Кроме того — двигатели самолета получили запальные устройства, воспламеняющие недогоревшие частицы пороха.
Помимо технических были предусмотрены и организационные мероприятия:
- разрешена стрельба из пушки только короткими одно-двухсекундными очередями (как было указано выше - это еще и увеличивало срок жизни стволов);
- обязательная промывка двигателя после каждых 2600-3000 выстрелов мыльным раствором для удаления сажи с лопаток вентилятора и компрессора.
Для перезарядки пушки требуется специализированный наземный комплекс ALS (Ammunition Loading System). Или еще говорят – несколько человек персонала и один грузовик [3].
Специальный комплекс ALS (Ammunition Loading System) для перезарядки GAU-8
Но и помимо пушки были проблемы.
В ходе эксплуатации штурмовиков в климатических условиях Европы выявились недостаточные возможности навигационного оборудования А-10А. В результате на последних 283 серийных самолетах, выпускавшихся с 1980 года, установили относительно простую инерциальную навигационную систему ASN-141, обеспечивающую, тем не менее, возможность более уверенного применения А-10А в сложных погодных условиях, на малых высотах. Тогда же самолет получил и радиовысотомеры малых высот APN-194, в дополнение к барометрическим.
Неудовлетворительные способности одноместного самолета вести боевые действия в условиях центральной Европы вызвали к жизни идею специализированного всепогодного и всесуточного варианта A-10N/AW, которому были бы нипочем длинные зимние ночи, снег, дождь, туман, низкая облачность (все эти «европейские сложности»). Был сделан вывод, что с этим может справиться только экипаж из двух человек.
В 1977 году фирма «Фэрчайлд Рипаблик», не дожидаясь заказа ВВС, приступила к созданию такого самолета. В апреле 1978 года началось и финансирование «ночного всепогодного» варианта штурмовика А-10.
Помимо проблем с навигацией и полетами на малых высотах в условиях европейского театра военных действий, были проблемы с поиском целей (привет ребятам, высмеивающим прицеливание на Су-25). Состав оборудования позволяет поражать наземные цели только в простых метеоусловиях.
Использование управляемого вооружения с лазерными гловками самонаведения (ГСН) было возможно только при внешней подсветке. Для обнаружения подсвеченных лазером целей справа от носовой стойки шасси на специальном пилоне установлен контейнер AAS-35 «Пейв Пенни». Система способна обнаруживать цели, подсвеченные лазером, установленным на земле или на других летательных аппаратах, на расстоянии до 24 км.
Обнаружение оптически контрастной цели производится головкой самонаведения ракеты, находящейся на подвеске под самолетом. Теоретически оно возможна на дальности до 11-13 км, однако в реальных боевых условиях, как правило, не превышает 4-6 км (что связано с погодой, дымами над полем боя и т. п.). При этом телевизионная «картинка» воспроизводится на экране в кабине летчика. После ручного сопровождения цели в течение 4-8 секунд головка «запирается» на цель, переходя на режим самонаведения, производится пуск ракеты.
Кабина штурмовика А-10А
Потому - доработки самолета продолжались.
Почти сразу же после начала эксплуатации, в конце 70-х, решили оснастить самолет разрабатываемой в то время контейнерной оптоэлектронной навигационно-прицельной системой LANTIRN. Планировалось с 1987 года оснащать контейнерами штурмовики А-10 и истребители F-15, F-16, но... впоследствии решили, что штурмовик
В 1986 году А-10А получил ракеты «Воздух-воздух» с ИК ГСН AIM-9 «Сайдуиндер» для самообороны.
Самолет продолжали дорабатывать и далее. Например впоследствии еще переработали автомат выброса ЛТЦ (ложных тепловых целей, они же «инфракрасные ловушки»).
Но успешное применение в ходе войны в Персидском заливе (1991) самолет «реабилитировало».
Проверка боем
Впервые в бой А-10 пошли во время войны в Персидском заливе 1991 года, где они были задействованы в операции по освобождению Рас-эль-Хафджи.
За день заявили об уничтожили А-10 24-х танков противника, но при этом потеряли один самолет. Была выявлена низкая эффективность штурмовиков при действиях в ночное время суток. Мало того - летчик одного из самолетов A-10 не смог опознать БМП американских морпехов, приняв восьмиколесный LAV-25 за иракский БТР, и уничтожив его ракетой «Мейверик» вместе с экипажем (погибло 7 американцев).
Через месяц досталось союзным разведчикам на легких танках FV107 Scimitar, двигавшихся под британским флагом. По свидетельству Стивена Геррарда, водителя головной машины - колонна была расстреляна в два захода с 500 метров. Британцы потеряли 6 человек - один убитый и 5 раненных (по другим данным - 9 человек). [9]
FV107 Scimitar
Американцы остались довольны эффективностью самолета и его рекордной боеготовностью (95,7 %) среди остальных самолетов фронтовой авиации. Здесь же он впервые продемонстрировал свою живучесть.
По заявлениям американских пилотов, «Тандерболты» уничтожили более 1000 иракских танков, 2000 других единиц военной техники и 1200 стволов артиллерии; даже если принять во внимание, что первоначальные оценки понесённого иракской армией ущерба были завышены, A-10 всё равно оказался в числе наиболее эффективных американских самолётов этой войны, по количеству уничтоженных танков вдвое превзойдя специализированный противотанковый вертолёт AH-64 «Апач» (у последнего было заявлено 500 уничтоженных танков, хотя и часов налета - в 6 раз меньше). Правда, как показали послевоенные американские исследования только третья часть из заявленной уничтоженной техники была подтверждена [8].
На счету А-10 так же два вертолета, сбитых огнем из пушки.
Во время охоты за пусковыми установками оперативно-тактических ракет «Скад» заявляли, что A-10 за одну ночь уничтожили 6 стационарных, 3 временные и 3 мобильные пусковые установки. Как показало послевоенное исследование ни одной ракетной установки не было уничтожено. [8]
Всего в кампании участвовали 144 самолета, совершившие 8077 боевых вылетов. За время боевых действий в Персидском заливе было сбито 7 штурмовиков [11] и повреждено 15.
Если при действиях в светлое время суток штурмовики оказались весьма эффективным противотанковым средством, то ночью и в условиях большой запыленности и задымленности выявилась относительно низкая эффективность А-10А. Самолеты были неспособны осуществлять поиск и опознавание техники на поле боя. Из-за отсутствия бортовых телевизионных и тепловизионных систем поиск цели осуществлялся посредством головки самонаведения самой ракеты, имеющей узкое поле зрения и недостаточную дальность. [1]
Затем А-10 были применены в 1995 году в операции «Дэнни Флайт» в Югославии (при ударах по боснийским сербам). Они работали в условиях подавленной ПВО, но особенных успехов не показали.
«...Вечером удары продолжились, теперь в атаках участвовали американские А-10 и голландские F-16, причем их основным оружием были ПТУР «Мейверик». Ночью свои цели нашли «ганшипы» АС-130Н из 16-й эскадрильи специального назначения. Несмотря на многочисленные победные реляции потери сербов в боевой технике были минимальные. К примеру уже после многодневных атак с воздуха они располагали пятьюдесятью (!) танками.« [12]
Как в ходе операции «Решительная сила», так и ранее, в середине 90-х годов (в рамках операции в Боснии) были зафиксированы несколько случаев поражения штурмовиков А-10А «Тандерболт-2» управляемыми ракетами с ИК ГСН. Поэтому американское военное ведомство было вынуждено провести дополнительные испытания автоматов выброса инфракрасных ловушек (ИКЛ) и дипольных отражателей. Данная система действовала в соответствии с предъявляемыми к ней требованиями. Однако параметры ее работы определялись и программировались наземными специалистами и часто не соответствовали реально существовавшим угрозам. Автоматы отстрела ЛТЦ и дипольных отражателей были доработаны. [13]
С 2001 года A-10 принимают участие в операции международной коалиции в Афганистане. Некоторое время они базировались на аэродроме Баграм под Кабулом.
С 2003 года американцы «освобождают» Ирак (операция «Свобода Ираку»). В марте-апреле 2003 года в боевых действиях принимали участие в общей сложности 60 штурмовиков A-10. Один самолёт был сбит 7 апреля в районе Багдадского международного аэропорта. Другой «Тандерболт», капитана Ким Кэмпбелл, был серьезно поврежден (повреждён один двигатель, отказ гидравлической системы, сотни пробоин в крыле, оперении и фюзеляже самолёта).
В первые дни вторжения в Ирак Тандерболты снова открывали огонь по своим. Известно, как минимум, два случая.
В первом из них «Тандерболты» из-за ошибки авианаводчика морской пехоты атаковали подразделение морских пехотинцев во время сражения за Насирию, официально в результате атаки А-10 погиб один морпех... однако в ходе сражения погибло 18 морпехов и лишь 8 из них погибли однозначно от огня противника. [10]
Второй инцидент более известен - это атака парой А-10 28 марта 2003 года колонны британских БМП. Штурмовики, отработав по колонне, повредили 4 боевые машины и убили одного британца. Есть даже видео.
Неоднократно встречал упоминание об атаке А-10 под Эн-Наджафом 27 марта 2003 года в условиях плохой видимости колонны американской бронетехники, в ходе которой был уничтожен 1 танк M-1 Абрамс, 4 боевые машины и убито и ранено до 50 человек... Но подтверждения - не нашел.
Урановый дождь
Как мы помним - основным боеприпасом пушки GAU-8 (80% боекомплекта) были бронебойные снаряды PGU-14/B. Сообщается, что 148 штурмовиков, базировавшихся в Саудовской Аравии, выполнили 8077 боевых вылетов, выпустив в общей сложности 783514 снарядов PGU-14/B (каждый снаряд содержит около 300 гр. обедненного урана).
Получается, что во время операции «Буря в пустыне» штурмовики А-10 ВВС США израсходовали над Персидским заливом «подарили» арабам около 259 тонн обедненного урана. [4]
По итогам боевого применения А-10 показал себя как надежная рабочая лошадка. Если еще учесть, что стоимость его летного часа значительно ниже других ударных самолетов ВВС США (к примеру F-16 и F-15) - становится понятным почему он глянулся американским военным.
Модификации А-10
A-10N/AW (YA-10B) (1979 г.)
Всепогодный и всесуточный («N/AW» - Night/ Adverse Weather) двухместный вариант штурмовика, появившийся по результатам неудовлетворительной работы А-10А в Европе.
Первый полет прототипа нового самолета состоялся 4 мая 1979 года. Вторая кабина размещалась над отсеком с боекомплектом для пушки. Высота вертикального оперения была увеличена на 510 мм. Пилотирование могло осуществляться из обоих кабин. Из-за кабины второго летчика пришлось урезать боезапас пушки, укоротив ее барабанный магазин с 492 до 408 мм. Вес пустого самолета увеличился на 680 кг.
Наиболее серьезному усовершенствованию подверглось БРЭО самолета, в состав которого была введена БРЛС Вестингауз WX-50, расположенная в подвесном подфюзеляжном контейнере. Станция, созданная на базе метео-РЛС, решала три основные задачи - осуществляла картографирование, обнаруживала малоразмерные наземные цели, а также обеспечивала полет в режиме огибания рельефа местности. В другом подфюзеляжном контейнере, расположенном на параллельном пилоне, находилась тепловизионная станция Тексас Инструменте AN/AAR-42, совмещенная с лазерным дальномером-целеуказателем Ферранти 105. Опто-электронные системы и БРЛС не были объединены в комплекс и управление ими не было автоматизированным (по мнению американцев для небольших скоростей полета штурмовика последнего и не требовалось). Машину оснастили, также, ИНС Литтон LN-39, модифицированным ИЛС фирмы «Кайзер» и двумя монохромными индикаторами на ЭЛТ в задней кабине.
В серийном самолете для улучшения аэродинамики (и освобождения подфюзеляжных пилонов) БРЛС и оптоэлектронные датчики должны были разместить в гондолах шасси.
Построен один прототип, проходивший летные испытания в 1979-1982 годах (выполнено более 300 полетов).
В итоге военные от самолета отказались.
ОА-10А (1987 г.)
Одноместный самолёт воздушного контроля («О» - Observation).
В конце 1980-х, начале 1990-х часть штурмовиков переклассифицировали в самолеты воздушного контроля ОА-10А, используемые для передового авианаведения и поисково-спасательных работ.
При этом была демонтирована пассивная лазерная система «Пейв Пенни» и снята часть бронирования, что позволило несколько облегчить самолет и улучшить его летно-технические характеристики.
Самолет предназначался исключительно для взаимодействия с сухопутными войсками и применяется в боевых целях только в исключительных случаях, и тем не менее - имел потери.
Есть мнение, что не все ОА-10 проходили переоборудование - а на роль ОА-10 была также назначена часть строевых А-10А вылетавших на задания в соответствующей конфигурации вооружения (пара ракет В-В AIM-9 для самообороны и блок НУРСов со световыми трассерами для маркировки наземных целей).
В роли ОА-10 успело «поработать» более сотни самолетов.
A-10C (2006 г.)
Модификация, появившаяся в результате модернизации имевшихся А-10А по программе РЕМ (Precision Engagement Modification).
Помимо серьезного обновления БРЭО (многофункциональные 14-см цветные дисплеи, новая СУО, позволяющая применять контейнеры разведки и целеуказания типа Litening II, Sniper XR и оружие наводящееся по GPS а также новые системы РЭП AN/ALQ-131 и AN/ALR-69), ручек управления от истребителей (с реализацией концепции HOTAS) на самолете усилили конструкцию крыла (устраняя дефекты, выявленные у парка А-10 в 2008 году).
На 2016 год в строю оставалось 287 самолетов в модификации A-10C.
A-10PCAS (проект)
Беспилотный вариант штурмовика А-10. Разработан компаниями Raytheon и Aurora Flight Sciences в рамках проекта DARPA Persistent Close Air Support.
Предполагаемый внешний вид QA-10 (A-10PCAS)
Дальнейшего развития проект «беспилотного А-10» не получил.
Непростая судьба
Первоначально новый штурмовик вызвал большой интерес и в ряде стран-союзников США. Возможность его приобретения обсуждалась правительствами Англии, Австралии, Бельгии, Норвегии, ФРГ, Южной Кореи и Японии.
Но... никто из них так самолет и не купил.
Возможно - сказалась высокая цена самолета, и если бы А-10 был подешевле... то его бы и приобрели. А так специализированный штурмовик оказался слишком дорогостоящим удовольствием и «союзники» предпочли более многофункциональные многоцелевые самолеты (в основном модификации - F-15, F-16).
С вооружения - снять!
Не просто судьба А-10 сложилась и на Родине. В 2014 году самолет решили с вооружения снять.
Сперва ВВС США решили сэкономить на Тандерболтах... Конгресс противился.
Затем военные заявили, что при выделяемых деньгах им придется либо сократить А-10, либо уменьшить количество F-16... и как бы перевалили этим решение на плечи Конгресса, который в части количества денежных знаков для ВВС остался непреклонен. С тех пор началась катавасия вокруг Тандерболта.
Командование ВВС США приступило к выработке требований к новому штурмовому самолету, «который должен будет заменить устаревшие A-10 Thunderbolt II» объявив новый конкурс A-X2. Они снова хотят «простой и дешевый» самолет и поглядывают, то в сторону «СуперТукано», то на Cessn-овский «Скорпион», то на AT-6 «Wolverine» . Ну хоть не Air Tractor AT-802, перепродаваемый L-3 Technologies.
Морпехи, например, уже настолько обезумили от безнадеги, что собирались использовать для непосредственной поддержки войск «вооруженные» конвертопланы Bell V-22 Osprey! Лучше уж и правда,
В итоге решили, что А-10 пока еще поживет (до 2022 года), а месяц назад намерение пока оставить А-10 в строю (правда уже до 2021 года) подтвердил начштаба ВВС США генерал Дэвид Гольдфейн.
Хотя «дальновидных» планов все-таки заменить его недобомбардировщиком истребителем F-35 - не оставляют (они еще до сих пор не определились «способен ли F-35 стать полноценной заменой A-10» и намерены провести сравнительные испытания этих самолетов на время реакции и точность ударов).
Ключевые слова: Навигационная система США, DARPA, Raytheon, МАИ
|Bridenstine calls upon House appropriators to fund military space programs and FAA commercial space office
|2017-03-10 03:03:49
WASHINGTON — Congressman Jim Bridenstine, an Oklahoma Republican who is among the leading candidates to be the next NASA administrator, called upon his fellow lawmakers Thursday to support the Pentagon as it adapts to a radically shifting landscape in orbit.
Bridenstine, in appearances between two subcommittees of the House Appropriations Committee, also called on appropriators to fully fund the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST).
In testimony in a "members' day" session of the defense appropriations subcommittee, where committee members receive testimony from fellow House members, Bridenstine made the case for funding a range of military space programs from responsive launch to secure communications.
"In the space domain, the Department of Defense must develop, acquire, operate, and sustain space capabilities in fundamentally new ways," Bridenstine said.
"Our current space systems are stovepiped, vulnerable, and expensive," he continued. "Our next-generation space systems must be integrated, resilient, and affordable."
Bridenstine's testimony comes at a time when the nation's capital is anticipating the release of a high-level "blueprint" budget proposal for fiscal year 2018. President Donald Trump is expected to ask for an increase in military spending, though there's little certainty on how much of that extra funding will find its way to space programs.
The congressman urged his colleagues to support several major defense programs ranging from weather to launch.
The U.S. is falling behind on launch capabilities, Bridenstine said, adding that he would like to see at least $30 million for the Air Force fund responsive launch demonstrations.
"It's truly disgraceful when U.S. companies, and U.S. astronauts, must hitch a ride on Russian rockets only to see Moscow use the fare to fund its military space programs," he said in his prepared remarks. "The dearth of U.S. launch capacity is forcing our most innovative space companies to launch overseas on foreign rockets."
Congress needs to support the Pentagon's Space Test Program, which is used by the military to test out innovative concepts, Bridenstine said.
"An army of inexpensive, responsive rockets could rapidly populate and reconstitute military satellites," he noted.
Another of the major efforts currently underway in the Air Force is the study of military satellite communications to draft a way forward following the launch of the last planned Wideband Global Satcom satellites. Bridenstine said the subcommittee should appropriate at least $50 million for research, development, testing and evaluation for the service's pilot program to demonstrate follow-on capabilities.
"Will DoD replace one stovepiped, vulnerable, and expensive architecture with another? Or will DoD open the aperture and consider integrated, resilient, and affordable alternatives?" Bridenstine questioned. "This [analysis of alternatives] will shape the answer and the SATCOM Pilot Program will inform the process. Dedicated funding is needed to demonstrate promising technologies and commercial business models such as managed services."
It would be a large boost over the $10 million House approprators gave the program in its fiscal year 2017 spending bill last year, he said, but the funding can help the Pentagon to find a better way to buy commercial satcom services than the current "annual spot market leases" which are "the most inefficient way possible."
Likewise, Bridenstine said he wants to see more support for securing communications, an effort dubbed the Protected Tactical Service.
"Commercial satcom systems, the kinds that deliver DirecTV and internet from space, have a massive throughput advantage over government systems, but generally lack the most robust military-grade protection," he said. "Protected Tactical Service helps 'level the playing field' by developing standardized protected waveforms and modems usable on both government and commercial systems. Bringing commercial up to military-grade protection moves us closer to a unified Satcom architecture."
In a further effort to unify satellite architecture, Bridenstine voiced his support for the Air Force's Enterprise Ground Services, a program that is trying to develop a standardized ground station for satellite control. Leaders at Air Force Space Command have long advocated for more interconnectedness between ground terminals, noting that some operations floors can have close to 20 unique control systems.
The congressman also said he would like to see $10 million in the budget for the Air Force's follow-on for weather systems and efforts to purchase weather data from commercial services.
Funding FAA's commercial space office
In a separate appearance before the transportation subcommittee's members' day, Bridenstine advocated for funding for FAA/AST. "What we need to within the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation is to make sure they are adequately funded for all the upcoming launches," he said. That office regulates commercial launches by U.S. companies and also promotes the industry.
AST requested $19.8 million for fiscal year 2017, which appropriators granted in a bill that failed to become law. The agency is operating under a continuing resolution that funds it at the rate of its 2016 appropriations, $17.8 million, a level that FAA officials said last month is making it difficult for their office to make ends meet.
Bridenstine said that AST should receive a significant budget increase in 2018. "I'm requesting that the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation… be funded to the tune of $23 million," he said.
Bridenstine himself, meanwhile, received a vote of confidence from Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA.
"I strongly support his application to become the new NASA administrator," Culberson said at the transportation subcommittee hearing. "Jim would do a superb job with that position and I strongly express my endorsement and support for your work. I hope to see you become the new NASA administrator and I look forward to helping you in that role."
Jeff Foust contributed to this article.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: DirecTV, Inc. , Космическое агентство США
|MacDonald Dettwiler & DigitalGlobe, the Worldview Legion Constellation, Canada's RADARSATs & America's "Deep State"
|2017-02-28 02:02:00
By Chuck Black
After a whirlwind romance, which included a truncated public courtship lasting barely a week, Richmond BC based (officially, and for now at least) MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) has announced its intent to purchase US based satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe Inc. (DGI) for about $3.10Bln CDN, in what some have categorized as "the biggest deal yet in a fast-consolidating earth-imaging satellite market."
As outlined in the February 24th, 2017 MDA press release, "MDA to Acquire DigitalGlobe, Creating Industry Leader in End-to-End Space Systems, Earth Imagery and Geospatial Solutions," MDA will acquire DGI for $35 US ($46 CDN) per share "in a combination of cash and stock."
The complete transaction provides an equity value of approximately $3.1Bln CDN with an enterprise value of $4.7Bln CDN for DGI, but also includes $1.6Bln CDN in DGI net debt, which will be taken over by MDA.
The transaction has been "unanimously" approved by the boards of directors of both companies and is expected to close in the second half of 2017, contingent on stockholder and regulatory approval.
Those regulatory hoops are perhaps the most interesting. As outlined in the press release:
Even better, at least according to the press release, "MDA undertook a corporate reorganization in 2016 that included the formation of SSL MDA Holdings, the US. Operating Company of MDA, under the guidance and approval of the US Department of Defense (DoD)," in order to gain access to US military contracts.
That re-org was discussed in the October 7th, 2016 post, "Iconic MacDonald Dettwiler is Now SSL MDA Holdings, a US Based Company with a Canadian Subsidiary."
Of course, there are synergies and useful components to the latest deal.
At the very least, this re-org will make it difficult for any company not owned by Delaware incorporated SSL MDA Holdings to effectively bid on the upcoming Worldview Legion Constellation.
As outlined in the February 24th, 2017 Space News post, "In buying DigitalGlobe, MDA ensures SSL will build just-disclosed WorldView Legion constellation," before going public with their plans to merge, "Canada's MDA Corp. and DigitalGlobe were already working together on a next-generation imaging constellation called WorldView Legion they say will be able to revisit some locations on Earth up to 40 times in a day."
But there are concerns.
The investment community is concerned over the total amount of net debt created as a result of the transaction.
Net debt to operating earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for this deal, often called "net leverage" will work out to approximately 4.1, which is substantially higher than the traditional MDA corporate average of around 2.5.
According to MDA CEO Howard Lance, MDA expects to be able to reduce net leverage back down to 3.0 between now and 2020, a period of three years.
Since the net debt to EBITDA ratio is also an estimate of how many years it would take for a company to pay back its debt given no change in conditions, the implication is that MDA is planning only a slow payback of its outstanding debts, and may even be intending to reduce net leverage by growing the company, instead of paying down debts.
And it won't be the last re-org. According to Lance, "'the ultimate parent of DGI" will be incorporated in the US before the end of 2019.
But Wait! There's More!
As outlined in the February 24th, 2017 Access Wire press release "SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Announces an Investigation Concerning Whether the Sale of DigitalGlobe, Inc. to MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. is Fair to Shareholders - DGI," at least one US based law firm, NY based Levi & Korsinsky, LLP, has offered to give "shareholders a voice," in the upcoming merger.
But Levi and Korsinsky lawyers are also exploring or currently engaged in class actions on behalf of shareholders against a variety of companies including Endologix, Inc., Cemtrex, Inc., Inotek Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the Board of Graña y Montero and even FaceBook.
So any reports of potential litigation, especially from this particular firm, should be taken with a grain of salt.
The deal also highlights Canadian government security concerns related to the RADARSAT-2 and the upcoming RADARSAT Constellation mission (RCM) since compliance with US regulations "under the guidance and approval of the US Department of Defense (DoD)," opens up Canadian based programs to US regulations and oversight, even when the contracts are undertaken with the Canadian government using Canadian facilities.
In essence, MDA's new corporate structure puts Canadian civilian and military projects at substantial risk when US concerns perceive a need, or even a simple business focused competitive advantage, to US interests.
Here's a recent example.
As outlined in the March 30th, 2001 Globe and Mail post, "Bilateral spat causing delays, costing millions," RADARSAT-2 was once at the core of a US/ bilateral disagreement relating to its capabilities (which were considered to be equal or better than anything the US was capable of generating at that time) and the potential uses of the satellite data.
Those concerns led the US government to cancel the original NASA launch. A second launch from California was first postponed and then cancelled as well. New components needed to be sourced from non-US based suppliers when the original US suppliers cancelled orders. All told those disruptions and delays led to hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns.
Thank goodness MDA, the prime contractor for RADARSAT-2, was then Canadian owned. Otherwise the program would have completely derailed. RADARSAT-2 was eventually launched on December 14th, 2007, almost seven years late, from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The September 2009 Canadian Space Agency (CSA) document on the "Evaluation of the RADARSAT-2 Major Crown Project," stated explicitly that:
The 2009 CSA evaluation also noted that, while the RADARSAT-2 program was "aimed to develop the (Earth observation) EO sector," and used much the same methodology as was used in the 1970's to grow the Canadian commercial satellite communications sector, the various delays to the program gave other competitors time to generate alternative offerings and prevented Canada from dominating the marketplace.
Rumour has it that the current Federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is collaborating with US government and MDA executives in the US and Canada to facilitate US re-incorporation and restructuring to take advantage of US military and government opportunities and benefit MDA shareholders.
If so, they are doing so at the expense of MDA's Canadian employees and the Canadian public at large. The government should be held accountable and a public debate should be held.
Otherwise, our Canadian space industry is going to end up either moving to the US, or working in retail.
RADARSAT Constellation is currently scheduled for launch sometime in 2018. Here's hoping that it doesn't end up as part of "'the ultimate (US based) parent of DGI" which MDA CEO Lance has promised for 2019.
The post MacDonald Dettwiler & DigitalGlobe, the Worldview Legion Constellation, Canada's RADARSATs & America's "Deep State" appeared first on BlogsCanada.ca.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США, ATK, Космическое агентство Канады, MDA
|Experts weigh in on what a bigger Pentagon budget should mean for space
|2017-02-21 21:02:14
This article originally appeared in the Feb. 13 issue of SpaceNews magazine.
U.S. President Donald Trump promised "a great rebuilding of the armed services" when he spoke at the Pentagon in January, ordering newly sworn-in Defense Secretary James Mattis to work with the White House Office of Management and Budget on a "military readiness emergency budget amendment" for boosting defense spending this year.
Trump gave Mattis and OMB until the end of April to thoroughly revise the Pentagon's 2018 budget proposal, which was drafted under a different commander-in-chief.
During his campaign, Trump called for more airplanes, more ships and more soldiers, but said little about bolstering the space capabilities these forces rely upon.
While we wait to see how space fares in the Pentagon's revised spending plans, SpaceNews reached out to leaders in the space field and asked them:
If the Defense Department increases spending on military space, what programs or areas would you like to see that extra funding go towards?
What follows is what they had to say. Responses have been edited for length.
Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), House Armed services strategic forces subcommittee
I would like to see increased defense space funding in five areas:
– Protected Tactical Service: The PTS program will develop and deploy a more robust satellite communications waveform which can be integrated into military and commercial systems. More funding is needed to accelerate the development, testing, and deployment.
– Enterprise Ground Services: Right now, mission ground systems are stovepiped, thus preventing seamless information sharing and common operating pictures. They don't "talk" to each other, and operators are trained to use individual systems. EGS is a new initiative to break down those stovepipes.
– Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center: Contested space requires unity of effort from the defense and intelligence communities. JICSpOC is a critical effort to fuse space situational awareness across the enterprise and coordinate responsive actions.
– Satcom Pilot Program: It is important that the ongoing [Wideband Global Satcom] Follow-on Analysis of Alternatives help ensure that the future satcom architecture fully leverage commercial systems and services. The Satcom Pilots can inform the AoA by demonstrating leap-ahead commercial capabilities. These pilots need a substantial increase in funding so DoD can select and start multiple projects.
– Space-based missile defense sensor layer: Employing tracking sensors in space could provide global and persistent coverage and contribute significantly to interceptor performance. The space-based layer would also contribute to space situational awareness. We need to move quickly from demonstration to operational capabilities. This is a long-overdue effort.
U.S. Army Maj. Jamie Davis, Defense Department spokesman
The president and secretary of defense directed the department to review future funding priorities. Anything we would provide at this time would be pre-decisional, and thus we do not want to get ahead of these reviews.
Space capabilities remain foundational to our way of life, not only for the United States, but for the international community at large. From a military perspective, space today is fundamental to every single military operation that occurs on the planet. It's ever-present in the corners of the world where we operate, ensuring that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are never alone. Every operation they conduct, from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to major combat operations, is critically dependent on space capabilities. That is why the U.S. must maintain and evolve our space-based capabilities, and why we will continue to advocate for its prioritization.
Jim Simpson, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Aerojet Rocketdyne
One of the things we've been determining in space is how do we become more resilient? A lot of the activities that people have been looking at is how do we take the ways we are doing certain programs of record, and can we break those down into smaller systems and be able to provide a larger capability to reconstitute?
Philip Harlow, President and COO, XTAR
I think DoD's headed down an absolutely critical path of space situational awareness. Intelsat reported last year that [another] satellite crept up and parked itself near one of theirs. We were unable to really determine what it was doing. It's all good and well being able to see what's going on, but are you actually able to do anything about it. So that's the second part of the equation: the offense measures — can you get rid of the threat? And the defensive measures, can you mitigate what the threat is doing?
Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, Senior Vice President of U.S. Government Business Unit, Inmarsat
Certainly the ability to operate in a contested environment to address the resiliency challenges, and that's in terms of not only making sure that you can operate command and control through space, but also acquiring the right interoperable and redundant capabilities to add that resiliency picture, in terms of recapitalization. That's true across all spectrum of space, to include the commercial satcom piece and to invest in that intentionally as a critical component of communications infrastructure.
Brian Weeden, Director of Program Planning, Secure World Foundation
Increased funding is probably most appropriate to accelerate development and implementation of future architectures that increase resilience for core areas, such as overhead persistent infrared, military satellite communications, and positioning, navigation, and timing. The Pentagon has spent the last several years developing a space mission assurance strategy for reducing the vulnerability of national security space capabilities, and it would be good to start implementing that strategy.
Todd Harrison, Director of Defense Budget Analysis, CSIS
It would be wise for the new administration to invest additional funds in starting new acquisition programs for protected satcom and missile warning. We are at a point where we don't just need the next-generation of [Advanced Extremely High Frequency] and [Space Based Infrared System] satellites but rather entirely new architectures that are more resilient, more distributed, and more scalable.
Will Pomerantz, Vice President of Special Projects, Virgin Galactic
The administration should direct the national security and military space communities to explore the use of small satellites and of responsive, commercial launch vehicles in their next-generation system architecture trade studies. Specifically, small satellites have proven to provide cost-effective alternatives to large program missions, with some unique capabilities that could not be realized otherwise.
Jim Simpson, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Aerojet Rocketdyne
How do you get low-cost launch? There's several people looking at that, but we haven't really gotten that low-cost, reliable launch vehicle. How do we really lower the cost of launch that could enable us to deploy a lower-cost satellite and not have them need to last seven to 15 years?. On the satellite side, how do we build more universal buses, how do we build buses that really can accommodate multiple types of payloads, so you can spend your money on the payloads rather than on the buses.
Rick Lober, Vice President and General Manager, Hughes Defense and Intelligence Systems Division
For commercial satellite providers to actively support [Pentagon programs], DoD must shift its focus from developing its own unique systems to leveraging resilient, flexible technology from industry partners. Commercially available managed services are one advanced option that can help ensure uninterrupted, high-throughput communications worldwide when and where it is most needed.
Todd Harrison, Director of Defense Budget Analysis, CSIS
When it comes to commercial space, the military can be an important enabler by co-funding development of dual-use technologies to seed the market and by serving as an anchor customer for commercial space services the military can also utilize. This would help the military access commercial space innovations and help ensure U.S. space companies remain competitive in the global market—both of which are good for national security.
Myland Pride, Director of Government and Legislative Affairs, Intelsat General
In a fiscally constrained environment, with changing mission priorities, the Department of Defense needs to seriously consider taking advantage of growing commercial capabilities in space operations, satellite communications, weather, [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], and other mission areas. Funding for transition of some mission areas to commercial, to save money and precious manpower to focus on more critical missions should be a priority.
The government should fund an academic-led consortium to provide it with state-of-the-possible ideas to its problems and serve as an independent assessor of scientific and technological solutions being sold to the government by private industry (i.e. sniffing proposed technologies for whether they would actually work based upon technical merit or not). The military needs an unbiased group that can help it be more efficient in acquiring critical space technologies. Academia is perfect for scrutinizing the ideas of any community or entities.
Frank Slazer, Vice President of Space Systems, Aerospace Industries Association
"There is a need for better coordination and dialogue between government and industry in order to shorten the time from requirement development to deployed capability. Our cycle times are approaching 10-12 years. That's way too long given the rapid rate of progress by other nations. Acquisition reform is needed to streamline this process. With better dialogue, the government will better understand what industry can (and can't!) currently do, and industry will have a clearer understanding of what the government needs and where new investments are needed…it is much better to have an ongoing dialogue with industry than a more formal industry response to a formal, and fixed, set of government requirements.
Brian Weeden, Director of Program Planning, Secure World Foundation
All that said, I'd caution against focusing solely on spending as a metric of progress or success. All too often, increased spending is used as a crutch to avoid making strategic choices, which only kicks the core problems down the road. Part of the reason the U.S. is facing its current challenges are because of past decisions to just keep doing more of the same thing.
This article originally appeared in the Feb. 13 issue of SpaceNews.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Aerojet Rocketdyne, WISE, Hughes, Intelsat
|O3b CEO Talks Capital Expenditure Plans – "Massive Step Up" on the Horizon
|2017-02-15 01:02:52
Steve Collar, CEO of O3b Networks. Photo: O3b Networks.
Since its inception, O3b Networks, now part of SES, has been one of the most talked-about companies in the satellite sector. O3b is now well established with a number of satellites launched and a number of different types of customers. Via Satellite got the opportunity to catch up with O3b CEO Steve Collar, to talk about recent events such as company's attempts to break into the lucrative U.S. government market, as well as the benefits of now being fully under the SES umbrella.
VIA SATELLITE: Where is the company in terms of its capital expenditure plans going forward? When will be the next lot of Requests for Proposals (RFPs)?
Collar: We have eight new O3b satellites under construction, the first four of which will launch at the end of this year or the very beginning of next year. We are also working very hard on our follow-on next generation architecture. I can't say too much about it but it is very high on our priority list and it is super exciting. Hopefully we will have something to say over the course of the first half of this year.
VIA SATELLITE: What does the next growth phase of O3b look like? Where does the company go next?
Collar: The concept of O3b was always a scalable system and a scalable network that you can start small and grow as the market develops. We now have a well-proven value proposition to the market and the next set of satellites build on that strong base. I am very optimistic that the solution that we have for our follow-on architecture will be extremely competitive with anything else that is either in the market now or planned for the future.
For O3b, because we are equatorial, it is not about launching hundreds of satellites — although we certainly have the ability to — it is more about developing the capability and efficiency of each satellite. Our follow-on architecture will reflect a massive step up in terms of throughput, coverage, flexibility and capability. It will be a real shift in terms of performance.
VIA SATELLITE: When we spoke last year you said that, in terms of growth, 2014 was the year of maritime, 2015 was energy, and you expected 2016 to be the year for government. Did that prove to be the case?
Collar: It really did. We got our first Department of Defense (DoD) customer signed, commissioned and operational over the O3b network. We spent a good amount of time with the Combatant Commands within the DoD, talking to them about the benefits of higher speed and throughput and the improvements in applications performance that they could expect. We then proved it through a number of highly interactive demos where we set up links and the government brought their suite of applications and equipment to test. They were blown away. It was one of the reasons that I was so optimistic because we saw the reaction of the government users, particularly the users in the field who have the responsibility of moving the data about the place and achieving the government's mission.
For our first deal, we have stood up two major backhaul sites in Southwest Asia working with SES Government Solutions to support U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The first deployment there has attracted a lot of interest and it's a major reference for many more opportunities going forward. It's super exciting.
We are also doing a good amount of work in government aero. The O3b system can deliver more bandwidth onto an aeronautical platform and, just as importantly, take more data off an aeronautical platform, than any other solution out there. That is attracting a lot of interest. We are not quite at the same point in terms of a contract but it doesn't feel far away. I could not be happier with the progress we made in 2016 on the government side.
VIA SATELLITE: What will be the vertical you think O3b will have the most impact in in 2017?
Collar: 2017 will see us build on the strong entry we have in the high-end verticals. Energy has obviously been a tricky market over the last couple of years but we feel that it is coming back. We signed a very significant deal in Brazil serving offshore Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) units and we are in the course of implementing that right now.
Energy, maritime and government will all grow for O3b in 2017. That said, the thing I am probably most excited about in 2017 is in the core telecommunications and Mobile Network Operator (MNO) area and our evolution as a business toward data networking and the additional value that we can bring. We are becoming less a satellite operator in the traditional sense and more a data network provider, engaging our customers in discussions about how we can provide more than just connectivity, having different kinds of conversations, managing their networks for them, delivering incremental value, etc. With the segments we are addressing today, we already have a great portfolio of customers and products. Now, it is about going deeper.
VIA SATELLITE: You said the tone of the conversations is changing. How is that happening? Can you give us an example?
Collar: If you take a telco serving a country or region in the emerging markets, we have established a high performance link to them over O3b and, more often than not, it has driven substantial demand in their network. Now we are starting to engage around how we can either help them make more money or save money rather than simply focusing on bandwidth. Once you are in a telco's network, you can start having these conversations. It starts with the link but quickly becomes a discussion about our customers' network and its performance. How are you attacking the education or financial services market in your region? Is there anything we can do to support you there and help you grow your business? How is the performance of your network downstream of our link and is it inhibiting growth? Do we know what your link is carrying and does it make sense to peer differently, cache content, etc.? Our early experience is that this approach drives fantastic customer engagement and we can add more value than you could possibly imagine. It is going beyond just delivering a link. It is changing the thinking away from satellite infrastructure and approaching it from the perspective of the customers' network. And the approach has great applicability in the energy or maritime business as well.
VIA SATELLITE: Obviously since we last spoke SES has now taken control of O3b. Has anything changed in the day to day running of the company?
Collar: Nothing has changed in the day to day running of the company but the full acquisition of O3b by SES is a hugely positive thing for both companies. There are a lot of things that we can do together that are much easier than they would be as separate businesses. The combined value proposition of O3b and the SES infrastructure together with the end-to-end service capabilities that we have built, positions us uniquely as a company.
VIA SATELLITE: When you talked about government before you spoke about not just the U.S. government but an international play. How did this pan out?
Collar: It is certainly the case we see relevance for O3b in international government. The truth is that the U.S. government still remains the largest user of commercial satcom services. That is the starting point for us, but we definitely see relevance for the services we provide to the U.S. government on a more international basis. The African peacekeeping network that we have successfully deployed during 2016 and is now delivering service in eight missions across Africa is a great example of that. It is changing the way peacekeepers are operating. It is changing the access to information in region, the ability of missions to communicate back to headquarters and the way peacekeepers can respond to regional threats.
VIA SATELLITE: What do you see as the talking points in the industry in 2017?
Collar: I think there will be continued focus around the viability of the big systems, particularly the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems. There is a lot of money either being invested or being contemplated with respect to LEOs but the business case for such systems still remains incredibly challenged, not to mention the technical complexity. Equally, I think the performance of the major satellite operators will also be a source of focus. 2016 was not a great year in terms of the performance of the stock of the large operators as the market somewhat turned against them. In my view this was probably overdone but I think there will be renewed focus on performance and growth. Lastly, the enabling technologies such as flat panel antennas systems, high throughput modems, and integrated operating systems will continue to develop and become more real in 2017. An exciting year ahead!t
The post O3b CEO Talks Capital Expenditure Plans – "Massive Step Up" on the Horizon appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Opportunity, SES, ELSE
|US Air Force Awards Orbital ATK with Integration Contract
|2017-02-13 23:02:36
Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) concept art. Photo: NASA.
U.S. Air Force Space and Missiles System Center has awarded Orbital ATK a contract to provide payload integration and support services for Space Test Program Satellite 6 (STPSat-6). The multipurpose satellite will operationally demonstrate advanced communication capabilities, collect space weather data and support nuclear detonation detection in the Earth's atmosphere or in near space. STPSat-6 is the primary payload on the STP-3 mission, which is set to launch no earlier than June 2019.
STPSat-6 will be built on Orbital ATK's modular A-500 bus, which will be modified to fit mission requirements. Under the contract, Orbital ATK will integrate and test the spacecraft, deliver operations procedures, and support launch and on-orbit check-out. The satellite will carry nine payloads from the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Nuclear Security Administration and NASA.
The multiple payloads on board STPSat-6 include the Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System (SABRS-3), NASA's Laser Communication Relay Demonstration (LCRD), and seven experiments from the DOD Space Experiments Review Board. Orbital ATK's heritage bus and avionics product line is designed to support multiple payloads and can be adapted to support the customer's desired mission life.
The Space Test Program (STP), which is the primary provider of spaceflight for the DOD space science and technology community, sponsors and manages the STP-3 mission. The Advanced Systems and Development Directorate of the Space and Missile Center manages STP.
The post US Air Force Awards Orbital ATK with Integration Contract appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Orbital ATK, ATK, STPSat-6
|US-Led Coalition Started Disabling Bridges Near Syria's Raqqa - Pentagon
|2017-02-10 21:02:00
The US-led anti-Daesh coalition has started disabling bridges south of the Syrian city of Raqqa, US DoD spokesperson Jeff Davis said in a briefing on Friday. Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Министерство обороны США
|UrtheCast & Farming, PPPs, Improperly Disposed Space Debris, Falcon-9 "Flaws" & The HandBook for New Actors in Space
|2017-02-07 18:02:00
By Henry Stewart
For the week of February 6th, 2017, here are a few of the stories we're currently tracking in the Commercial Space blog:
For more, check out future posts in the Commercial Space blog.
Henry Stewart is the pseudonym of a Toronto based aerospace writer.
The post UrtheCast & Farming, PPPs, Improperly Disposed Space Debris, Falcon-9 "Flaws" & The HandBook for New Actors in Space appeared first on BlogsCanada.ca.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Европейское космическое агентство, Космическое агентство Индии, Orbital ATK, Telesat Canada Ltd.
|Air Force considering taking over NOAA weather satellite
|2017-01-26 02:01:45
SEATTLE — The U.S. Air Force is considering taking over an existing geostationary orbit weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help fill a gap in coverage over the Indian Ocean.
In a panel discussion at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society here Jan. 24, Ralph Stoffler, director of weather for the U.S. Air Force, said that an agreement signed in December between the Air Force and NOAA would allow the Air Force to take over operations of a spare Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) weather satellite.
That opportunity became available after the successful launch in November of the GOES-R satellite, now named GOES-16. That satellite is undergoing checkout and is scheduled to become operational later this year.
"We have a plan where potentially, now that GOES-R is up there, that GOES-14 would become DOD-1 as we try to grab that satellite and move it over to the Indian Ocean and become the first DOD geostationary weather satellite, if we have to move down that pathway," he said.
Weather satellite coverage of the Indian Ocean region has been a challenge for the Air Force, which has relied on non-U.S. satellites, including from Europe, to provide imagery. The area had been served by Eumetsat's Meteosat-7 satellite, which is scheduled to be retired this year. In June 2016, Eumetsat agreed to move Meteosat-8 to the region to continue to coverage when Meteosat-7 is retired.
Meteosat-8 is in a different orbital position that Meteosat-7 — 41.5 degrees east versus 57 degrees east — so its coverage of the region is not the same. Meteosat-8 is also expected to reach the end of its life in 2019, requiring the Air Force to find another satellite to cover the region in a few years.
"The Indian Ocean region has been a challenge for us," Stoffler said, saying the Air Force appreciated Eumetsat's decision to move Meteosat-8. "It doesn't provide us all the coverage that we need, but I'm glad that we were able to buy that time."
Stoffler said the Air Force was reluctant to take on the responsibility of operating geostationary weather satellites. "Certainly it's not our desire to get into this business, but the bottom line is we have to have assured access to this type of information," he said.
An alternative option, he said, is to access images from Indian weather satellites in the region, provided the Air Force was confident it would always have access to that data. "That would probably be the more cost-effective solution," he said. "But to have a U.S.-owned and controlled satellite in that part of the world, certainly from my perspective, is ideal."
If the Air Force goes ahead with plans to take over GOES-14, Stoffler said the Air Force would not have to pay NOAA to access the satellite. However, it would bear the cost of setting up its own downlink station for the satellite in the Indian Ocean region. "We want to have this in place before Meteosat-8 expires," he said.
Stoffler mentioned GOES-14 because that satellite, launched in 2009, is a spare, with GOES-13 operating as GOES-East and GOES-15 as GOES-West. However, a NOAA official on the panel said a final decision on what satellite to offer to the Air Force won't be made until GOES-16 completes its commissioning late this year.
"Both the programmatic and the engineering details are in the early stages," said Karen St. Germain, director of the Office of Systems Architecture and Advanced Planning in NOAA's Satellite and Information Service.
"We, on the NOAA side, have not committed to any particular bird," she said. "What we said was, when we get to the point of commissioning operationally GOES-16, we'll then look at the constellation health and have a negotiation with the Air Force."Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Orbital ATK, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Envisat 1
|Yahsat's Mahmood on Brazil, Africa, Facebook and future satellites
|2017-01-18 07:01:45
WASHINGTON — When Yahsat decided to invest in its first satellite for Brazil, the the Dubai, UAE-based operator probably didn't foresee the triple-whammy of a Zika virus outbreak, presidential impeachment, and double-digit unemployment that dogged the world's 10th largest economy over the last two years.
Brazil fell into its second recession in five years by the time Yahsat finalized its order with U.S.-based Orbital ATK in September 2014 for Al Yah 3. The high-throughput satellite, slated to launch this year on a European Ariane 5 rocket, is expected to extend Yahsat's commercial Ka-band coverage to an additional 600 million users across Brazil and Africa.
Yahsat Chief Executive Masood M. Sharif Mahmood told SpaceNews that Brazil's woes haven't made Yahsat's first foray into South America's telecom market easy. However, he said Yahsat is starting to see "green shoots of recovery," with 20 to 25 percent of the Al Yah 3's capacity already spoken for by Italy's Telespazio, the U.K's Talia and others.
Yahsat, which on Jan. 17 celebrated the 10th anniversary of its founding by the Abu Dhabi-owned Mubadala Development Co., will soon have three satellites on orbit assuming the launch of Al Yah 3 goes well.
The satellite's 60 high-throughput spot beams will cover 95 percent of Brazil's population and expand Yahsat's coverage of Africa — the company's largest market — to 60 percent of the continent's population.
Part of Al Yah 3's capacity — about 10 gigabits per second of throughput — will support Konnect Africa, Paris-based Eutelsat's revamped strategy for delivering commercial broadband service to 20 sub-Saharan nations by 2019. Eutelsat said in November that its multi-year Al Yah 3 lease will replace the capacity lost with the Sept. 1 destruction of Amos-6, the Spacecom of Israel satellite destroyed when SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded while being fueled for a pre-launch test
Mahmood said Yahsat was in the right place at the right time to pick up Eutelsat's business. "But it didn't come from that incident alone," he said. "We have always maintained our position and belief in Ka and our belief in Africa … We made sure we were there on the ground, we made sure we had the future capacity, we made sure we had the right designs from a space segment and ground segment — all of that came into play."
Yahsat turned heads shortly after its January 2007 founding when it signed a $1.66 billion contract that summer with Astrium (now Airbus Defence and Space) and Thales Alenia Space to build its first satellites — a two-spacecraft telecommunications systems for military and civilian users.
Those satellites, Yahsat 1A and Yahsat 1B, launched in 2011 and 2012 respectively, and established the operator as a formidable regional player in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Al Yah 3 now promises to strengthen Yahsat's position in Africa while extending the operator's reach to South America.
In an interview with SpaceNews, Mahmood discussed Yahsat's ongoing expansion and plans for generating business in its new and established markets.
How far along is Yahsat in the preparation for Al Yah 3? How much capacity is pre-sold?
Today we are very far along the road. We are looking at a Q1 or Q2 launch for the satellite in 2017. Today we are in a position where we pre-sold a good part of the satellite and the rest we are strategically making sure we allocate for our growth for the subscriber business. The numbers reached around 20 to 25 percent of the satellite sold. This is definitely a boost of confidence in terms of our business plan and our geographic expansion because these came from both Brazil and Africa.
Brazil has been good to us. We have the Yahsat office in Rio de Janeiro, we have the team populated, we have our partnership agreement not only for wholesale, we have wholesale plus our distributors as well and we are developing the system as we speak.
Regional publications have quoted you discussing the addition of four more satellites to the Yahsat fleet. What do your expansion plans look like today?
I think the conversation you are referring to was taken out of context. The question asked at the time was "what would be your ideal scenario for the company five to 10 years down the road?" This was not the ambition.
If the question is around general ambition then yes we continually strive to grow the company, especially on the commercial side to maintain the anchor customers we have and anchor relationships we have with the United Arab Emirate armed forces and the government agencies as being the satcom solutions provider.
On the commercial side we would like to grow that business, enrich our presence in our existing markets as well as get into other segments. As you know we have an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with Panasonic to explore working together on a constellation for aero [connectivity] and an MOU with Etihad Airways to do a test flight on one of their planes. We are pushing actively along those lines.
So is Yahsat not planning four additional satellites between now and 2020?
We are always planning additional satellites, but … in terms of a specific number of missions, that is something that is left to the market to determine once we see how things are picking up.
How did Yahsat's recent deal with Eutelsat come about?
As you know it came at the backdrop of an unfortunate incident. We are never happy when we see a launch failure, especially since it impacts the manifest of the industry and impacts our colleagues and other operators. But it didn't come from that incident alone. We have always maintained our position and belief in Ka and our belief in Africa. I think a lot of other operators made the move later on, but we made the move early on. We made sure we were there on the ground, we made sure we had the future capacity, we made sure we had the right designs from a space segment and ground segment — all of that came into play.
We saw a way for us to have a win-win relationship whereby we contribute to them and help them get back on track while they derisk some of our business in Africa.
Does that deal continue after Eutelsat launches their Africa Broadband Satellite in 2019?
The way we see it is the market is big enough for both of us, and the market specifically in Africa, while it is a niche market, the market is enough for both operators to be active in and build the capacity through their satellites or through our satellites, so I think it will have to be played by ear, but today what we see is the market is big enough for all of the capacity that's coming.
Are there still discussions ongoing with Facebook about using Eutelsat now potentially through Yahsat?
I cannot comment on Eutelsat … but with respect to Yahsat we always keep an open mind to all of the discussions with all the interested parties in Africa. There will be Facebook, other operators — it's very collaborative. We had discussions with Facebook a few years back and continue to have discussions with them, and we are open to any transaction or collaboration that the likes of Facebook would like to have.
Yahsat has gradually invested more and more heavily into Ka-band HTS. Is this where you see the future?
The jury is out on the desirability of Ka-band. What enables Yahsat to have a leading position is the fact that when we were moving towards Ka-band, not a lot of people were going to that spectrum band. As an experiment it worked for us, and that's why we want to continue on this. We like to always be on the lookout for what's coming out next so that we don't become a one-trick pony.
What that means is we would like to repeat that success with what's coming next. We are keeping a close eye on the mega-constellation developments, be it OneWeb or others, keeping a close interaction with them to make sure we could tap into any opportunity once this becomes viable.
When we talk about the future with regard to spectrum we are very engaged with satellite bodies such as the EMEA Satellite Operator's Association (ESOA). Yahsat is involved in the spectrum conversation with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the telecom sector. That puts us in a position not only to lead the defense on future bands such as Q and V, but also to be aware of the priorities in those bands. We are keeping an eye on those bands and the satcom discussion.
Yahsat was providing service for U.S. forces to augment WGS. Is Yahsat's government business still U.S. focused or is it focused on the UAE and other nations?
Primarily the [UAE and other nations]. We've had a landmark deal with providing secure satcom for the Kingdom of Bahrain DoD. We extended to them a fully managed solution where they have their own satcom infrastructure fully developed in the kingdom using our satellites.
We have also been able to gain traction and deliver some satcom solutions and backup cases for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) DoDs. Today we see a pickup in the region.
There is still a lot of talk about oversupply in many markets. Have you felt pricing pressure from too much capacity being available in the markets where Yahsat is active?
The fact that in some countries we are the only available option, and not only from the skies but the only available option on the ground, this has given us some resilience, but it is an inescapable fact that the emerging markets have been hit and that caused some pressure for us. Luckily we were in a position where we are able to protect against that by making sure that we are in parts of the market where we are protected.
Ten years from now, where do you envision Yahsat will be?
When Yahsat was incorporated we didn't even have the iPhone … if you look at 10 years in this millennium, the jump in business models is almost equivalent to two or three decades if you measure it against the previous millennium. Things really do change and it's difficult to know what to expect in the future. What I would like to see is the continued growth of our commercial business and the continued dependence of the government business on our solutions.
Ключевые слова: Astrium, Al Yah Satellite Communications, Eutelsat Communications S.A., Orbital ATK
|Many questions, few answers when it comes to space traffic management, experts say
|2017-01-18 04:01:11
WASHINGTON – With an ever growing number of countries and corporations launching satellites into orbit, there's never been a greater need for thorough tracking of objects in space, but many questions need to be answered first, according to a panel of experts at a recent conference.
"The time is now to address this issue," said George Nield, Federal Aviation Administration associate administrator for commercial space transportation, speaking at a panel on space situational awareness (SSA) at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Science and Technology Forum held in Grapevine, Texas, Jan. 11. "We need to avoid the temptation because it is a complex and challenging problem to try to get everything perfect before we start taking action."
One of the first issues for any new space traffic management system is data collection. "There's great work to be done on the collection side," said Mike Gazarik, vice president of engineering at Ball Aerospace. "How do you want to collect the data, from space or on the ground?… Are we doing it for the nation or the world? Well, that's difficult to separate in space."
Donald Greiman, vice president of commercial space situation awareness at Schafer Corporation, said that whoever is in charge of SSA would need their own way to collect data on objects in orbit, similar to air traffic control radar used by the FAA.
Developing a tracking system in the air "did not rely on a system that was 100 percent self-reporting from each airplane," he said, adding that similar capabilities are needed for space. "We need an independent way, a la air traffic radar, to have that transparency to see what people are doing in space."
As the previous commander of 14th Air Force at Air Force Space Command, retired Lt. Gen. Susan Helms had access to the most advance radar the U.S. has to offer, but said that often even that wasn't enough.
"The [Defense Department] has radars, but they are not promulgated to the point you can get that kind of actionable knowledge quickly in a time dominate manner," she said.
Helms recalled one story of having two satellites pass within close proximity of each other, but not knowing if they had collided until after the fact. "It's not like a TV explosion in the sky," she said. "If they do collide, you don't know that unless you take a look with your radar."
Comparing it to weather prediction, Helms said knowledge of possible satellite collisions should be like hurricanes: you know they're coming well in advance and have plenty of time to prepare.
Instead, in the case of the near-miss, "this was the tornado that came out of nowhere," she said. "I'd rather have a hurricane and not a tornado. I wish I had world coverage radars so I could get an assessment of the possibility of collision on this object now."
But collecting data is just the first part of the battle. Better analysis and processing are needed to turn the raw data into something useful, Greiman said.
He said there were more than 670,000 conjunction warnings in 2014 alone, and noted that the Air Force's plans for an advance tracking system known as Space Fence will soon add more raw data to the pile. "We simply have to come up, if nothing else, with a better way of doing measurements and predictions of conjunctions," Greiman said.
Even if data collection and analysis are excellent, there's still a legal question of who exactly can force a change in orbit.
"In the United States we don't have an agency that has the authority to tell a space operator to move their satellite out of the way of a piece of degree," said P.J. Blount, an adjunct law professor at Montclair State University. "I think this jurisdiction question is going to be an important one."
Private companies might be willing to take more risks than the U.S. government would like, Blount explained, by weighing the cost of a collision versus a loss of satellite lifespan due to having to maneuver the craft.
It becomes an even more uncertain issue for the international community. "We have the possibility of conjunction, not just between U.S. assets, but a U.S. actor and an actor from another nation," Blount said.
Travis Blake, senior manager at the Advanced Technology Center for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said he believes the idea of space being very large has hindered work on SSA somewhat, as most believe the possibility of a collision wasn't realistic. "The ability to have to manage what's up there has not had to come along as quickly as it did in the maritime and the air traffic world," he said.
It's a bit of a misconception, however, Blake argued, as while space is very large, certain areas like geosynchronous orbit are becoming very crowded. "What we're seeing now in the space era is we have taken this very large portion of space, and we've kind of constricted it down to these corridors that we operate in," he said.
The various "corridors" used by spacecraft could further complicate issues, Helms said, as different areas of space might require different rules for avoiding collision, such as changing how much of an empty "bubble" each object needs around it. "The mode you use for [LEO] is not the model you want to use for GEO," she said.
Greiman said there needs to be a central authority for space traffic management, an agency that could tell an operator, "Your cubesat has got a three-year lifecycle. Show me in your launch and registration plan how at three years and six months you're going to de-orbit that cubesat, or take out an insurance policy?"
For his part, Greiman put his support behind transferring SSA duties from the Air Force to the FAA, an idea that has been widely discussed in government circles. "The FAA in my opinion…is not just an option, it's the only option," he said. "It's the only agency that can put safety as number one and has the government association to protect the information."
Nield, the FAA administrator, said his agency is ready. "We're in the process right now of figuring out what this ought to look like," he said. "We're very excited about getting this started."
The FAA would need three things to perform space traffic tracking properly, Nield said. "The authority to distribute the information just like the [Defense Department] has today, immunity from lawsuits just like DoD has today, and the resources to do the job because of course we're not currently funded to do that duty," he said.
Regardless of how better SSA eventually develops, it's critical that it does, Nield said.
"It's very important for those of us in the business to periodically step back and think for a minute on how dependent we have become as a nation and as a society on space and spacecraft," he said. "To the extent that we have more and more congestion, more and more collisions, there's a very real possibility that individual spacecraft and even the entire regions of space that we count on so much will at some point become unusable. Pretty scary thought."Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Lockheed Martin
|Senator targets Alaska launch site in wasteful spending report
|2017-01-17 14:01:08
WASHINGTON — The company that operates an Alaska launch site is critical of the spaceport's inclusion in a list of pork-barrel spending released last week by a senator.
The 2017 edition of the "Wastebook" by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a compendium of projects costing anywhere from tens of thousands to billions of dollars that the senator deemed a waste of taxpayer money, included the Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska (PSCA), previously known as the Kodiak Launch Complex, on Alaska's Kodiak Island.
The report, released Jan. 10, is specifically critical of a contract worth up to $80.4 million awarded to Alaska Aerospace Corporation by the Missile Defense Agency in 2016. The six-year contract covers flight tests and other services planned for the spaceport.
"DOD is sinking more than $80 million into a 'spaceport' in Alaska that is not even equipped for the rockets that the Pentagon is planning to launch there," the report claims. "Derided as 'space pork,' Congress forced DOD to build the launch site as part of an illegal kick-back scheme over the objections of the military."
"This was a surprise to us," said Craig Campbell, chief executive of Alaska Aerospace Corporation, in a Jan. 12 interview. He said Flake's office had not contacted the company during its work putting together the report, and that he wasn't aware the spaceport was included in the report until after it was released.
Campbell took issue with the report's focus on the spaceport's development in the 1990s, including linking it to a scheme where two Army Space and Missile Defense Command employees collected $1.6 million in payments for directing $350 million in funds for various projects, including construction of the Kodiak launch site.
"I think that's irrelevant today," he said of that emphasis in the report. "Regardless of what happened 20 years ago, we're all focused now on what's right for the taxpayer today."
He also noted that the MDA contract is an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity award, with $80.4 million the maximum value only if all task orders on the contract are exercised. "To date we've only had four task orders, and it's substantially less than $80 million," he said.
The spaceport, developed to support small launch vehicles as well as missile tests, has encountered setbacks in recent years. An August 2014 missile test from the spaceport ended in failure seconds after liftoff, with an explosion damaging launch facilities there. The launch complex also suffered from financial problems linked to broader budget issues with the state government, which owns the site.
Campbell said that there is renewed interest in PSCA beyond the MDA contract. The spaceport is providing a mobile range and telemetry system to support the initial launches of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket in New Zealand.
Alaska Aerospace Corporation is also in discussions with Vector Space Systems about hosting launches of that company's small launch vehicles from the spaceport. Campbell added he is in discussions with another vehicle developer he declined to identify. "We're getting very active in the commercial side with the new entrants," he said.
In addition to the Alaska spaceport, two small NASA projects were included in the Wastebook report. One was a series of studies, with a total cost of $88,000, that examined the effects of climate change on wine production. The other was a $1.1 million grant from NASA's astrobiology program to the Center of Theological Inquiry to study how the world's religions would respond to the discovery of life beyond Earth.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США, MDA, Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska, Aerospace Corporation
|Military's Shift Away From Oil Clashes With Donald Trump Promises
|2017-01-16 22:01:31
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. (AP) – At a sprawling desert base, a Marine recharged his radio's batteries simply by walking, while nearby fellow troops examined a rocket artillery system and a drone – both powered by the sun.
Navy and Marine Corps brass, accompanied by green energy executives, showcased the energy-harnessing knee braces and other innovations at a renewable energy demonstration at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, one of many such events that have taken place at military bases across the country as part of the Defense Department's unprecedented shift away from fossil fuels under the Obama administration. The Pentagon has invested millions over the past decade into everything from hybrid electric ships to wind turbines.
While a growing number of military leaders have declared global warming a national security threat, the strategy clashes with President-elect Donald Trump's vow to end policies that "undermine" fossil fuel producers. Trump has a chosen a Cabinet with climate change skeptics, though his pick for defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, has advocated green technology to curtail risky fuel-supply runs for troops in conflict zones.
It's not known if Mattis would support buying alternative fuels for ships and aircraft, among the military's biggest petroleum users. He didn't respond to requests seeking comment.
Republican lawmakers have lashed out at many of the green initiatives for the Defense Department – one of the world's largest energy consumers – especially the Navy's Great Green Fleet that deployed ships run partly on biofuel amid falling oil prices.
Military leaders say alternative energy makes warriors more agile and effective on today's battlefields.
At the recent demonstrations, a Marine wore knee braces with tiny generators that transformed the energy he produced from walking to recharge batteries. The technology allows troops to generate their own power for as long as three days. The event also featured a M777 howitzer and a drone that use solar power.
"To do something other than continue these programs would be a mistake," said Joe Bryan, the Navy's deputy assistant secretary for energy. "My expectation is that will be recognized no matter where people are on the political spectrum."
Rising sea levels threaten Navy bases worldwide, and it would be "shortsighted" for the military not to address climate change, Bryan said.
Trump's transition team did not respond to questions about whether it would end the strategy.
Republican lawmakers have said the Pentagon has propped up the alternative energy industry, investing in programs that are not sustainable. The Defense Department has been working toward generating 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025. The Navy and Marine Corps set a goal to draw half of its power from renewable energy sources by 2020.
GOP legislators have criticized the Obama administration for spending roughly $120 billion on climate change initiatives while putting in motion $1 trillion in defense cuts.
"I hope the new administration allows the U.S. military to focus on the most important defense issues like fighting ISIS, defending from Iranian and North Korean belligerence, and guarding against aggression from China and Russia," Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck said in a statement to The Associated Press. "Our military should use the most cost-efficient fuel sources, rather than burning money on green energy experiments."
The most contentious initiative has been the purchase of biofuel for ships. Critics say while ships may leave port with a biofuel mix, they still must rely on foreign oil in many places near battlefields and the plant-based fuel has become more expensive than traditional fuel.
According to a 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress' research arm, the Pentagon paid $58.6 million for 2 million gallons of alternative fuel from 2007 to 2014, or about $29 per gallon. At the same time, it spent $107.2 billion for 32 billion gallons of petroleum, paying about $3 per gallon.
Legislators passed a law in 2012 prohibiting the Pentagon from buying biofuels in bulk unless the price is competitive with that of petroleum.
As a result, the Great Green Fleet's carrier strike group set sail in early 2016 using a mix of 90 percent petroleum and only 10 percent biofuels made from beef fat. The Navy originally aimed for the ratio to be 50-50.
"The Obama administration found a way to make a market for biofuels within the DOD and they did that by saying it was critical to national defense, even though petroleum is not in short supply by any means," said Rachel Zissimos, a research assistant at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The climate change agenda within the DOD was a way to impose these renewable energy mandates on the DOD. I think the climate change issues can be dropped very quickly."
Green energy supporters are banking on Mattis, Trump's defense secretary choice, who helped usher in the Pentagon's shift toward renewable energy by challenging the Defense Department to "unleash us from the tether of fuel" during the Iraq war.
Zissimos said Mattis made the challenge when problems with maintaining fuel levels hindered the advance of U.S. forces and troops were going on supply runs through enemy territory, causing casualties.
She expects Trump's administration will support initiatives that help the military but not necessarily the planet – in contrast to Obama who was driven by combatting climate change.
"Repealing some of these programs means a part of Obama's legacy will go away," she said. "For Trump, that's not a factor, so there are fewer reasons for him to hold on to failing initiatives."
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Planet Labs
|Fallout: New Vegas Direct Download crack by SpaceXFallout: New Vegas Direct Download crack by SpaceX
|2017-01-07 14:01:40
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About This Game
Welcome to Vegas. New Vegas.It's the kind of town where you dig your own grave prior to being shot in the head and left for dead…and that's before things really get ugly. It's a town of dreamers and desperados being torn apart by warring factions vying for complete control of this desert oasis. It's a place where the right kind of person with the right kind of weaponry can really make a name for themselves, and make more than an enemy or two along the way.As you battle your way across the heat-blasted Mojave Wasteland, the colossal Hoover Dam, and the neon drenched Vegas Strip, you'll be introduced to a colorful cast of characters, power-hungry factions, special weapons, mutated creatures and much more. Choose sides in the upcoming war or declare "winner takes all" and crown yourself the King of New Vegas in this follow-up to the 2008 videogame of the year, Fallout 3.Enjoy your stay.Key FeaturesFeel the Heat in New Vegas! Not even nuclear fallout could slow the hustle of Sin City. Explore the vast expanses of the desert wastelands – from the small towns dotting the Mojave Wasteland to the bright lights of the New Vegas strip. See the Great Southwest as could only be imagined in Fallout.Feuding Factions, Colorful Characters and a Host of Hostiles! A war is brewing between rival factions with consequences that will change the lives of all the inhabitants of New Vegas. The choices you make will bring you into contact with countless characters, creatures, allies, and foes, and determine the final explosive outcome of this epic power struggle.New Systems! Enjoy new additions to Fallout: New Vegas such as a Companion Wheel that streamlines directing your companions, a Reputation System that tracks the consequences of your actions, and the aptly titled Hardcore Mode to separate the meek from the mighty. Special melee combat moves have been added to bring new meaning to the phrase "up close and personal". Use V.A.T.S. to pause time in combat, target specific enemy body parts and queue up attacks, or get right to the action using the finely-tuned real-time combat mechanics.An Arsenal of Shiny New Guns! With double the amount of weapons found in Fallout 3, you'll have more than enough new and exciting ways to deal with the threats of the wasteland and the locals. In addition, Vault-Tec engineers have devised a new weapons configuration system that lets you tinker with your toys and see the modifications you make in real time.Let it Ride! In a huge, open world with unlimited options you can see the sights, choose sides, or go it alone. Peacemaker or Hard Case, House Rules, or the Wild Card - it's all in how you play the game.
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Ключевые слова: China Academy of Space Technology, SpaceX
|Innovation is Not a Top-Down Process
|2016-12-23 02:12:42
McLean VA (SPX) Dec 16, 2016 - The U.S. Department of Defense continues to look to the private sector for ways to encourage innovation. This is a welcome initiative that we have commented on previously, and we applaud the leadership of Defense Secretary Ash Carter in this area.
Earlier this month, Defense One reported on recommendations from the Defense Innovation Board, made up of technology company heavyweights such as Google Alphabet's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Most of their recommendations were very sound, and we applaud the DoD's focus on innovation.
The recommendation for the DoD to establish a Chief Innovation Officer position - to better promote innovation inside the DoD - should be approached with caution. Innovation comes from the bottom up, relying on collaboration and a culture that incentivizes asking tough questions and solving big challenges. Being innovative is not hierarchical in nature.
Fostering innovation means challenging the status quo, and such behavior has not historically been acceptable within the risk-averse DoD. Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk captured the current situation in what he shared with Secretary Carter: "Having an incentive structure that rewards innovation is extremely important. It's economics 101. Whatever you reward will happen."
The other recommendations of the Defense Innovation Board include:
+ Increase the speed and timeliness of the acquisition process by increasing the use of mechanisms for waivers and exemptions and offering incentives for quickly resolving concerns.
+ Establish a career track for computer science and a digital Reserve Officer's Training Corps program.
+ Build a culture of evidence-based, outcome-driven policies and experimentation by, among other things, offering bonuses, recognition, awards and other incentives for managers who promote innovation; giving employees greater voice; and encouraging creativity and divergent views.
+ Increase investment in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, rapid equipping units and other small, agile, innovative organizations and create more connections among them.
+ Establish a computer science resource that is a "human cloud" of computer programmers and software developers available on demand to swiftly solve software problems.
Of course, the DoD doesn't need to look to Silicon Valley for evidence of technological innovation. Operating in a highly competitive market, IGC has learned to move very quickly. An example of this is the three-year timeline from development to launch of the first of Intelsat's high-throughput Intelsat EpicNG satellites. In contrast, government programs can take more than a decade to get a platform into space.
Intelsat has consistently improved its technology and processes over the past half-century of operating one of the world's largest satellite fleets. We have developed a number of proprietary automation tools that allow just a few operators at a single location to simultaneously control more than 75 spacecraft orbiting the earth, in a range of orbit planes.
These tools benefit numerous commercial customers today, but could also benefit the U.S. government, which is currently considering ways to shift the operation of military satellites over to commercial operators.
The commercial space industry has invested in technology and has developed new technology that ultimately can benefit the military. These latest recommendations, other than creating a new "Innovation Czar," are positive steps. Now it's up to the government to execute on them, and take better advantage of innovative commercial satellite services like HTS, hosted payloads and integrated ground services.
These innovations are already here, right in the DoD's backyard. An increasingly collaborative and transparent partnership with commercial space operators would be a giant step towards augmenting and reinforcing U.S. capabilities in space.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Intelsat, SpaceX
|How Will Trump Use Science to Further His Political Agenda?
|2016-12-01 17:12:00
Of all the memorable lines from this year's election, the one I keep returning to months later—for self-interested reasons—is from Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. "And I believe in science," she said, as she pivoted to climate change. She giggled. The crowded roared.
It wasn't just her remark that struck me but also the response. I'm a journalist who writes about science, so my Twitter feed that night was full of scientists and writers who had waited long to see science on the political stage: Isn't it absurd she had to say she believed in science? I can't believe 2016. And most smug of all: Hillary, science is not a belief.
* * *
Donald Trump will be president in two months. He's so far said very little about science—the notable exception, of course, being his loud rejection of climate change. His advisors, though, are relishing the end of all earth science research at NASA, and scientists have worried a Trump administration will slash funding for other areas of research.
But this narrow framing around what Trump means for science—will he fund it or won't he?—misses another question: How will Trump and his supporters end up using science to further their political goals?
As president, Trump will be appointing people to head the EPA, CDC, NASA, USDA—to name just a few of the federal agencies that employ physicians and scientists—and these agencies will keep churning out official reports.
Trump has shifted the bounds of public discourse as a candidate, and he will continue to do so as president. We have a president-elect who appears to believe in his genetic superiority, with a chief strategist who has been reported to believe the same. We have a president-elect with an affinity for torture. It's an open question as to whether Trump will bring these views into the White House, pulling them back into mainstream discussions by dint of his high office. And it's not clear how else he might use scientists to burnish his agenda. In the Bush administration, for instance, psychologists lent the gravitas of science to torture. What will scientists be asked to support under Trump?
* * *
So here is why I've been thinking, again, about Clinton's appeal to science as a partisan rallying cry way back in July. It was clearly in response to the mockery of Trump and his supporters as "anti-science." But "anti-science" is a dangerously simplistic label.
Science isn't a monolith. Trump may deride NASA's climate science research, but he also gave an astronaut a primetime speaking spot at the Republican National Convention. He could dismiss the evidence for childhood vaccines in one breath and call for more anti-addiction drugs for the opioid crisis in another. Rather than despair that all science is dead in Trump's America, we have to look at specific scientific fields to see how they are becoming entangled with politics.
Politicians have real incentives to appeal to science. Even if you do talk generically about science, American's views on it are overwhelmingly positive. In a Pew report last year, 79 percent of adults agreed that science has made life easier; more than 70 percent said that government investment in research pays off in the long run.
In fact, the right and so-called alt-right is happy to appeal to science's prestige when pushing their own views. The head of Trump's EPA transition team, prominent climate change denier Myron Ebell, is comfortable expounding on carbon dioxide levels and the Little Ice Age. His pick for health secretary, Tom Price, is a surgeon endorsed by the American Medical Association, who also belongs to a conservative doctor's group whose journal has criticized the consensus on climate change and the "gay male lifestyle." White supremacists are obsessed with genetic tests.
The trappings of science can be decoupled from the actual rigor of science. In a post-fact, post-expert world, science still holds currency. It just has to be your facts and your experts.
Stephen Colbert, who famously coined "truthiness," less famously also came up with "factiness." If "truthiness" is a feeling of truth with a disregard for the facts, then "factiness" is using actual facts to paint a misleading truth. "It is also a fact that Mr. Obama is a carbon-based life form, just like Osama bin Laden," said Colbert, going for the absurd, "If Obama really wanted to separate himself from our enemies, wouldn't he try to be one those sulfur-based tube worms that live in the volcanic vents off the coast of Chile?" So many science words! Such gobbledygook!
The morning after the election, Nathan Jurgenson also wrote, independently it seems and in less absurdist terms than Colbert, about factiness on the left:
I'll suggest that factiness doesn't actually cleave neatly across the left and the right. It's an outgrowth of our cognitive biases. We often make decisions emotionally, sometimes based on tribal affiliations; then we marshall the facts that prove us right while discarding the ones that prove us wrong.
As such, throwing more facts at climate deniers hasn't convinced them. When Yale law professor Dan Kahan surveyed 1,540 adults about climate change, he found that scientific literacy did not correlate with perceiving climate change as a greater risk. Rather, higher scientific literacy made people more extreme in how they viewed climate change—on both sides. Expressing a view on climate change is often a statement of identity, more than anything else.
Factiness is why using the veneer of science to rationalize an idea is dangerous, making the idea appear more justified than it really is. It is pro-science in appearance, but anti-science in spirit.
* * *
That brings to me a troubling response I saw to Clinton's DNC speech, that "science is not a belief." In theory, science provides an objective framework for finding truths about the world. I think that's what these responses were getting at. But in practice, science is conducted by humans with biases, often blind to them. To ignore how the practice of science is intertwined with politics is to be blind, in turn, to the coming changes. As a President Trump pulls the discourse in his direction, the ground will shift slowly but surely shift underneath our feet.
Consider the Bush administration's torture program in the early 2000s. In a 542-page report last year, an independent review laid out how the American Psychological Association gave torture scientific credibility. The Department of Defense is one of the country's largest employers of psychologists, and the APA wanted to curry favor. A former APA president told the CIA that sleep deprivation did not constitute torture, and the association loosened ethics rules to allow psychologists to participate in interrogations.
Perhaps the most damning detail is how eager the psychologists in the APA were to work with the DoD because of their professional rivalry with psychiatrists. Collaborating with the DoD would mean more jobs and a higher status in the DoDfor psychologists (who are PhDs), rather than psychiatrists (MDs). It doesn't even take malice.
The early 2000s was a different time. The U.S. had just begun a war; the memory of September 11th was still fresh. Psychologists and physicians alike are now horrified about their role in giving the U.S.'s torture programs any semblance of scientific credibility. The APA's complicity in torture is of course easy to condemn in retrospect. It's harder to recognize in the very beginning, when the ground has only shifted ever so slightly.
I won't pretend to know exactly what to watch for in a Trump administration. I worry about the resurgence of interest in race and genetics among white supremacists. A historian who specializes in the history of eugenics recently told me that the language about immigrants that fueled eugenics in the early 20th century is startlingly similar to Trump's language. Back then it was about Italians and Poles taking over the country; now it's about Mexicans and Muslims. But eugenics is such a third rail—for now.
Trump's campaign has also emboldened law enforcement, and his incoming justice department shows no inclination to go after racial bias in the criminal justice system of states. Science could get further entangled here, as research into neuroscience and social science filters into the court room. In May, ProPublica reported on an algorithm used to sentence criminals that was biased against African Americans. Factiness can give cover to policies that are racist without explicitly seeming to.
Even less controversial parts of science will have the imprint of politics. Trump's plan to refocus NASA on planetary explanation, for example, is as much as about boosting American exceptionalism as it is about doing science—much like the first space race. And the rhetoric around rugged space heroes in a hostile land is all to similar to old rhetoric around manifest destiny. Writing in Fusion, Danielle Lee has considered some of the political questions that colonizing Mars would pose, "Who will be the individuals selected to colonize other planets? Will the Mars emigrants extract life-supporting resources from Earth to make life on humanity's new home possible? How will these extractions impact life back home? Who will do this heavy and potentially dangerous work?" A Trump administration will surely not have to answer all these questions, but the political movements he's invigorated will shape future discussions about who gets to benefit from space exploration.
If Clinton can make appeals to science andPresident Obama can ingratiate himself with tech, then so too can a future President Trump. Science still has social and political currency; it's now a matter of who gets to spend it and how.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США
|Q&A | Inmarsat's Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch on shifts in government demand, Global Xpress and Inmarsat 6
|2016-11-29 23:11:40
WASHINGTON — The advent of new high-throughput systems, growing acceptance of commercial input for space situational awareness, and a surprise U.S. election outcome are all pieces of the shifting industry landscape at a time when the U.S. government is actively preparing for its next iteration of satellite communications.
A year-long U.S. Department of Defense study of future wideband satcom needs and solutions post-Wideband Global Satcom, is underway after receiving commercial and international government partner input.
The U.S. government also has a number of new industry engagements going on, such as the Commercial Integration Cell within the Joint Space Operations Center, letting six satellite operators work directly with government on SSA tasks like boosting the accuracy of conjunction assessments and reducing RF interference between satellites. The Commercial Integration Cell, along with the Pathfinder capacity acquisition experiments and other projects have increased industry confidence in collaborating with the government.
Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, senior vice president of Inmarsat Government Services, spoke with SpaceNews about why she is still confident industry-government relations will continue to improve under the next administration as well as how Inmarsat is preparing to address government satcom needs.
Over the past year or two there seems to be a lot of positive headway made between the commercial sector and DoD leadership. Now that the country is preparing for Donald Trump to be president, do you see that shaping the relationship between the commercial sector and the Air Force?
I think that it will continue to mature and become even more substantive. There has been quite a bit of progress and even improvement — because talk is one thing, action is something else — in that relationship between industry and leadership within the department of defense.
I believe, as we are watching the cabinet taking shape and where the president-elect may take the country, that these relationships will continue to further develop. The people that are carrying the mantle and engaging with industry are not immediately intended to be replaced by the changing administration, so they maintain the continuity of that leadership through the course of the transition of power, which is very essential to continue to ensure progress.
Government demand has been low for most operators. Has government demand still atrophied or do you see that rebounding?
This is true for us and other operators in the concentrated areas of the Middle East where you have bandwidth from so many users concentrated in one area of operation. However, what we are seeing now is greater geographically dispersed demand that is not entirely concentrated in one specific region. That can be anything from responding to earthquakes worldwide, such as the recent disaster in New Zealand, to training for different troop movements and other events that are happening in theater. We actually see wider demand from a broader geography as opposed to very concentrated demand in one specific region. From Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance to data backhaul, Blue Force Tracking or video distribution, we see consistently growing demand.
Since Intelsat had an issue with one of their thrusters on an Epic satellite, has that resulted in any business swinging to Inmarsat?
We would never celebrate another satellite operator's difficulties, because that is always a challenge to the rest of the business. I will say that what we offer is a very highly differentiated service that is truly focused and intentionally built from the ground up with mobility in mind.
Talking about high throughput satellites in general, how have you seen DoD respond to the growth of high throughput satellites, and where do you see the best fit?
I see a lot of interest in the concept of high throughput, and a lot of talking on panels discussing the viability of very dense satellite communications coverage. That's looking more toward the future in the possibility of a bandwidth spike with huge amounts of bandwidth available. There is interest in having choice amongst the different operators and having greater access to increased bandwidth.
What we are seeing today on Global Xpress is significant interest in integrating our capabilities into the architecture. This ensures we are operating right alongside traditional military satellite communications so that they have augmentation capabilities and redundant services as well as diverse capabilities to be able to address requirements.
Regarding Pathfinder 3, it seems to be similar to Pathfinder 2. What is your take on this latest Pathfinder?
My understanding is that Pathfinder 2 will be focused on continental U.S. capability in terms of where the service may be provided. As articulated by some people at Space and Missile Systems Center, Pathfinder 3 will continue to be more global, so there will be a geographic difference.
Our hope for the Pathfinders is now that we have gone to solve yesterday's challenges, that the Pathfinders explore new and innovative acquisition processes to shape how the government can acquire capabilities in that very dynamic environment. This supports the ability to to outfit the architecture of the future by complementing legacy milsatcom, and a very finite and small separate purpose-built milsatcom, rather than an operational and maintenance tail by perpetuating yesterday's business model. We are watching the Pathfinders very closely, so that they will actually be more progressive and about new acquisition approaches more so than trying to provide a capability based on old-buying habits. That's not the intent of the Pathfinders.
It is important to see how the Pathfinders and AoA stitch together. The Pathfinders should feed into the Wideband Analysis of Alternatives, and I think it will be very exciting to see how quickly and informed the government can look at a range of alternatives that incorporate the best of breed of commercial as a foundation of their satellite communications architecture to fill in that known gap that is on the horizon in a very affordable and agile fashion. We have been positioning Inmarsat to add that augmentation.
With the WGS AoA, there seemed to be a lot of positive feedback about the commercial input being received for that. Are those conversations still ongoing? What's your sense of how the commercial sector's input has been taken into consideration there?
The discussions that have taken place so far have all been pre-Analysis of Alternatives discussions. Winston Beauchamp from the Principal DoD Space Advisor office has been very open in trying to engage industry to shape the AoA so that they ask the right questions. Now that the guidance is out from the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, the Air Force is going to Secretary Kendall for a milestone decision and directions in the early December timeframe. That will kick off the formal Analysis of Alternatives activities and the summation of working groups.
Ostensibly there is intended to be a commercial working group that will enable open dialog and feedback with industry in the actual execution of the AoA. That should be very interesting to see how that comes together. This is something very new and different that to the best of my knowledge is unprecedented and exciting to look forward to, but it's unclear yet how that will shape up.
Inmarsat was named the winner of a contested navy contract after a protest from Intelsat. Now that the contract is in Inmarsat's hands, are there any other hurdles or is that moving forward?
One of our distribution partners, our value added reseller arm Inmarsat Government, was in fact awarded the Navy Commercial Broadband Satellite Program. Now that that contract has been awarded to Inmarsat Government, our retail arm is in the execution phase right now. There are no obstacles. The contract has been awarded, it has been initiated, and they have begun work on it.
The Inmarsat 6 generation satellites were announced at the end of last year, and Inmarsat has the forthcoming launch of the fourth I-5 satellite. What considerations are being made with respect to new capacity when it comes to providing government services?
The U.S. government is our single largest customer, and a very strong and valued trusted partner of Inmarsat. As we look at all of our options in terms of future investment, growth, capacity and capability, we always look at our markets that we serve, in this case the U.S. government. As we did with Global Xpress, we intentionally built in attributes and capabilities and functionality that were of benefit and value to the U.S. government. We will continue to do that in our Inmarsat 6 fleet. We have done so on our Global Xpress Inmarsat-5 flight-four, and we continue to listen to our users.
If the government had a unique capability that they would want to add or a payload they would want to insert, we would look at those requirements on a case by case basis, and we will certainly look into that for any of our fleet where it makes sense.
Can you give any example of a service you would be able to provide to the government with I-6 that you couldn't do today?
There will be more capacity available and more geography as well. There will be different orbital slot locations to be able to add L and Ka frequencies for additional coverage and redundancy, so it is geography, it i's capacity, it is capability, and we're always looking at new and different waveforms that can add different types of throughputs and resiliency. Those are the types of new things we are looking at in the Inmarsat 6s.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Orbital ATK, Intelsat, Inmarsat
|There are a bunch of signs pointing to General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis as the next Defense Secretary
|2016-11-22 23:11:08
President-elect Donald Trump hasn't yet finalized his decision for who he'll tap to lead the Pentagon next year, but plenty of signs are pointing to retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as the top choice.
First and foremost among them are Trump's comments during an interview with New York Times reporters on Tuesday, in which he said he was "seriously considering" Mattis for Defense Secretary.
The comments came just a day after an off-the-record meeting the President-elect had with media executives and on-air personalities, in which he said "he believes it is time to have someone from the military as secretary of defense," according to Politico.
If Trump were to stick with that view, then that means the field of potential candidates has gotten much thinner.
There were a number of names initially floated, including retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.). Both Flynn and Sessions have accepted other positions within the administration, while Talent is apparently still in the running, according to The Washington Post.
Trump met with Mattis on Saturday for about an hour to discuss the position. Not much is known about what they talked about, but Trump did ask the general about the use of waterboarding and was surprised that Mattis was against it.
Afterward, Trump tweeted that Mattis was "very impressive" and called him a "true General's General."
Besides receiving praise from Trump himself, Mattis has been receiving near-universal praise in national security circles and among some of the DC elite. Syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham, a Trump backer who spoke at the Republican Convention, said on Twitter that he was the "best candidate."
And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, offered a ringing endorsement of Mattis on Monday.
"General Mattis is one of the finest military officers of his generation and an extraordinary leader who inspires a rare and special admiration of his troops," McCain wrote in his statement. "I hope he has an opportunity to serve America again."
Mattis did have some competition from another retired general — Army. Gen. Jack Keane — who was apparently offered the job, but Keane declined it for personal reasons, according to NPR. When asked who Trump should choose instead, Keane gave two names: David Petraeus and James Mattis.
While both would seem a good fit for Defense Secretary, picking Petraeus would likely be a much harder one to get confirmed. Congress seems likely to grant Mattis a waiver of the requirement of a seven-year gap between military service and the civilian defense job, but Petraeus would bring plenty of baggage to a confirmation hearing. That would include a sex scandal and charges of sharing classified information, for which he received a $100,000 fine and two years of probation.
According to people familiar with Trump's deliberations who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, Mattis is the most likely candidate.
Mattis, 66, is something of a legendary figure in the US military. Looked at as a warrior among Marines and well-respected by members of other services, he's been at the forefront of a number of engagements.
The former four-star general retired in 2013 after leading Marines for 44 years. His last post was with US Central Command, the Tampa, Florida-based unified command tasked with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as more than two-dozen other countries.
He led his battalion of Marines in the assault during the first Gulf war in 1991 and commanded the task force charging into Afghanistan in 2001. In 2003, as a Major General, he once again took up the task of motivating his young Marines to go into battle, penning a must-read letter to his troops before they crossed the border into Iraq.
A number of defense secretaries who served under President Barack Obama have criticized him for his supposed "micromanagement." Even Mattis himself was reportedly forced into early retirement by the Obama administration due to his hawkish views on Iran, according to Tom Ricks at Foreign Policy.
Whoever is ultimately picked, the next head of the Pentagon will oversee roughly 3 million military and civilian personnel and face myriad challenges, from the ongoing fight against ISIS and China's moves in the South China Sea to the ongoing stress on the military imposed by sequestration.
The next defense secretary may also end up dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea, and Russia is very likely to test limits in eastern Europe. The secretary will also need to reinvigorate a military plagued by low morale.
Mattis did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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NOW WATCH: A government agency is perplexed by video of a strange creature that some are comparing to the Loch Ness monsterПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Opportunity
|Public Private Partnerships, Marc Garneau, Telesat, DND, WGS, DoD, CSA & Urthecast
|2016-11-15 04:11:00
By Henry Stewart
Here are a few of the stories we're currently tracking in the Commercial Space blog:
For more, check out upcoming editions of the Commercial Space blog.
Henry Stewart is the pseudonym of a Toronto based aerospace writer.
The post Public Private Partnerships, Marc Garneau, Telesat, DND, WGS, DoD, CSA & Urthecast appeared first on BlogsCanada.ca.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Orbital ATK, Telesat Canada Ltd., Министерство обороны США, Космическое агентство Канады
|Q&A | Intelsat General's Skot Butler on EpicNG and selling bandwidth to DoD
|2016-11-08 18:11:13
A Q&A with Skot Butler, President, Intelsat General Corp.
A decade after leaving a business development job at a defense contractor to join Intelsat General Corp., Skot Butler was promoted in March to president of IGC. A wholly owned subsidiary of satellite-fleet operator Intelsat, IGC provides satellite-communications solutions to military, commercial and government customers.
Butler replaced the plain-spoken Kay Sears, who finished her 10-year tenure at the tail end of a decline in U.S. government bandwidth spending that tracks the military's shrinking footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Butler now gets a chance to come in at a trough and build, rather than manage a decline, as Sears had to do.
He's also taking over just as Intelsat's Epic-generation of Ku-band high-throughput satellites begin to enter service. Intelsat 29e launched in late January and entered service over North and South America at the end of March. Intelsat 33e launched in August, but is not expected to enter service over Africa and Asia until early 2017 due to a thruster malfunction that will delay its arrival on station.
Butler spoke with SpaceNews editor-in-chief Brian Berger a week before heading to London for the Global Milsatcom conference.
A satellite's projected capabilities and demonstrated capabilities aren't always the same. Have there been any surprises in what the EpicNG satellite can deliver?
Generally, Intelsat 29e has over-performed based on projections. We are very pleased. Nothing about the technology is disappointing or problematic.
What has your testing to date entailed?
Intelsat General has tested more than 10 small, tactical terminals, ranging in size from 45 centimeters to 1.3 meters on IS-29e, and achieved efficiencies up to 2.8 bps/Hz. This is an improvement of two- to three-times over what we have seen on typical wide-beam satellites. Next-generation ground modems being rolled out in 2017 are expected to achieve efficiencies up to 3.5 bps/Hz on EpicNG-class satellites.
We have also tested a 15-centimeter terminal on a Class 3 unmanned aerial vehicle -— think remotely piloted aircraft small enough to fit it a shipping container — and achieved 3.9 Mbps, a more than threefold increase. Finally, we've successfully tested the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) on IS-29e. The next challenge is defining the cost and concept of operations for commercial service. The Global Hawk satcom package was coupled with a PTW modem and operated in real time across multiple transponders on Intelsat H-1 satellite. This test validated that PTW — on existing, wideband Ku-band satellites — can provide up to 500 MHz of jamming protection. That's a significant improvement over the standard 36 or 72 MHz provided in the single transponder mode of operation.
We also have both transition and new services coming online with Intelsat 33e once it is ready for service in the first quarter of 2017. These are both fixed-ground and mobility applications.
Are there any milestones coming up that will show us the extent of the Defense Department's appetite for EpicNG bandwidth?
We do not publicize projections based on market segments we serve. We do have some customers who have told us that they are ready to use this as soon as it comes on-station. Some of this will be new service, and some will be existing service transitioning off of wideband and onto the Epic platform. Based on a lot of government requirements, existing ones must wait for re-competed government contracts or contract options. Because of this, we are focused on new service.
Now that Inmarsat has finally been declared the winner of the U.S. Navy's Commercial Broadband Satellite Program Satellite Service (CSSC), how much longer will Intelsat General be providing the service?
There is an extension for a few more months with our piece of it. I cannot comment on the turn-on of the new service.
After an extended decline, Intelsat's government revenue grew two percent during the three months ending Sept. 30. Should we expect a dip as the CSSC work comes to an end?
We have expected this and have been working hard to find business to take its place. We see some strong opportunities in the fourth quarter that will help to smooth this out. We are hyper-focused on mobility — and specifically aero — as there are requirements that are growing, compared to other sectors. We also saw the compression caused by budget sequestration and also pricing pressure —not just in government, but the overall satcom market. We feel good about EpicNG and the managed services we plan to build around this, as well as en-route and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance services to drive new business.
As you look out a few years, do you see Ka-band having a big impact on DoD business?
That has been a question for a number of years. It depends on the platform, and it is clear that the government is indicating that Ka will be used. Then there are cases like the installed base, where changing does not make sense. This applies to the Predator and Reaper UAVs. I think that we will see more multi-band capabilities to give the user more choices. The Air Force's Wideband Analysis of Alternatives focuses on a possible a one-to-one WGS replacement, or some government-owned replacement system that is more nimble and will include commercial, to give the government more flexibility and a greater ability to move around in a more seamless fashion. This will apply to moving between military satcom and commercial satcom, as well as between commercial satcom systems. There will be greater focus on a more enterprise-like system that is based on the mission. I think to this end, we will see more multi-band sorts of capabilities.
Intelsat General and its competitors have positioned commercial-satellite communications services as a good way for the Defense Department to achieve "resiliency" for all its space capabilities. Does DoD seem to be buying the argument?
The only thing we can point to directly is the Wideband Analysis of Alternatives that's in process. The Air Force is asking that we show them how commercial can play a significant role, but not all of the role. No particular architecture is on or off the table. The government is looking to use commercial in any way where it can work across capabilities. The Air Force's commercial satcom acquisition Pathfinder and future-technology-oriented pilot programs are looking at how this would work. Government leaders are serious — and with resilience being a buzzword, that is important. Even with cost still being a factor, commercial will continue as a part of resilience. We can be a good, reliable partner — and can be better if we know our place in the overall architecture. We have pushed hard on including this with the single-acquisition agent, which is not something I recall industry ever asking for. Currently, the Defense Information Systems Agency procures most commercial capacity to meet end-user requirements, while the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center procures military assets to meet these requirements. The commercial industry needs a single office where commercial and military satellite capabilities come together. Although DISA and SMC are cooperating more than ever, there is still no way to seamlessly allocate military requirements between commercial and military assets.
IGC seems to have made some progress under the Obama administration in terms of changing the way the the Pentagon works with commercial-satellite operators. Are you back to square one after the election?
I wish I had a crystal ball. I really hope we are not. I think that our area of the world does not get that level of attention, as we are relatively small beans. There's been enough of a shift that I don't think we will lose that progress. The civilian and military leadership have a cooperative relationship with comercial satcom operators. That pays good dividends into the future and it pays good dividends now, like the commercial integration cell, where fleet operators (including Intelsat) share spacecraft position information with the Air Force's Joint Space Operations Center.
There may be some holdouts who believe they have to own and control everything. But I think that future is not realistic, especially with costs and resiliency being important. It becomes obvious that we have to work together.
We don't know what personnel changes the next U.S. president will make on the civilian side, but on the uniformed side, Gen. John Hyten just moved to Strategic Command and Gen. John Raymond succeed him at Space Command. Does this suggest a continuity?
Absolutely. As an industry, and as a company, we have a lot of respect for Gen. Raymond. He has engaged with industry and thinks a lot like Gen. Hyten. We are excited that he is taking this role and we expect no changes. The next level down from Raymond, many new people need to be exposed and may experience some change. I think that Gen. Raymond's commander's intent memo was just released, and, here, we can get a peak under the covers. While the commander's intent is not long on specifics, the references to the role of commercial as a partner, combined with the Hyten's Space Enterprise Vision — which has resiliency as a core tenet — paint a favorable picture for continued engagement and support from his command on things like the commercialization of WGS flight operations and the Air Force Satellite Control Network.
Any final thoughts?
The future prospects of commercial satcom meeting government and DoD needs is bright. While we can't wait for activities like the Wideband Analysis of Alternatives to conclude, and procurement decisions to be made, commercial moves quickly to meet emerging demands across our user segments, government and otherwise. The good news is that more capable and more flexible satellites and satellite services are constantly being built and launched — with or without a contracted government requirement. Could we move even faster and more deliberately, of course. But, flexible designs mean we can more easily and rapidly react to changes in user demand, be that by moving coverage, mitigating interference, or offering service-model options which provide users choices in how they buy.
This article originally appeared in the Nov. 7 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Intelsat, Inmarsat, Intelsat 29e, Intelsat 33e
|This man built a cutting-edge stealth boat for the US Navy. Then the government tried to put him out of business.
|2016-11-05 18:11:00
In the summer of 2007, a US Navy carrier strike group of approximately 20 ships was decimated while on patrol in the Middle East. Some 20,000 sailors were killed.
The group, comprised of an aircraft carrier, five amphibious ships, and several cruisers, was overwhelmed by a swarm of fast attack boats laden with explosives, missiles launched from ground sites, and low-flying aircraft. The assault was "over in five, maybe ten minutes," Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper said at the time.
Fortunately, it was only a training exercise.
No ships were actually sunk. No sailors lost their lives.
But the Millennium Challenge Exercise of 2002 — which tested US military capabilities five years into the future — exposed a critical gap in the Navy's defenses: No matter how much firepower or armor a ship might have, it's entirely possible that at least some among a large swarm of small boats could penetrate those defenses and inflict major damage. And countries like Iran have taken notice.
"The US military has never found a way to stop that type of swarm attack against the US fleet," Gregory Sancoff, the CEO of Juliet Marine Systems, told Business Insider. "They're incredibly difficult targets."
While the military hasn't yet perfected a solution, Sancoff believes he has it.
It's called Ghost, and it's a stealthy, small boat that can be outfitted with a variety of weapons to fight back in danger areas such as the Strait of Hormuz. But the US Navy doesn't want it, and the government of the United States seems to be doing everything it can to stop anyone else from having it as well.
When a serial entrepreneur decides to build a stealth boat
Sancoff did things differently than most in the defense contracting world. Instead of waiting around for the Pentagon to put out requirements or solicit contract proposals, he saw the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and the revelations from Millennium Challenge, as the catalyst for building his next company.
Like most entrepreneurs, he saw a problem that needed a solution. So he just decided to build it.
"We are the model the Secretary of Defense is looking for," he said, of Defense Secretary Ash Carter's push for companies outside the defense establishment to start building things for the Pentagon.
Sancoff had built successful companies outside of the defense industry plenty of times. He built low-cost portable IV pumps for hospitals with his first company, Block Medical, which he later sold for $80 million. Then he started a different company, and sold that for $400 million. And then he sold yet another in 2004.
After that, Sancoff wanted to start something that would be helpful for his country. He named the company Juliet Marine Systems, and its flagship project was called Ghost.
Sancoff, along with some outside investors, put down roughly $20 million to make it happen. He hired engineers and naval experts, and assembled a board with an impressive array of former Navy admirals to help advise him.
Then he got to work, building a prototype of the design he came up with. That was in 2007. It took him about four years, and $5 million of his own money, but eventually his full-scale Ghost prototype was ready to hit the water outside Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, New Hampshire, where it was built.
There are a few things the Ghost does very well: Its clever design makes its radar signature minimal, so most larger ships won't even pick it up on their radar displays. And since its cockpit sits far above the water, it can literally cut through waves for a smooth ride, reducing the slamming effect that rough water would have on a crew.
"You can sit there and drink your coffee going through six-foot swells," Sancoff told Bloomberg. But Ghost's most cutting-edge feature is its propulsion technology, which has far-reaching implications for navies with access to it.
"He put the propellers at the forward end of these two hull forms," Rear Adm. Jay Cohen (Ret.), the former head of the Office of Naval Research, and now a board member for Juliet, told Business Insider. "It's like riding on two fins attached to two submarines. But instead of pushing, they are pulling."
Sancoff's design was a super cavitating propulsion system — the propellers create a gas bubble through which the fins then move — which is a more efficient and faster way to move a boat through water with far less drag.
"The beauty of that is they are very stable," Cohen said. "It's like front wheel drive versus rear wheel drive."
Sancoff said that he made plenty of overtures to the Navy and the Pentagon about what he was working on. The Office of Naval Research initially balked at his idea prior to the completion of a prototype, according to Bloomberg. Then, he claims, a call came from DARPA, which eventually led to contract negotiations for the Ghost.
"To me, this was a no brainer," Cohen, the ONR Chief from 2000 to 2006, said. "Had I been chief of naval research [at that time], I absolutely would have invested in a cooperative agreement for a couple of million dollars." As Cohen explained, the ONR's budget is mostly dedicated to investments that will probably turn into viable projects down the road, but about 10% of that budget is set aside for "high risk, high gain" projects like Sancoff's — systems that can be bought and fielded much quicker than going through the slower defense acquisition funnel.
"The Congress and the Navy are very supportive of this because basically, if it's successful, you can introduce it immediately as a solution," Cohen said. "And if its not, you're not wasting your money on an acquisition program."
But that didn't happen.
"The next thing you know I get a contract from them and I look at it and they want all the patent rights," he said. Sancoff, believing the Ghost could have many more uses outside the military market, scoffed at the idea of losing his intellectual property. He turned down the contract, thinking eventually the US Navy would go for it, and if not, he could sell to a friendly nation such as South Korea, Japan, or the UK.
Instead, about a month later, Sancoff said, "I had secrecy orders slapped on my company. They took it anyway. They went and they grabbed my four patents, put secrecy orders on them, and they didn't call me."
Sancoff and Cohen believe that DARPA may have contacted ONR to shut him out of any further opportunities to do business with the Pentagon. Then the Navy issued secrecy orders over Juliet's four patents, which meant the company couldn't sell the boat, or even show it to anyone.
"This thing reeks of conspiracy," Cohen said.
Almost as soon as he had built the cutting-edge boat, Sancoff's dream of turning it into a business was fading away.
Both DARPA and The Office of Naval Research declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. The Department of Justice also declined to comment.
'This is like a bad soap opera'
"If you're wondering why innovators like Greg Sancoff and others don't come to the US government to do business anymore," Cohen told Business Insider. "This is the kind of hubris by government service people of 'not invented here' that could significantly degrade our national security if its not nipped in the bud."
According to Cohen, it's likely that the Navy saw potential in Ghost's technology but its culture of investing mostly in internal projects tainted any hope of adoption. At one point in 2014, Adm. Michelle Howard — then serving as Chief of Naval Operations — even toured the boat and, according to Cohen, later asked ONR about it. They said the design was "dangerous," Cohen claimed, of rumors he heard afterward.
Howard did not respond to a request for comment.
"Meanwhile, they're funding other supercavitation initiatives," Cohen said.
Juliet Marine Systems was slapped with a secrecy order in October 2009. Then in March 2010, it was lifted without explanation. The orders were reinstated in August, and then lifted again in June 2011.
"It just completely stifled the innovation," Sancoff said. "It stifled our schedule and our financial plans, and we basically sat around for long periods of time with little money."
So Sancoff decided that if the US government didn't want Ghost, perhaps some US allies would. In the times he wasn't under secrecy order, he was hearing positive feedback from outside the United States. But his outreach to friendly nations was stifled by the State Department, using export regulations on defense-related systems.
If Juliet wants to take a meeting with South Korea, for example, it has to file paperwork with the State Department. And since it's naval technology, State then goes back to the Navy to ask for their opinion before issuing a decision. And pretty much every time, Sancoff said, those decisions come along with plenty of caveats.
"They tell us basically you cannot discuss anything with any foreign country unless we see it first," Sancoff said. "We absolutely believe they'd like us to go out of business. They don't want to see this technology used by other countries."
First and foremost among things Juliet cannot discuss, according to one export license the company shared with Business Insider, is the Ghost boat, and its supercavitating hull. It also said it couldn't talk about its stealth capabilities, or Ghost's ability to employ various US weapons systems.
Essentially, Juliet is hindered by a Catch-22 that says, sure you can do business outside the United States, as long it's not your main line of business.
"This is like a bad soap opera. You can't write this," Cohen said. "This is either incompetence at its height or it's a Machiavellian plot and you know what, its somewhere in between the two."
What happens next?
Juliet's bureaucratic nightmare continues to this day.
Because the company can't do business with anyone, Sancoff has had to lay off most of his employees. He has been in contact with Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and she has set up meetings with Navy officials and written letters on the company's behalf, but those efforts have only gone so far.
"It doesn't seem right for the US government to tell a company like Juliet Marine that the Department of Defense is not interested in the cutting-edge vessel and propulsion technology the company has developed at its own expense, while also telling the company that the technology is too advanced to permit them to share it with our nation's closest allies and partners," Ayotte told Business Insider in a written statement.
"DoD will increasingly need innovative American defense suppliers in the future, and the Pentagon would be wise to not adopt policies that will drive those companies out of business or out of the defense sector."
In July 2015, Sancoff decided to take the government to court over the secrecy orders, alleging that they resulted in a loss of business opportunities and revenue. Juliet's complaint says the orders delayed critical sea trials, discussions with potential partners, the marketing of its product, and stifled its ability to hire employees and raise additional investment.
Government lawyers have denied any damage has been caused by those orders, court filings show.
Now more than a year on, the case has moved slowly in the US Court of Federal Claims. Discovery has produced more than 37,000 documents from Juliet, while the government has only produced about 5,000. And for almost all of Juliet's filings, the government does not respond without first asking for an extension, adding weeks and months of delay.
"They are doing everything they can to stonewall us, redact everything they can redact, and fight us until the very end," Sancoff said.
But Sancoff is confident that he will emerge victorious. And though he's had to lay off most of his employees as he fights the government, he told Business Insider they would all be re-hired once the case is settled.
"Greg Sancoff and the backers of Juliet Marine will be damned if they will allow the federal government to run out the clock," Cohen said. "They are not inclined to do that."
"We will never give up this company," Sancoff said.
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Ключевые слова: WISE, DARPA
|Congress says the Pentagon can immediately fix the cash bonus scandal affecting 10,000 soldiers
|2016-10-26 00:10:38
The Pentagon apparently has the power to address the growing scandal involving nearly 10,000 soldiers who were paid juicy cash bonuses but are now being forced to pay it all back, after an audit found the payments were improperly issued.
"The law is clear that it allows the Secretary of Defense to stop the recoupment" of bonus payments, Joe Kaspar, the chief of staff for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), told Business Insider. "Now making someone whole again, that's probably where Congress is going to have to step in."
Kaspar pointed to the law concerning pay and allowances for the US military, Title 37, which has a provision that specifically gives the Defense Secretary the ability to waive the repayment of improper bonus payments if they would be "contrary to personnel policy or management objective, would be against the equity and good conscience, or would be contrary to the best interests of the United States."
A Pentagon spokesperson told Business Insider he would look into the matter.
"I do know that Sec Def was talking about this, and he said there are a lot of complexities," said Maj. Jamie Davis. "We are looking into it, and we are going to resolve it."
Indeed, Carter has directed a top Pentagon official to look into and solve the issue, according to Stars & Stripes.
But members of Congress are saying that Carter can resolve the issue using the current authority of Title 37. That authority would be especially important to use if the Pentagon wanted to fix the matter quickly, since Congress will not be in session until after the November election.
"We've already called on Defense Secretary Ash Carter to use his existing authority to halt efforts to claw back these bonuses, and we're encouraged by his recent remarks that the department is looking to resolve this situation," wrote Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in a joint statement.
"However, if Secretary Carter decides not to use that authority, we will introduce legislation when Congress is back in session – and use every opportunity to get it enacted into law before the end of the year – so that service members who unknowingly received improper reenlistment bonuses and other incentives can keep what they earned by wearing our nation's uniform."
One legislative fix is also being worked on for the FY17 defense authorization bill that would add a statute of limitations concerning how long the DoD has to get back improper payments.
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Ключевые слова: Opportunity
|Five Findings from GVF's Applied Innovation Conference
|2016-10-14 21:10:34
The Oct. 13 sunrise reflecting off Intelsat's McLean, Virginia headquarters, host of the GVF Applied Innovation Conference. Photo: Via Satellite
[Via Satellite 10-14-2016] Mobility is one of the satellite industry's new favorite words, now that connectivity is viewed as a must have for vehicles and vessels around the world. To capture that demand, several companies are working on new technologies and products, and shared about these at the Global VSAT Forum's (GVF) Applied Innovation Conference Oct. 13. Here Via Satellite shares our top five findings from the conference.
1. Hughes Wants Future HTS to be Very Flexible
Hughes envisions having High Throughput Satellites (HTS) that enable the company to readily service multiple applications and not be limited to one or two verticals. Dan Lozada, VP of international sales at Hughes, said that for the company's role as a service provider, Hughes wants future systems to use a combination of space and ground technology that enable flexibility in serving different markets.
"What you are going to see … is a satellite platform that has different types of applications all blended into a technology mix. It's a little bit different than designing the satellite with only the aero or only consumer base. Because we are launching satellites every two to three years, we know we have to be careful not to select only one or two markets and then not have proper solutions for different ones," he said.
Lozada said Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes Network Systems, has a vision for the company in terms of HTS. In February, Kaul said Hughes was "working very hard on Jupiter 3," as the operator's next generation HTS system. He estimated at the time that an announcement related to a satellite manufacturer would likely be made in the ensuing months. Eight months later, Hughes and parent company EchoStar have yet to make a public decision regarding Jupiter 3.
"The whole company is lined up in terms of what we are going to do for growing our consumer business, growing our mobility business, and part of that is also increasing the enterprise part of what we do," added Lozada.
In Hughes' business as a provider of technology to other satellite and telecommunications companies, Lozada said the company is involved in providing technology to High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) systems like what Google is working on, but added that Hughes does not plan to create a HAPS service of its own. Hughes next HTS satellite, Jupiter 2, is slated to launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket.
2. SSL has First In-Orbit Servicing Contract
Space Systems Loral (SSL) has a contract to provide in-orbit servicing with an undisclosed commercial customer, VP of Business Development, Karl Clausing said. Through parent company MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), SSL has significant experience in space robotics, coupled with its own contracts for satellite servicing technologies with NASA and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Clausing said the contract is essentially an agreement "to buy once the service is available." Right now, SSL still needs to prove if the business case is viable.
"The final business case is still out there, whether we fund this ourselves or bring in some venture capital or some other capital, or we work as a partnership. That's still to be determined for this particular servicer. In terms of the proximity operations, several of the operators have looked at this and believe we have done our due diligence and believe that this is all feasible," he said.
The first customer is not buying the entire capacity of the servicer, which SSL has yet to name, but only a portion of it. Clausing estimated at least three to five missions with the servicer would likely be enough to go forward with the project. He added that the servicer fits in with the long term vision of a "persistent platform," where instead of operators continually buying new satellites, they could instead launch new payloads and have them replace outdated technology right there in space. Two other companies, Orbital ATK and Effective Space Solutions have also announced contracts for in-orbit servicing this year.
3. CyberESI Customer Base is Roughly One-Quarter Satellite Companies
Andrew Silberstein, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of CyberESI, a managed security service provider, estimated that between 20 and 30 percent of his company's business now comes from the satellite industry. He said CyberESI is working increasingly with teleports and satellite operations centers, which are now prime targets for cyber criminals.
"Satellite communications and teleports, believe it or not, are a major threat vector for these adversaries for a lot of reasons," he explained. "One is the ubiquitous nature of satellite communications. We have seen that firsthand both in satellite operations centers and teleports, and these kind of attacks don't happen once a month — these happen almost on a daily basis. So if you are prepared for that, you can take action and mitigate risk, but without that, very likely there are issues going on either within your operations or within a particular teleport."
Silberstein said security incidents grew at a 66 percent Calculated Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in 2015, that 170 million malware incidents affected 10,000 organizations in one year alone, and that attackers took minutes or less to compromise systems in 93 percent of cases. He said to truly protect networks — satellite included — visibility into the network itself is a must.
"These companies that are breached, they all have firewalls, they all have anti-viruses, so there is an important message here. The message is that those lines of defense do not stop attackers. Obviously they are getting in within minutes, so if you just have firewalls on the front door and you've got anti-virus on the end-points, that's not going to stop them; something else is needed," he said.
4. AvL Technologies Researching Flat Panel Antenna Technology
AvL Technologies is beginning to wade into the field of flat-panel antennas, according to Dave Provencher, VP and director of business development. While gauging the opportunity in land mobility to be low due to line-of-sight issues caused by buildings and structures, for maritime and aero he said there are very visible market applications.
"The answer is yes," Provencher said in response to a query about if AvL is considering making phased array or electronically steered antennas, "but right now we are watching very carefully what's happening with Phasor and Kymeta and some of the other companies."
AvL has had high demand for its existing antenna solutions, so much so that the company last month opened a 60,000 square foot multi-tenant manufacturing facility to produce at higher volumes. The company also released a new line of fixed Earth station antennas last week. Provencher said AvL is beginning to research flat-panel antennas, but only on a limited basis.
"We have some steady contracts with universities right now, but it's such a large investment for a relatively small company to do that so I don't see us developing anything in house, but doing it in conjunction with [partners]," he said.
5. Kratos RT Logic Creating a "Roaming" Capability Between Government and Commercial Satellites
Kratos' RT Logic division is studying how to create a product that would let government customers leverage both milsatcom and comsatcom resources with the same system. Such a technology, according to Mark Dale, business development director at RT Logic, could enable government users to more flexibly use satellite communications.
"The idea is to let the government use satcom capability for roaming like a cellphone: you can either use a government satellite or a commercial satellite network," he said.
The system would require a multi-modem terminal that could tap into different satellite networks using an open architecture, Dale said. He described the system as using several modems, military gateways and a control system to manage milsatcom, commercial leased bandwidth and commercial managed networks.
Dale said the concept for this "roaming" capability comes from military leadership at the United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). Without such Department of Defense (DOD) support, he said the project would probably be too farfetched.
"The government itself is seeing this," he said. "They absolutely have to change the way they access satellite capacity."
The post Five Findings from GVF's Applied Innovation Conference appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: EchoStar Corporation, Orbital ATK, Space Systems Loral, Военно-воздушные силы США
|NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19960039894: NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Report 45; The Technical Communications Practices of US Aerospace Engineers and Scientists: Results of the Phase 3 US Aerospace Engineering Educators Survey
|2016-10-13 10:10:44
The U.S. government technical report is a primary means by which the results of federally funded research and development (R&D) are transferred to the U.S. aerospace industry. However, little is known about this information product in terms of its actual use, importance, and value in the transfer of....
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Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США
|Gen Hyten will bring multi-domain experience to STRATCOM
|2016-10-07 01:10:34
McLean VA (SPX) Oct 06, 2016 - Gen. John Hyten, long a champion of linking space and cyberspace domains in U.S. defense planning, is expected to get a chance to further that advocacy in leading Strategic Command.
President Obama nominated Hyten, who has headed Space Command for two years, to lead the Strategic Command (STRATCOM) on September 9. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted approval of the nomination on September 22 after a lengthy confirmation hearing on September 20. The last hurdle is a vote by the full Senate.
Hyten would replace Adm. Cecil Haney at STRATCOM. Hyten would be replaced at Space Command by Lt. Gen Jay Raymond, currently the Air Force Chief of Staff for Operations. On Friday, the Senate also approved the nomination of Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves to head Missile Defense Command.
In his "Commanders Strategic Intent" in April, Hyten expanded the definition of battlespace that must be defended to include geosynchronous orbit, where the nation's military and commercial satellites hold the key to the continuous communications necessary for national defense. Without it, he said in a "60 Minutes" interview in 2015, the military fights a World-War-II-type, pre-Industrial-Age battle.
Space is an environment where the United States is becoming more capable, with the addition of high-throughput satellites such as the Intelsat EpicNG constellation. But the space environment is also becoming increasingly crowded and contested, Hyten has said on many occasions, building awareness in every audience he addresses. During Hyten's confirmation hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) indicated he only recently understood the potential peril in space when he learned that China and Russia are building weapons "specifically designed to cripple U.S. systems."
Hyten told the committee that space control programs and a battle-management command and control system should be among the Department of Defense's top priorities. He has long sought to remove redundancy in current space control by combining six different systems into one. Industry is seeking to operate that system, freeing the military to expand training for battle management.
In written testimony, Hyten also attempted to clear up differences in the mission of the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenburg Air Force Base, Calif., and the recently created Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSpOC) at Schriver Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
The JSpOC is focused on the terrestrial fight, while the JICSpOC handles the conflict that extends into space. "If we tried to integrate either with the other, both would be at significant risk of failure," Hyten said.
During a keynote address at the Air Force Association's Air, Space and Cyber Conference on September 21, Deputy Defense Sec. Bob Work called the JICSpOC "the first operational organizational construct of the Third Offset," DoD's mission to keep a U.S. military advantage ahead of potential adversaries for the next two to three decades.
Two days earlier at the conference, Gen. Raymond made clear that he will take a multi-domain perspective into his new job at Space Command. He said Desert Storm was the first conflict in which space capabilities were integrated into wartime operations.
Industry, including Intelsat General Corp., provided satellite support that eventually carried 80 percent of the military's communications needs during that war.
"I would just say that we are working - just like we have done in other domains -to integrate everything into the fight, and we're doing that more than what we've done in the past," he told C4ISRNET. The integration is "very analogous to space capabilities [because] we worked very hard over the years to integrate space capabilities."
At Space Command, Raymond would inherit the Space Enterprise Vision (SEV) from Hyten, who could continue his support at STRATCOM. The SEV outlines moves to build resilience into the military's satellite capability and improve situational awareness in space. It also seeks to commercialize some space operations.
Even before testifying in his confirmation hearing, Hyten made clear his posture on global multi-domain integration, calling it a "significant challenge. ... In other words, how do we effectively integrate our forces to fight seamlessly on the land, at sea, in air, in space, and in cyberspace."
These leaders are being promoted during a critical time. The DoD faces a number of decisions and challenges as it seeks to maintain and enhance space capacities that are second to no other nation. Based on their stated goals and priorities, these are the right people for the job.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Intelsat
|Lawmakers are fighting a space battle on Capitol Hill over SpaceX and its biggest competitor
|2016-10-04 20:10:00
A space battle is being fought on Capitol Hill, and a fleet of rocket companies are using millions of lobbying dollars to wage it.
The core struggle is between SpaceX, founded in 2002 by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, and United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is jointly owned by aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
At stake is roughly $70 billion worth of Pentagon satellite launch contracts through 2030, plus what some members of Congress argue is the safety of future astronauts.
While the skirmish dates back more than a decade, lawmakers began sparring over issues central to each company's interests in the past week — just days after SpaceX founder Elon Musk debuted his bold vision for colonizing Mars.
On September 27, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), who represents the district where ULA is headquartered, penned a four-page congressional letter with nine other House Republicans and sent it to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NASA, and the US Air Force (USAF).
The oversight letter — which has no legal authority, but government organizations almost always respond to — calls on the federal agencies to take control of SpaceX's internally led investigations and specifically references the company's most recent rocket failures on September 1, 2016, and June 28, 2015.
"These failures could have spelled disaster, even loss of life, had critical national security payloads or NASA crew been aboard those rockets," the letter states. "Both SpaceX failures occurred after the Air Force certified the Falcon 9 launch vehicle for US national security launches, less than fifteen months ago."
But on Tuesday, October 4, a larger, bipartisan group of 24 members of Congress delivered a strong rebuttal. Their letter urges the FAA, NASA, and USAF to stay the course.
"Accidents are unfortunate events, and accident investigations should not be politicized. We encourage you to reject calls for your organizations to abandon established, well considered, and long standing procedures," states the letter, led by Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), whose district includes a large SpaceX facility.
Beyond any convictions about how the commercial space industry should work, and what constitutes appropriate use of taxpayer dollars, lobbyist spending seems to be driving the latest feud.
In 2015 alone, SpaceX dropped almost $1.8 million on its lobbying efforts — up from about $569,000 just 5 years earlier. Spending by ULA has followed suit, with nearly $1.5 million in 2015, up from $120,000 in 2010.
A sizable cut of that money, according to data gathered by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (which tracks federal campaign contributions and lobbying efforts on its website opensecrets.org), has ended up in the campaign coffers of many lawmakers who seem to be fighting on the companies' behalves.
The latest volleys in a long space battle
The rivalry between the rocket-launching companies goes back at least a decade.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin used to compete against each other for military launch contracts, but in 2005 they announced their plan to lay down arms and form a joint rocket-launching business: ULA.
At the time, SpaceX was just 3-year-old rocket company with few launches under its belt — and a lot to prove. Regardless, it sued Boeing and Lockheed Martin in October 2005 in an attempt to block ULA's formation under antitrust law.
A judge dismissed SpaceX's lawsuit in February 2006. The FTC then approved the joint venture in October 2006, expressing that, while it was concerned about "anticompetitive harm", the Pentagon needed "assured access to space" and ULA was the only real option.
SpaceX didn't forget about ULA's military spaceflight monopoly, yet chose to focus its energies elsewhere.
Over the next 8 years, Musk's aerospace company matured its Falcon 9 rocket design, figured out how to build rocket boosters that can land themselves at sea, bagged contracts with telecommunications satellite providers, and worked toward winning NASA contracts to resupply the space station (and eventually launch people into space).
Crucially, it also launched two out of three certification flights the US Air Force required to compete with ULA for Pentagon contracts.
But in September 2013, when SpaceX says it was "just days away" from its third and final certification flight, the Air Force quietly inked a contract with ULA to fly its next 36 launches.
SpaceX sued the government over the deal in April 2014, detailing its rationale in a press release:
"Since the merger, not only have there been no savings but costs have skyrocketed. Vehicle costs are up from approximately $100M per vehicle to $400M per vehicle—making ULA's launch vehicles the most expensive not just in the US, but the world. In addition, the United States pays ULA nearly $1 billion dollars per year just to maintain the ability to launch—regardless of whether or not they launch a single rocket.
"To be clear, SpaceX is not seeking to be awarded any launch contracts. We are simply seeking the opportunity to compete—and not just for SpaceX, but for any qualified company. If we compete and we lose, that's ok too."
In January 2015, ULA settled with SpaceX, which dropped its lawsuit. Four months later, in May 2015, SpaceX earned its USAF certification, followed by its first $83 million GPS satellite launch contract — hundreds of millions of dollars less than ULA's typical bid.
Another flash point for SpaceX vs. Boeing-Lockheed-ULA involved a government rule limiting the use of Russian-made RD-180 engines, which are powerful devices that ULA uses to propel heavy military satellites into orbit.
While Russia aggressively annexed Crimea in Ukraine, SpaceX lobbied intensely to have the engines banned after 2019 in a re-authorization of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Since SpaceX makes its own rocket engines, passage of the rule might have guaranteed its own military launch monopoly.
But Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) — to whom SpaceX contributed at least $16,500 in the latest election cycle, and who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — ultimately backed down from his position that allowing the use of RD-180s would be funding "Putin's top cronies."
In a legislative compromise earlier this year, the NDAA re-authorization gave ULA permission to use 18 of the RD-180 engines on its rockets through 2022. (The much-deeper pockets of Boeing and Lockheed Martin almost certainly helped win the day.)
Amid these legal actions, SpaceX suffered two launch failures (in 2012 and 2015) and a string of anomalies at launch — giving Coffman and other politicians multiple openings to wade into the fray.
Rocket-powered lobbying
Raising issues about SpaceX, its launch failures and anomalies, and its relationship with the US government is not a first for Coffman.
As a member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee (which oversees military spacecraft), he did so in 2014, and in 2015 on multiple occasions.
The senator faces a tough 2016 reelection campaign in his district — the home base of ULA.
Records show that, during his political career, Coffman has accepted at least $51,800 in campaign donations from Lockheed Martin and $21,000 from Boeing, and has publicly defended ULA.
In the 2016 election cycle, SpaceX contributed money to at least half of the 24 signers of the congressional letter that responded to (and contested) Coffman's. Flores himself has taken at least $2,000, and cosigner Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) accepted at least $7,000 from SpaceX.
Flores also presides over district 17 in Texas, which is home to SpaceX's 4,000-acre rocket development facility in the town of McGregor.
Samanthan Masunaga, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, captured the relationship well in a story published in May 2016:
"Traditional launch providers see their market being threatened by nontraditional entrants," said Loren Thompson, aerospace analyst with the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., think tank. "Basically, this is competition between launch providers over market share and money that in the political process gets related to local interests."
Business Insider contacted Rep. Coffman's press secretary as well as ULA, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin about campaign funding and other issues related to this story, but we did not immediately receive a response. Representatives from Rep. Flores' office and SpaceX also did not immediately provide a comment.
Despite the apparent turf-based lobbying war, Coffman and his colleagues are not alone in their critique of how government agencies permit SpaceX to internally lead their own mishap investigations — and, by extension, other rocket companies like Orbital ATK and ULA. (Both have chosen to lead their own investigations in recent years.)
In fact, a June 2016 audit by NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) argues that internally led probes don't meet the bar for being independent.
Semi-internal investigations
The first SpaceX incident in question was an in-flight explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket on June 28, 2015, which destroyed a telecommunications satellite.
SpaceX chose to do an internal accident investigation with some FAA oversight, ultimately determining that a faulty strut had caused the accident.
The June 2016 NASA OIG audit concluded that investigation wasn't independent "because 11 of the 12 voting members were SpaceX employees."
"While not required in the CRS-1 contract, this lack of independence does not meet Government best practice standards for NASA, NTSB, and USAF investigations and could impact the board's ability to identify the root cause and make corrective actions," the report read.
The most recent incident was a launchpad fireball of a Falcon 9 rocket on September 1, 2016, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The percussive blaze destroyed Facebook's $200 million Amos-6 satellite, and SpaceX again exercised a federal law to perform its own investigation (since no people were harmed). That investigation isn't done, though a helium system seems to be at fault.
Musk said in a press call on September 27 that the company hasn't lost any contracts because of the incident.
"If something happens to SpaceX, it gets 100 times more press ... The public may think that our rockets fail, but actually lots of rockets fail," he told reporters. "This is a small thing on a long road. There will probably be other failures in the future."
For its ongoing investigation, SpaceX nearly doubled its team to a core group of "around 20 people," of which "more than half are representatives from FAA, NASA, US Air Force and industry experts," a company spokesperson previously told Business Insider in an email.
Leading the entire group is Hans Koenigsmann — SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance.
"[W]e believe he is the best person to do so," the spokesperson said. "We are collaborating very closely with the participating agencies, sharing raw data and providing access to meetings."
But the 10 signers of the first congressional letter do not seem satisfied with the internally led process.
"We feel strongly that the current investigation should be led by NASA and the Air Force to ensure that proper investigative engineering rigor is applied and that the outcomes are sufficient to prevent NASA and military launch mishaps in the future," the letter states.
John Taylor, a SpaceX spokesperson, declined to comment when provided a copy of the first letter.
How federal agencies responded
The first letter calls on the FAA, USAF, and NASA for their responses to the letter by October 31, 2016.
Business Insider forwarded both a draft and then a signed letter to those agencies as well as to the DoD (which is named in the letter) and asked for comment.
Hank Price, an FAA spokesperson, told Business Insider "it'd take some time to draft a response, and we wouldn't respond to it until we'd spoken to the Congressman first."
Another FAA spokesperson later told Business Insider in an email: "The FAA received the letter late Thursday afternoon and has not had a chance to review it. Safety of all operations, including commercial space, is our top priority, and the FAA is closely overseeing the accident investigation. We will respond to the members of Congress in a timely manner."
NASA representatives for the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate told Business Insider in an email "we haven't officially received this, but even when we do, we wouldn't be able to comment in advance of responding."
Laura Seal, a DoD spokesperson, told Business Insider by email that the "letter is not addressed to the Department of Defense. If we do receive a letter from Congress on this topic for response, we would respond directly to the author."
Representatives at the USAF did not immediately reply.
The congressional letters
Below is the full text of the first letter, from Coffman's group on September 27:
And the second letter from Flores' contingent, released October 4:
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Elon Musk rarely hires non-US citizens to work at SpaceX — here's whyПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Атлас 5, Orbital ATK, Космическое агентство США, Серия РН Фалькон
|US Air Force Competing STP 3 Launch Contract
|2016-10-03 23:10:44
[Via Satellite 10-03-2016] The United States Air Force has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the launch of the Space Test Program 3 (STP 3) mission in June 2019. The winner of the award will receive a firm-fixed price contract for a total launch solution including launch vehicle production, mission integration and launch operations.
This is the third competitive launch service solicitation under the Air Force's current Phase 1A procurement strategy, which reintroduces competition for National Security Space (NSS) launch services. Today, two companies — Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) a Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture — have the necessary certification to launch national security payloads. The Air Force released a draft RFP on Aug. 19 to obtain industry feedback, which then informed the final RFP, released on Sept. 29. Proposals are due back to the Air Force no later than Dec. 2.
The STP 3 mission consists of a primary space vehicle (STPSat 6) and a propulsive Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) holding up to six payloads to be identified no later than 12-months prior to launch. The satellite will host the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System 3 (SABRS 3) payload, NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) payload, and seven Science and Technology (S&T) payloads from the Department of Defense (DOD) Space Test Program.
The post US Air Force Competing STP 3 Launch Contract appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Ball Aerospace, Военно-воздушные силы США
|A congressman doesn't want SpaceX handling its own 'troubling' rocket accident investigation
|2016-09-30 02:09:00
Just days after SpaceX founder Elon Musk delivered his sweeping vision of colonizing Mars, a Colorado congressman is calling on government agencies to take over an investigation of the aerospace company's recent launchpad rocket explosion.
The move — a signed congressional letter dated Thursday, September 29 — follows on the heels of two recent explosions of uncrewed Falcon 9 rockets.
"These failures could have spelled disaster, even loss of life, had critical national security payloads or NASA crew been aboard those rockets," the letter states. "Both SpaceX failures occurred after the Air Force certified the Falcon 9 launch vehicle for U.S. national security launches, less than fifteen months ago."
Congressman Mike Coffman (R-CO) penned the four-page congressional letter, which was cosigned by nine other House Republicans. (The letter's full text is at the end of this post.)
It asks for increased scrutiny of SpaceX's investigation practices, given its plans with NASA to launch astronauts to the International Space Station. It also lobs pointed questions at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NASA, and the US Air Force (USAF) about the certification process of SpaceX hardware, pricing schemes, risk assessment, and more.
Semi-internal investigations
The first SpaceX incident in question was an in-flight explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket on June 28, 2015, destroying a telecommunications satellite.
SpaceX chose to do an internal accident investigation with some FAA oversight, ultimately determining that a faulty strut had caused the accident.
The most recent accident was a launchpad fireball of a Falcon 9 rocket on September 1, 2016, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The percussive blaze destroyed Facebook's $200 million Amos-6 satellite, and SpaceX again exercised a federal law to perform its own investigation (since no people were harmed). That investigation isn't done, though a helium system seems to be at fault.
For its ongoing investigation, SpaceX nearly doubled its team to a core group of "around 20 people," of which "more than half are representatives from FAA, NASA, US Air Force and industry experts," a company spokesperson previously told Business Insider in an email.
Leading the entire group is Hans Koenigsmann — SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance.
"[W]e believe he is the best person to do so," the spokesperson said. "We are collaborating very closely with the participating agencies, sharing raw data and providing access to meetings."
But the 10 signers of the congressional letter do not seem satisfied with the internally led process.
"We feel strongly that the current investigation should be led by NASA and the Air Force to ensure that proper investigative engineering rigor is applied and that the outcomes are sufficient to prevent NASA and military launch mishaps in the future," the draft letter states.
John Taylor, a SpaceX spokesperson, declined to comment when provided a copy of the letter.
A space battle on Capitol Hill
Raising issues about SpaceX, its failures, and its treatment by the US government is not a first for Coffman.
As a member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee (which oversees military spacecraft), he did so in 2015 on multiple occasions, and in 2014 as well.
The senator now faces a heated 2016 reelection campaign in his district — the home of SpaceX's biggest competitor, United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is itself a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Records show that Coffman has publicly accepted more than $51,000 in campaign donations from Lockheed Martin during his career.
Coffman has also publicly supported ULA.
Samanthan Masunaga, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, captured the scuffle well in a story published in May 2016:
"Traditional launch providers see their market being threatened by nontraditional entrants," said Loren Thompson, aerospace analyst with the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., think tank. "Basically, this is competition between launch providers over market share and money that in the political process gets related to local interests."
In 2015, United Launch Alliance spent $1.4 million on lobbying, up from $1 million the year before, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks federal campaign contributions and lobbying efforts on its website opensecrets.org.
That same year, SpaceX spent $1.7 million on lobbying, up from $1.5 million in 2014.
The sparring has been especially heated between the two companies as they compete for government launch contracts worth tens of billions of dollars.
A government rule limiting the use of Russian-made engines — which ULA has relied on for its rockets — in the launch of military spacecraft has not helped matters for the company. (SpaceX makes its own rocket engines.)
Business Insider contacted Rep. Coffman's press secretary as well as ULA and Lockheed Martin for this story, but we did not immediately receive a response. A Boeing representative could not immediately provide a comment.
No comment for now
The letter calls on the FAA, USAF, and NASA for their responses to the letter by October 31, 2016.
Business Insider forwarded both a draft and then a signed letter to those agencies as well as to the DoD (which is named in the letter) and asked for comment.
Hank Price, an FAA spokesperson, told Business Insider "it'd take some time to draft a response, and we wouldn't respond to it until we'd spoken to the Congressman first."
NASA representatives for the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate told Business Insider in an email "we haven't officially received this, but even when we do, we wouldn't be able to comment in advance of responding."
Laura Seal, a DoD spokesperson, told Business Insider by email that the "letter is not addressed to the Department of Defense. If we do receive a letter from Congress on this topic for response, we would respond directly to the author."
Representatives at the USAF did not immediately reply.
The congressional letter
Below is the full text of the signed letter.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Elon Musk isn't allowed to hire non-US citizens to work at SpaceX — here's whyПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США, Серия РН Фалькон, BOEING COMPANY, Lockheed Martin
|NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 19940028329: NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 1: The value of scientific and technical information (STI), its relationship to Research and Development (R/D), and its use by US aerospace engineers and scientists
|2016-09-26 08:09:06
This paper is based on the premise that scientific and technical information (STI), its use by aerospace engineers and scientists, and the aerospace research and development (R&D) process are related. We intend to support this premise with data gathered from numerous studies concerned with STI, the ....
This item belongs to: texts/godaneinbox.
This item has files of the following types: Abbyy GZ, Animated GIF, Archive BitTorrent, DjVuTXT, Djvu XML, Metadata, Scandata, Single Page Processed JP2 ZIP, Text PDFПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США
|Secure Eraser Professional Edition 5.000 Multilingual
|2016-09-11 19:09:07
Secure Eraser - основное предназначение программы - удаление конфиденциальной информации пользователя с жесткого диска без возможности восстановления. Программа сразу после удаления информации перезапишет освободившиеся секторы несколько раз производной комбинацией символов, так что для восстановления информации понадобятся специальные аппаратные средства. Помимо надёжного удаления данных, в программе присутствует возможность очистки файлов во временных папках системы и IE, затирание неиспользованного (свободного) пространства дисков, а также очистка реестра от ненужных записей.
Для безвозвратного удаления файлов можно выбрать один из следующих известных и признанных стандартов: US DoD 5220.22-M E, US DoD 5220.22-M ECE, German standard, Peter Gutmann standard. Начать безвозвратное удаление файлов можно прямо из контексного меню Explorer или Корзины.
Applying five well-known and acknowledged deletion standards Secure Eraser deletes your sensitive data irretrievably - and offers several system cleaning options either. Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Министерство обороны США
|How tech changed scoring in sports—nearly a century ago
|2016-08-18 19:08:45
Technology has changed sports by offering things like instant replay and the ability to determine precisely where a ball is relative to lines on the field and court. But these offerings don't always sit well with players and fans, who may worry about the loss of some human influence on the run of play. It has been said that no technology is value-neutral, that it will—in undetermined ways—influence anything it is applied to. Technology has now been applied to many sports, which have changed as a result, as evidenced by one of the oldest sports around.
Fencing is an old sport. The earliest evidence of it comes from Egypt during the reign of Rameses III. A relief carving from roughly 1190 BCE in the temple of Madinat Habu depicts combatants wearing masks and wielding weapons as part of a bout or tournament. The modern sport has its earliest roots in 15th century Spain, where Diego de Valera wrote Treatise on Arms, a manuscript discussing swordsmanship for duels and self-defense.
Fencing can be traced through the European Renaissance. Eventually, dueling weapons and blade weapons fell out of favor, replaced by black powder and guns. For swords, this was reflected in a change in nature from a cutting to a thrusting action coupled with more skilled swordsmanship. These changes favored using agility and speed as opposed to brute force.
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Ключевые слова: Министерство обороны США
|Looks like the Pentagon turned on the F-35 money tap again (LMT)
|2016-08-18 16:08:28
America's most expensive weapon ever just got a gazillion more dollars from Uncle Sam.
According to Defense News, the Department of Defense approved another $1 billion in funding to reimburse Lockheed Martin for costs incurred for F-35's in the low rate initial production (LRIP) lot 9, or the ninth batch of planes purchased by the government.
The reimbursement comes after Lockheed Martin executives stressed in its most recent quarterly earnings call that the company would not be able to continue paying out of pocket costs for expenses from early production of the F-35.
"We continue to ask for funding recovery from the US government. To this point, they have not funded us," Bruce Tanner, Lockheed Martin's executive vice president and chief financial officer, said during an earnings conference call.
"We will not be able to continue and have that level of cash outflow as a corporation, we simply don't have that capacity. The Pentagon clearly knows that situation, and I'm optimistic that we're going to get cash soon."
The now nearly $400 billion F-35 Lightning II weapons program, was developed starting in 2001 to replace the US military's aging F-15, F-16, and F-18 aircraft.
And despite significant snags in developing the fifth-generation jet, the Pentagon's top weapons supplier, posted better than expected quarterly revenue earnings and lifted its 2016 revenue and profit forecasts for a second time this year.
Sales in its aeronautics business, the company's largest division, rose 6% in the past three months due to delivery of 14 F-35s. What's more, Lockheed Martin has said it plans to deliver 53 F-35 jets in 2016, up from 45 a year earlier.
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NOW WATCH: America's $400 billion warplane has some major flawsПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Lockheed Martin
|DoD's Welby Wants Technology Development to Move Faster
|2016-08-17 19:08:56
McLean VA (SPX) Aug 08, 2016 - Stephen Welby uses a beach analogy to describe his mission as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and for the Department of Defense's quest for a Third Offset Strategy.
"To surf the wave of global innovation, we must paddle out in front," he says at every stop in what has been a whirlwind seven months since he was confirmed by the Senate. As the DoD's equivalent to a Chief Technology Officer, Welby leads a charge for change at the Pentagon.
"I've testified on the Hill that I do not expect to see in the future any more decadal development programs," he told the United States Geospatial Information Foundation's GEOINT 2016 in Orlando in May. "A 20-year development program for a military capability is 20 years that an adversary has to build countermeasures before you deploy it."
Speed is why Welby seeks greater involvement with academia and the commercial industry in technology development. For example, it only took three years from design to the January launch of the first Intelsat EpicNG high-throughput satellite that will revolutionize commercial SATCOM. The second EpicNG satellite is due to launch this month. Compare that with the decade-plus timeline of the Pentagon's Wideband Global Satellite (WGS) constellation, and it's easy to see why Welby is harping on moving much faster.
"The Third Offset is much bigger than technology," Welby said at GEOINT 2016 of the DoD's desire to forge a long-term edge over potential adversaries. "[The Third Offset] is really about how the department thinks about its future in a competitive national security environment. We realize that technology is going to be at the core of that. [But] I think we're all convinced that in the future we're going to have to turn the innovation engine in the department at a much faster pace. In the future, we're going to have to out-innovate our adversaries."
Innovation has driven most of Welby's 28 years in government service, from time in Army research, to serving in senior leadership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to time in the Pentagon. He has worked on aeronautical and space systems, robotics, advanced weapons, software and sensors.
DARPA helped forge his mindset:
"What I discovered ... was for those few precious years, I was living in the future," he said in a webcast on C4ISRNET. "The folks [there] are imagining how technology is going to shape, not just the future of the Department of Defense, but the future of the world. And their mission is to make it happen fast."
After enjoying a 40-year military technology advantage, the U.S. is "on the wrong side of the cost and capability curve, where our speed to delivery and cost to delivery hinders us, where others have been able to demonstrate much faster times," he said in the webcast.
Welby sees the commercial industry's speed-to-market as a competitive advantage. He wants it to be leverage for the military. To that end, the Pentagon has established the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) in Silicon Valley as a way to become faster at adopting new technology. A new DIUx location opened recently in Boston. But Welby knows that those units are hardly the only places on the cutting edge of technological development.
"I hate the continuous drumbeat about Silicon Valley. We use that as shorthand for centers of innovation," Welby said at GEOINT 2016. "Quite frankly, all interesting ideas don't emerge from the area around the San Jose airport."
"The Department must carefully select those areas where we must invest to lead technology development," Welby told the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities in a February 24 statement. "We must also identify those areas where we want to partner with academia, industry and our international partners in shaping technology development. By engaging early, DoD can shape the technology environment and drive a focus on speed from lab to field."
The commercial space industry has long sought early engagement and a clear seat at the table with government customers. It would make commercial an even more valuable partner in space.
In many cases the innovation already exists - all the government needs is to be willing to "paddle out in front."Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Intelsat, DARPA
|US DoD Bans Pokemon Go on Pentagon's Premises Over Spying Concerns
|2016-08-11 20:08:00
The US Defense Department has banned the use of the Pokemon Go app on its premises, citing concerns over potential security breaches by foreign spies as the game tracks the users' location. Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Министерство обороны США
|Spreading Critical DoD Space Capabilities Over More Satellites
|2016-08-08 23:08:54
McLean VA (SPX) Aug 09, 2016 - For decades, the most secure and protected U.S. military satellite network has served both a strategic and a tactical purpose. But now with space becoming a more contested and militarized theater, there is an ongoing conversation within the DoD to separate - or disaggregate - the strategic and tactical functions of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite constellation.
Three of the planned six AEHF satellites have been launched so far to replace the aging Milstar constellation. Both constellations have the strategic role of maintaining command and control communications in the event of a catastrophe such as nuclear war and a tactical role of transmitting communications and data to and from areas of military operations.
The disaggregation of these functions may better protect the DoD's capabilities in space. A recent Space News article explained:
"During that [study period], the Air Force and the broader national security space community it serves have been debating the value of disaggregation: spreading critical space capabilities among batches of smaller, highly specialized satellites instead of building a handful of super-expensive "exquisite" satellites jam-packed with top-shelf features. Proponents argue that presenting an enemy with numerous lower-value targets instead of a much smaller number of high-value targets would make it harder to degrade the U.S. military's space-enabled battlefield advantages."
There are other important benefits to separating the strategic and tactical roles of AEHF. Moving the tactical function to different satellite payloads would enable the DoD to take advantage of technological advances in commercial SATCOM capability. Separating the two functions also makes sense because the strategic role of AEHF is inherently in the government's domain while wideband tactical communications are already carried, in large part, by commercial operators.
Putting the tactical function on other satellites would also give the DoD an opportunity to encourage collaboration with both the commercial industry and allied nations. These points were made by Douglas Loverro, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy in an article from Aviation Week (registration required):
"Interoperability is most easily achieved when established as a requirement in a program's early stages, says Douglas Loverro... With the U.S. and its closest allies preparing to spend more on their respective military satellite communications fleets in the next decade, there is an opportunity to cultivate greater compatibility across these systems."
"'That is going to provide a much better capability than anything we could do individually, or if we share after the fact,' Loverro said at the MilSatCom USA conference in Arlington, Virginia, organized by the SMi Group of London, on June 28-29. 'So I would urge us all to commit to that goal, to create a unified satellite communications system' by about 2025.?'"
There is certainly precedent for taking a collaborative and innovative approach to tactical SATCOM. The Australian Defense Force (ADF) turned to Intelsat General for a UHF hosted payload aboard IS-22 launched in 2012.
The IS-22 hosted payload delivered substantial reductions in cost and time to capability for the Australian military. Leasing the UHF bandwidth would have cost the Australians 180 percent more than the hosted solution, and procuring a new satellite would have cost them twice as much.
There is funding in place that could potentially be used for separating AEHF. The Air Force's Pathfinder program is an effort to purchase commercial SATCOM capacity in more efficient ways. While future Pathfinders are not yet fully defined, they are fully funded: $30 million in fiscal year 2017; $41 million in FY2018; and $50 million in FY2019.
The decision on whether to separate these two functions on separate satellite payloads is expected by year's end. There are elements of space communications that should be entirely in the hands of the DoD. The strategic function of AEHF certainly belongs in that category. Yet there are others elements of SATCOM where the DoD could do a much better job embracing the superior flexibility and performance of commercial technology.
As is often the case when it comes to change, the challenge is cultural more than technical. Loverro admitted as much in the Aviation Week article:
"It's not a matter of, 'Can it work?' it's a matter of, 'Do we want it to work?' he says." 'If we want to make it work, it will.'"Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Opportunity, Intelsat
|How to Improve Enterprise Ground Services for Space
|2016-08-01 18:08:40
McLean VA (SPX) Jun 24, 2016 - Recently, I wrote about the push to improve Air Force Space Command's Enterprise Ground Services (EGS). EGS is not a new kind of ground system or acquisition program - it's a new approach to satellite ground infrastructure critical to supporting General John Hyten's overall concept for the future Space Enterprise Vision.
Space has been called this country's Achilles' heel when it comes to national security. Our current space architecture has become inflexible, and is a tempting target for potential adversaries. I've just returned from a space technology conference where I presented key benefits of and considerations for how the US Government can acquire commercial services within EGS and future satellite program acquisitions.
Currently every space system is highly stove-piped, and has limited interoperability with other mission ground systems. It's a highly inefficient system that creates too many single points of failure in the case of conflict. What's needed is a set of standards and common core pieces that would allow systems to interoperate and serve as backup for greater resiliency. This would also optimize resources across space missions.
There are two opportunities for Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) to implement EGS and optimize its buying power. The first is through commercializing routine satellite operations. The Air Force is leaning toward commercializing Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) operations in 2016, and other satellite missions to follow. Routine satellite command and control can be serviced by a commercial operator, allowing the Air Force to focus personnel on battlefield management tasks and payload mission operations.
The second opportunity is implementing EGS to focus on reorganizing existing ground systems to support a common infrastructure and a multi-mission environment. This would allow for interoperability and a more resilient dispersal or virtualization of space fighting capabilities. The Air Force can no longer allow every space program to be stove-piped, which is incredibly inefficient, is vulnerable to disruption and provides no holistic situational awareness in space.
To date there has been a great deal of discussion around common data standards for EGS, which is a positive step towards a more resilient space architecture. Standards for data fusion are very good, but EGS needs to be about defined services as well. A focus on standards alone could quickly evolve to more government requirements, which could be used to promote proprietary, non-COTS solutions.
But beyond that, focusing on standards eludes a major shift that must occur for EGS efforts to succeed. Where it makes sense, the US Government needs to shift their buying practices and begin purchasing services from commercial space operators. Trying to do otherwise in today's threat environment ensures that systems will be obsolete before they ever make it into space. The way to ensure EGS considers commercial space services is to make it part of the due diligence process for developing future Air Force satellite mission acquisition strategies.
The current procurement process for a new space system requires review and approval through the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and Congress, through the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDs) and the congressional budget process. That's a process that takes years, and makes rapid technological innovation impossible! In contrast, buying space services from commercial operators "bakes in" innovation, since the commercial sector is constantly innovating to stay competitive.
The process around purchasing space services greatly increases efficiencies as well as innovation. Military needs would be clearly scoped, and the DoD could take advantage of rigorous Service Level Agreements guaranteeing availability and reporting. Government customers would be leveraging decades of commercial operational expertise, and the services can be delivered and operational in a period of weeks and months. The current procurement structure requires years or decades.
Procuring services from commercial space operators is a critical piece for EGS to succeed. It keeps DoD ahead of potential space adversaries, increases flexibility and resiliency and is the only way to innovate rapidly. Commercial space is an incredibly competitive market, with operators constantly investing in technology to manage their own operations most affordably and to stay ahead of the competition.
If the USG can make the procurement shift from making systems to purchasing commercial services, they too will stay ahead of their competitors. This will increase resiliency and allow DoD to innovate rapidly in and through the Space domain.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Opportunity
|SSL to provide robotic arms to DARPA for satellite servicing
|2016-08-01 18:08:23
Palo Alto CA (SPX) Jul 26, 2016 - Space Systems Loral (SSL), a leading provider of innovative satellites and spacecraft systems, today announced it has received $20.7 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and build robotic arm flight hardware for the agency's Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program.
SSL is receiving the funds through MDA US Systems, a division of MDA managed by SSL, and is working with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which is managing the robotic arm contract for the RSGS program.
The contract is for two complete robotic arm systems, which would be able to carefully capture and berth with satellites that were not previously designed for docking. The robotic arms would each have multiple joints enabling dexterous movement and could carry and use multiple generic and mission-specific tools.
Building on contracts announced in both 2012 and 2013 for prior DARPA research into space robotics, the total contract value awarded now stands at over $40 million, and could grow further if all remaining options are exercised.
"The ability to safely and cooperatively service satellites in GEO would expand public and private opportunities in space. It could enable entirely new spacecraft designs and operations, including on-orbit assembly and maintenance, which could lower construction and deployment costs while extending satellite utility, resilience and reliability," said Al Tadros, vice president, Civil and DOD Business at SSL.
The goal of the RSGS program is to cooperatively inspect, capture, reposition, repair, and upgrade GEO spacecraft.
The DARPA-developed hardware and software toolkit, which includes the robotic arms, is planned to be integrated onto a commercially owned and operated servicing vehicle to provide on-demand servicing in space.
"Our work with DARPA and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory leverages many years of experience with robotics applications in space," said Steve Oldham, vice president, Strategic Business Development at SSL.
"We are very pleased to participate in the RSGS flight demonstration program, which is expected to make on-orbit servicing a reality."
SSL has the ability to build on robotics technologies proven on the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and the Mars lander and rovers.
The company recently announced other missions with the U.S. government and is working with DARPA and NASA to develop robotic on-orbit satellite assembly.
SSL is also the industry partner for a potential NASA Discovery Program mission to the asteroid Psyche and is participating in a first-phase study for a spacecraft bus for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Космическое агентство США, MDA, DARPA, Space Systems Loral
|Behold the most expensive weapons system ever and all of its ammunition in one photo
|2016-07-26 21:07:00
America's "jack of all trades" F-35s were developed to dogfight, provide close air support, execute long-range bombing attacks, and take off from and land on aircraft carriers — all while using the most advanced available stealth capabilities.
Designed and manufactured at Lockheed Martin's massive facility in Fort Worth, Texas, the F-35 Lightning II can carry an impressive 18,000 pounds of lethal ammunition.
Below is a photo of the F-35A (one of the three F-35 variants) and its weapons suite:
The nearly $400 billion F-35 weapons program was developed in 2001 to replace the US military's F-15, F-16, and F-18 aircraft. Since its inception, the fifth-generation stealth jet has experienced setbacks that include faulty ejection seats, software delays, helmet display issues, and an inability to dogfight.
Lockheed Martin's F-35 program includes three variants of the aircraft — the F-35A, the F-35B, and the F-35C — which are designed to meet the specific needs of America's sister service branches and numerous foreign military buyers such as the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, Norway, Japan, South Korea, and Israel.
Lockheed Martin says each F-35A, also referred to as the conventional takeoff and landing, or CTOL, jet, costs $108 million (including the engine) and is the most requested of the three aircraft. About 65 of the anticipated 1,763 F-35A jets have been delivered to the Department of Defense.
The F-35 variants carry similar arsenals, though the F-35A is the only variant to feature an internal cannon, which is located on the left side of the jet between the cockpit and the wing.
Here's an infographic of the weapons the jets are designed to carry:
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NOW WATCH: America's $400 billion warplane has some major flawsПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Lockheed Martin
|The F-35 may finally be getting its act together
|2016-07-21 01:07:00
While the F-35 Lightning II continues its turbulent march to combat readiness, the jet's manufacturer posted better than expected quarterly revenue earnings on Tuesday.
Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's top weapons supplier, also lifted its 2016 revenue and profit forecasts for a second time — despite significant snags in developing America's most expensive arms program.
Considered a bellwether for the US defense sector, Lockheed Martin's stock also posted a record high of $261.37 in early trading on Tuesday. What's more, the world's largest defense contractor's shares were already up approximately 18% this year.
And all of this is great news for the troubled fifth-generation stealth fighter jet.
"(The) consensus expectations are finally positive for the F-35 and for improvement in the defense budget, which has led to a higher valuation," Bernstein analyst Douglas Harned wrote in a note, according to Reuters.
The now nearly $400 billion F-35 weapons program was developed in 2001 to replace the US military's F-15, F-16, and F-18 aircraft.
Lockheed Martin's "jack of all trades" F-35s were developed to dogfight, provide close air support, execute long-range bombing attacks, and take off from and land on aircraft carriers — all while using the most advanced available stealth capabilities.
Adding to the complexity, Lockheed Martin agreed to design and manufacture three variant F-35s for different sister service branches.
The Air Force has the agile F-35A; the F-35B can take off and land without a runway, ideal for the amphibious Marine Corps; and the F-35C is meant to serve on the Navy's aircraft carriers.
As it stands now the Pentagon expects to buy 2,457 of these supersonic warplanes.
According to Lockheed Martin, sales in its aeronautics business, the company's largest, rose 6% in the past three months due to delivery of 14 F-35s.
The company has said it plans to deliver 53 F-35 jets in 2016, up from 45 a year earlier.
Highlights from Lockheed Martin's quarterly earnings report:
Defense giants Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are expected to report quarterly results next week.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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NOW WATCH: America's $400 billion warplane has some major flawsПерейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon
|Air Force to Make Long Term Commercial Integration Cell at JSpOC
|2016-06-10 00:06:16
[Via Satellite 06-09-2016] The U.S. Air Force is planning to formalize the creation of an intentional space for commercial satellite operators within the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). The pilot program for this presence, known as the Commercial Integration Cell (CIC), started in June 2015 and lasted until February this year. Originally planned for six months, the Joint Functional Component Command for Space (JFCC Space), which runs JSpOC, extended the prototype CIC by a few months to compensate for delays that stemmed from the original setup and structure. Now, having completed the program, JFCC Space says it found the collaborative environment to be helpful for both government and commercial operators, and that a more permanent program is being planned.
Six satellite operators — Intelsat, SES Government Solutions, Iridium, DigitalGlobe, Eutelsat, and Inmarsat — participated in the CIC pilot program. They aided in boosting JSpOC's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) through the sharing of ephemeral data, such as spacecraft position and direction, and participating in different exercises.
While the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) can observe satellites in orbit, it is far more accurate to use data supplied by operators. The CIC provided a way to incorporate that data.
"One of the things we worked with the CIC on was how to most effectively and efficiently share owner/operator ephemeral data between their operations centers and JSpOC so that we would produce the highest, most accurate and efficient conjunction assessments," U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Brian Brown, deputy commander at JFCC Space, told Via Satellite. "This would reduce the number of false alarms, and increase the accuracy of those assessments."
Brown said the CIC also looked at ways for industry and government to work together on addressing electromagnetic interference.
"Almost everyday, just based on how different networks and things are set up in the satellite communications environment, we deal quite often with RF interference. With our commercial partners we were able to help smooth that process through, help understand how communications will work between us and them, and how they can help us understand that environment and mitigate those things. We frequently observe inadvertent interference, which the CIC helps us work through," he said.
The CIC pilot program used a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) as its main legal framework, enabling industry partners and government to share technology and information on a no-cost basis. Now that a more permanent CIC is being planned, a new legal framework will be necessary. Brown said DOD worked with operators in the CIC to create a framework for the next steps that all parties are pleased with.
"Probably the most important outcome of the pilot was an actual concept of employment — a document that outlines what the CIC will do, the bridge between commercial industry and the government/DOD, and how we will use that to make the space environment safer," he said. "That concept of employment was developed. It was given to our industry partners, they were happy with it, and it set the framework for the next phases of the CIC."
Industry has largely viewed the CIC as a positive development, with the collaboration leading to more clarity between commercial operators and government.
"This is an exceptional approach to tackle very important topics for the industry, especially when it comes to promoting responsible space stewardship through enhanced SSA," Scott Scheimreif, executive vice president of government solutions at Iridium, told Via Satellite. Scheimreif said Iridium felt it was a natural fit to support the CIC because the company has many government customers, and it would also improve the space environment. He said this is particularly beneficial as the operator plans to refresh its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation with the Iridium Next series, which consists of 66 satellites and six more in-orbit spares, with launches starting this year.
Prior to the CIC, JFCC Space could work with other operators on SSA through its parent command, US STRATCOM, which has more than 60 such agreements with operators and space agencies around the world. However, Brown said the process of a small organization like JFCC Space reaching out to so many different operators was overwhelming, limiting the potential benefits.
"We didn't necessarily understand their culture, their language, how they operated — all those kinds of things. It's a fairly daunting task to keep that all in perspective. By entering into an agreement and pulling together the CIC, we now have entities on the watch floor who understand the commercial environment. They understand the network, the contacts, the language. For us they help translate and make those sharing agreements we have even more effective," he said.
Brown added that the CIC is able to make contact with a broader grouping of the commercial industry even beyond those 60 agreements. This includes connecting with new LEO SmallSat companies that plan to orbit constellations of dozens to hundreds of small satellites in the coming years.
"They are also covered under the CIC and also attend our owner/operator talks. One in particular, OneWeb, was at our last/owner operator talk and we had discussions," said Brown.
JFCC Space can help new satellite operators through the CIC to design orbits, understand how to responsibly put their satellites into space, and craft long term deorbit plans to prevent creating space debris, Brown said. DOD can also notify others if something does go wrong so they can adapt in order to keep the space environment safe.
"Operating a LEO constellation is very complex. It requires significant levels of domain expertise and a superior understanding of constellation management. This requires dedication from a trusted team and an appreciation of how activities need to be executed, in a congested environment," said Scheimreif. "Due to the surge in companies launching SmallSats and CubeSats into LEO, we feel that understanding the complexities of managing a network will ultimately improve SSA, which is paramount to the success of existing and future satellite constellations, as well as the space industry as a whole."
Brown said improving conjunction assessments over the next two to three years will be a principal goal of the future CIC. With more operators joining the program, he said that even with the number of satellites in orbit climbing, the space environment could ultimately become safer with better information sharing.
"It's not necessarily a bad thing to have more satellites up in space. If you set the right conditions up with owner/operators, you have the right agreements for sharing ephemeral data, and you have a good way to bring that into your system, that actually lowers the uncertainty of where things are in space and where they are going. The more you lower uncertainty, the better your conjunction assessment analysis will be and the fewer false alarms you will make," said Brown.
The post Air Force to Make Long Term Commercial Integration Cell at JSpOC appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: SES, Inmarsat
|3 of the world's 10 largest employers are now replacing their workers with robots
|2016-06-09 13:06:04
There is no need to worry about whether robots might start taking our jobs. It's already happening.
Three of the world's 10 largest employers are already replacing tens of thousands of their workers with robots:
That is likely the tip of the iceberg. This deliberately scruffy chart from CSLA of the 10 largest global employers shows the world's biggest workforces shows the potential for axing workers in favour of machines:
Of those 10, only the UK's National Health Service — with its massive army of doctors and nurses doing unrepetitive, unique tasks — looks like hostile territory for robots. The other nine are rich with rote, repetitive tasks that might be better performed by software.
77% of all Chinese jobs could go to robots
Foxconn's 60,000 robots are only a small fraction of its 1.3 million total workers. So we're still at the beginning of our robotic future. But few people are aware of the scale of the coming revolution in work. Consider:
The vision of mass unemployment created by robots isn't a guarantee, of course. The optimistic vision of a robotic future is one where our mechanical helpers allow us to work 4-day weeks by slashing the workload, leaving us to spend most of our time in the pub or in front of the TV (let's be honest). New technology tends to create more jobs than it destroys — every robot worker will need a maker, a manager, and a maintenance person.
But the pessimistic vision of the future is more inequality — cheap robots put the low-paid and middle classes out of work while reaping more and more profits for the factory masters and fatcats at the top of the chain. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics produced this chart showing that phenomenon in news publishing. The internet has created plenty of media jobs, but not as many as were destroyed in the print sector:
'The bad version is one where ... jobs get killed faster than we create new ones'
The Citi report warned that "the benefits of technological change are not being widely shared," and says advances in automation and robotics are likely to exacerbate the gulf between the 1% and the 99%.
Jim Snabe, a board member at WEF, set out this binary vision at the DocuSign Momentum conference in London this week, telling the audience:
There's no doubt that the opportunity for businesses to reinvent themselves. But the societal impact of that can be — will be — huge. There's a good and a bad version of that.
The bad version is one where we bet everything on that digital infrastructure and yet it's not secure, we don't know what privacy is, and jobs get killed faster than we create new ones. Then this digital revolution will just be an ordinary revolution. People won't accept the fact that there's no longer a need for them.
The good version of this is one where we begin to steer the innovation towards a path where we use the opportunity to get independent limited resources — we stop climate change, we empower 4 billion people who are today not connected to the world.
The optimistic vision sounds very optimistic and, unfortunately for everyone, it looks like the pessimistic vision is so far making better progress than its rival — particularly in China.
25% of all robots shipped in 2014 went to China
Two recent notes from CLSA and Bank of America Merrill Lynch draw attention to just how rapid the change is happening there. It a note on "Human Capital", BoAML says: "China has the fastest adoption of robots in the world and purchased over 57,000 industrial robots in 2014 (25% of global shipments). We believe China will witness a 25%+ CAGR in annual demand for new robots during 2014-18E."
Twenty-five percent of all the world's robots!McDonald's, which employs 1.9 million people to Walmart's 2.1 million, could even embrace the robot.
McDonald's, which employs 1.9 million people could even embrace the robot. McDonald's chief executive Ed Rensi told Fox Business that if minimum wage in the US rose, the fast-food chain would consider robots, according to CSLA's Seagrim. "It's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who is inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries," he told the broadcaster.
Rise of the new Luddites?
Seagrim starts his note by referencing the Luddites, the machine breakers of 19th century England, quoting the incredible fact that: "In 1811 more British soldiers were deployed fighting Ned Ludd and his army of unemployed textile workers in the North of England than were engaged fighting Napoleon in Spain!" Clearly machines stealing jobs is not a new phenomenon.
Despite the pace of change, Seagrim believes the outcome won't be as violent as the Luddite era: "In a human-machine study conducted by an MIT professor at a BMW factory, it was shown that teams made of humans and robots collaborating efficiently can be more productive than teams made of either humans or robots alone. The cooperative process reduced human idle time by 85%."
That may be great in theory but as WEF's Snabe points out, humans need a concerted and conscious effort from businesses to include them rather than just focusing on the bottom line.
He told the conference: "The societal impact is huge and I think we have an opportunity and an obligation as business leaders to think in that direction rather than simply optimising for the next quarter. What are we going to do to make sure there are relevant jobs — they will be different jobs — for the future.
He added: "We talk about the fourth industrial revolution — the second one was electricity. Well, there are still 1.4 billion people without access to electricity. Imagine we use our innovation capacity to solve this, we bring 4 billion people online — this is the future that we need."
SEE ALSO: WEF: Robots, automation, and AI will replace 5 million human jobs by 2020
DON'T MISS: Robots will steal your job: How AI could increase unemployment and inequality
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Ключевые слова: Министерство обороны США, Opportunity
|This is what disappointment looks like for the Pentagon
|2016-05-26 02:05:00
America's most expensive weapons system ever just hit another snag.
The F-35 Lightning II, Lockheed Martin's fifth-generation fighter jet, is expected to miss another crucial deadline on its march to combat readiness.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon acknowledged that the jet would stumble pass its operational testing phase.
"The target was the middle of 2017, but it's clear we're not going to make that," said Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's top acquisition officer said.
The new schedule date, according to Kendall, is likely to occur in 2018.
The mid-2017 target was already a postponement from the original target date because of setbacks with the F-35's sixth and final software release, referred to as Block 3F.
The Block 3F software is part of the 8 million lines of sophisticated software code that underpin the F-35.
In short, if the code fails, the F-35 fails.
The latest setback for the F-35 stems from a 48-page December 11 report from Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's top weapons tester.
According to Gilmore, the stealth fighter won't be ready by its July 2017 deadline.
As first reported by Aviation Week, the DoD report says "the rate of deficiency correction has not kept pace with the discovery rate," meaning more problems than solutions are arising from the F-35 program.
"Examples of well-known significant problems include the immaturity of the Autonomic Logistics Information System (aka the IT backbone of the F-35), Block 3F avionics instability, and several reliability and maintainability problems with the aircraft and engine."
One recommendation Gilmore gives for the F-35's latest woes is to triple the frequency of weapons-delivery-accuracy tests, which are executed once a month.
Adding more tests to the troubled warplane will most likely add to the cost overruns and schedule delays, but Gilmore says decreasing testing to meet deadlines will put "readiness for operational testing and employment in combat at significant risk."
According to the DoD report, the Block 3F software testing began in March, 11 months later than the planned date.
The nearly $400 billion weapons program was developed in 2001 to replace the US military's F-15, F-16,and F-18 aircraft.
Lockheed Martin's "jack-of-all-trades" F-35s were developed to dogfight, provide close air support, execute long-range bombing attacks, and take off from and land on aircraft carriers — all the while using the most advanced stealth capabilities available.
Adding to the complexity, Lockheed Martin agreed to design and manufacture three variant F-35s for different sister service branches.
The Air Force has the agile F-35A; the F-35B can take off and land without a runway, ideal for the amphibious Marine Corps; and the F-35C is meant to serve on the Navy's aircraft carriers.
Despite the Block 3F software setback, the Marine Corps last year declared an initial squadron of F-35s ready for combat, making it the first service branch to do so.
The standard for readiness the Marines used, referred to as initial operational capability, is determined separately by each service branch when the aircraft has successfully demonstrated various capabilities.
IOCs are announced prematurely, however, in that all tests and upgrades to the aircraft, such as the Block 3F software update, have not necessarily been completed.
Still, Gen. Joseph Dunford, then the commandant of the Marine Corps, in July declared initial operational capability for 10 F-35B fighter jets.
The Air Force is expected to declare IOC for its F-35As later this year, and the Navy plans to announce IOC for the F-35Cs in 2018.
Even so, America's most expensive warplane's turbulent march to combat readiness is far from over.
Here's the full report from the Department of Defense:
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Ключевые слова: Lockheed Martin
|US Drafting Legislation for New Commercial Space Ventures
|2016-05-11 23:05:49
[Via Satellite 05-11-2016] U.S. President Barack Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is proposing legislation that would provide a narrowly-tailored authorization process for newly-contemplated and pioneering commercial space activities. In an April 4 report to Congress, OSTP said this authorization process would only contain conditions necessary for compliance with the nation's international obligations like the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, foreign policy and national security interests, and protection of federal government uses of outer space.
Through its "mission authorization" framework, OSTP does not seek to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for outer space activities like launch services, satellite communications and remote sensing, which are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Instead, OSTP believes the proposed legislation is intended to establish a process no more burdensome than is necessary to enable the federal government to authorize pioneering space activities in conformity with its treaty obligations and to safeguard core public interests such as national security. These pioneering space activities include transportation of commercial payloads to the lunar surface, operation of a commercial lunar habitat, end-of-life extension modules, satellite refueling using fuels derived from space resources, and mining the moon or asteroids for rare-earth elements.
OSTP said the mission authorization proposal is closely modeled on the FAA's payload review process, in that the FAA would coordinate an interagency process in which designated agencies would review a proposed mission in relation to specified government interests. For example, the U.S. Department of State would be responsible for reviewing proposed missions for consistency with the Outer Space Treaty and would recommend authorization conditions only as necessary to ensure conformity with the provisions of this treaty.
OSTP believes the mission authorization proposal would preserve the competitiveness of the U.S. launch industry. At present, federal government review processes tied to the launch licensing framework, such as the payload review process, are limited to payloads launched from the United States. OSTP said these processes serve as a disincentive for purchasing launch services from U.S. providers to the extent payload owners perceive these existing processes as presenting regulatory risk or inconvenience.
Commercial space advocate and industry consultant Rand Simberg said May 5 that OSTP's approach seems reasonable, for now, and that it was nice to see that providing this licensing framework was not a partisan issue. Simberg said his fear is that the Department of State will place a higher priority on placating international critics of the asteroid mining law, many, he said, who want the U.S. to sign the Moon Treaty, as opposed to enabling U.S. space miners.
The 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSCLA), which tackles a number of important issues like spurring private aerospace competitiveness and entrepreneurship, commercial remote sensing and space resource exploration and utilization, required the April 4 report to Congress. The act said it was designed to facilitate a pro-growth environment for developing commercial space industry by encouraging private sector investment and creating more stable and predictable regulatory conditions.
One congressional stakeholder believes the lack of regulatory framework for launch is preventing the pioneering commercial space industry from getting off the ground. At a Secure World Foundation event in Washington, D.C. Thursday May 5, Christopher Ingraham, senior legislative assistant for Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., said Bridenstine's office has heard from the Department of State that it does not feel it has the mechanisms to ensure that more non-traditional activities like resource extraction are in compliance with international treaty obligations. Ingraham said the FAA and other agencies have informed many companies that they might not be able to get a launch license because their planned missions do not fit neatly into current procedures that license launch and approve payloads.
As a result, Ingraham said Bridenstine's office has been working to modify the administration's proposal and settled on a proposal that takes into account OSTP's concerns while providing a "light touch" that is acceptable to industry. Ingraham said Bridenstine's proposal would allow federal agencies like the state and defense departments the ability through FAA to say what payloads need to do to comply with international treaty obligations. Ingraham also said an early version of this proposal is in Bridenstine's comprehensive American Space Renaissance bill, and that Bridenstine is "really close" to an agreement with industry and has already started having discussions with federal agencies including the Department of State, FAA, DoD and OSTP about this language. Ingraham added that this bill language is a "top priority" for Bridenstine and a few other lawmakers and that it is a main goal to find a legislative vehicle for this language to get it done before this session of Congress ends.
The original version of this story was published on Defense Daily, a Via Satellite sister publication covering the global defense market intelligence in land, sea, air, and space initiatives.
The post US Drafting Legislation for New Commercial Space Ventures appeared first on Via Satellite.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
|FAA advisory committee recommends no changes to ICBM motor policy
|2016-04-29 20:04:23
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Federal Aviation Administration advisory panel approved a recommendation April 28 calling for no change in current policy that restricts the use of excess intercontinental ballistic missile motors for commercial launch vehicles.
The FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) approved the recommendation during a meeting here after hearing a request from the company most interested in using those motors that it defer action on the recommendation.
COMSTAC recommended to the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) that, in any discussions with other agencies and Congress, it "support the maintenance of existing policy with respect to the use of excess ICBM assets in order to sustain the continued growth of the commercial U.S. launch sector."
The possibility of changing that policy has emerged in recent weeks as Orbital ATK, whose Minotaur vehicles use ICBM motors, sought to lift current policy restrictions that limit their use to government-sponsored missions. The company has argued that a lack of launch capacity has forced satellites built in the U.S. to seek launches on Russian or other foreign vehicles, if they can find rides at all.
"In the last ten years in particular, we've seen a large outflux of opportunities that has gone to vehicles like the [Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle] in India and to the Dnepr in particular," said Charles Precourt, vice president and general manager of propulsion systems of Orbital ATK and a COMSTAC member, during a discussion about the recommendation. "We see an opportunity to fill that void."
COMSTAC's business and legal working group crafted the recommendation during an April 27 meeting, where members cited concerns that allowing commercial use of ICBM motors could harm ongoing development of small launch vehicles projected to enter service within the next few years.
Richard DalBello, vice president of business development and government affairs at Virgin Galactic, one of several companies developing small launchers, noted that the current policy restricting use of ICBM motors has been reviewed twice by the White House since it was put in place in the 1990s, most recently by the Obama Administration in 2013. In both cases, he said, those reviews recommended no changes.
"I know the issue is again being asked now," he said, "but we haven't seen anything as an industry that has changed today that would urge us to reach a different solution."
Precourt, who was not present at that working group meeting and participated in the main COMSTAC meeting by phone, asked members to delay a decision on the recommendation to give companies time to meet and develop a possible compromise position.
"The policy has been successful in many regards," he acknowledged, "but I think it has led in this one area of the market, which is principally payloads that are above 200 to 300 kilograms in size, to vacate the U.S. market and go overseas."
DalBello and others, though, believed that deferring a decision on the recommendation to the next COMSTAC meeting in October was ill-advised, given potential congressional action on the issue in a defense authorization bill. "The timeliness is right now," DalBello said. "This will be done by October." The committee later voted to approve the recommendation.
At the April 27 markup by the House Armed Services Committee of its National Defense Authorization Act, members approved an amendment by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) that requires studies by the Defense Department and the Government Accountability Office on commercial use of ICBM motors. The DoD study would be due to Congress by September 1, and the GAO study 90 days later.
The amendment, though, does not take a particular stand on the issue, noting the potential "negative consequences" to launch vehicle developers that could result from a policy change. "If we're going to do a study on this, it needs to be fair, balanced, and gives policymakers the information that we need," said Christopher Ingraham, senior legislative assistant for Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OKla.), discussing the amendment during a COMSTAC working group discussion April 27.
Another member of Congress also raised questions about commercial use of ICBM motors. "You're seeing tremendous innovation by private industry, and the question is, does the federal government support that and complement that, or does it throw up roadblocks to that?" asked Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, at a Commercial Spaceflight Federation breakfast event here April 29.
Kilmer specifically mentioned the issue regarding use of excess ICBM motors. "I don't want to see us do something that would stifle the commercial U.S. small launch industry," he said.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Днепр, Orbital ATK, Серия РН Минотавр, Opportunity
|HASC doubles Air Force allotment of RD-180 engines, focuses funding on building its replacement
|2016-04-28 21:04:48
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force would have access to as many as 18 Russian RD-180 rocket engines under a bill the House Armed Services Committee approved April 28.
By allowing United Launch Alliance to import twice the number of RD-180 engines allowed under last year's National Defense Authorization Act, this year's bill — as amended during a 16-hour markup session that wrapped up just before 3 a.m. — is intended to allow the Defense Department to continue to launch satellites aboard ULA's Atlas 5 rocket until the company's next-generation launcher, Vulcan, is ready to take over around 2022.
Congress, which has grown uncomfortable with relying on Russian-supplied engines to launch the bulk of U.S. military and intelligence satellites, enacted legislation in 2014 capping the number of RD-180 engines ULA can buy for future national security launches.
The Air Force has been pushing Congress to relax the cap, saying ULA needs about 18 engines to ensure it can compete against SpaceX for dozens of launch contracts the service expects to award before Vulcan is certified to carry critical DoD payloads.
That relief came in the form of an amendment introduced around 1:30 a.m. by Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), whose Denver-area district is home to many United Launch Alliance employees.
"The purpose of buying these engines is to make sure there is an alternative to SpaceX and we don't just have one bidder," said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the House Armed Services Committee's ranking member. Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-backed company building the BE-4 engine ULA favors for Vulcan, is headquartered in Smith's Seattle-area congressional district.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), whose San Diego-area district is a couple hours down the road from SpaceX's Hawthorne headquarters, said there is no immediate need to raise the RD-180 quota and that future imports could be approved as the engines are needed. Relaxing the ban now, he said, will only benefit a modernization of the Russian military.
"Congress isn't going away," he said. "We can look at this next year. There's no need for us to line Putin's pockets right now."
Leaders of the House Armed Services Committee acknowledged the RD-180 issue will be re-visited when they meet in conference with their Senate Armes Services Committee to hash out differences between the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, which sets policy and spending guidelines for the entire Defense Department.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) favors tighter restrictions on military use of RD-180s. In December, after Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that temporarily suspends the nine-engine limit McCain helped impose, McCain floated the possibility of seeking "an unrestricted prohibition" on Air Force use of the engine.
RD-180 replacement amendment
The RD-180 provision was one of two launch-related amendments that made it into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 by the time the committee voted 60 to 2 to send the bill to the full House of Representatives for its consideration.
Smith, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, successfully amended the bill to ensure that nearly all of the $300 million the Air Force seeks to spend in 2017 on research and development for a next-generation launcher can only be used for development of a new main-stage rocket engine.
While that's good news for Aerojet Rocketdyne, which won an initial $115 million Air Force contract in February to help fund development of the AR-1 engine it is pitching as a versatile, drop-in replacement for the RD-180 on the Atlas 5, it's likely less welcome to Orbital ATK, SpaceX and ULA which won contracts totaling $130 million this year to work on, respectively, a new solid-fueled booster, a new upper stage for Falcon, and Vulcan integration.
All told, the Air Force proposes to invest $1.2 billion over the next five years to help industry develop next-generation launch capabilities.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, joined with Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) to restrict that funding to development of a main-stage engine capable of replacing the RD-180.
But Smith's compromise, negotiations over which helped push the markup into the wee hours, limits the Air Force to spending no more than 25 percent of the R&D funds on anything that's not a main-stage engine.
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Ключевые слова: Orbital ATK, Атлас 5, SpaceX, BE-4
|Q&A | Lockheed Martin's Rick Ambrose on the convergence of commercial and defense systems
|2016-04-25 23:04:47
Rick Ambrose
Vice President, Lockheed Martin Space Systems
Harmonic Convergence
Lockheed Martin Space Systems builds the full range of government and commercial satellites in Denver and Sunnyvale, California. On the defense side of its business, Lockheed is the prime contractor for the U.S. Air Force's GPS, missile warning, and protected communications satellites. As a heavily invested incumbent on military space programs worth about $45 billion, Lockheed Martin Space Systems is taking a keen interest as the Defense Department plans its future satellite architectures over the next few years.
Companies large and small are looking to break off pieces of Lockheed Martin's business at a time when the DoD is searching out new technologies and new companies.
Since taking the helm of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in 2013, executive vice president Rick Ambrose has worked to position the company to win its share of government and commercial business, leading the company through a major reorganization in 2014 that included the closing of the Newtown, Pennsylvania factory that specialized in commercial satellites. In January, the company announced that its space systems division brought in $9.1 billion in sales and $1.17 billion in operating profit for 2015.
"We get called a lot of things," he said. "When you're one of the largest space companies a lot is said. But I have a real simple view on that: people innovate, not organizations."
Ambrose spoke recently with SpaceNews military space reporter Mike Gruss.
Is anyone within the Defense Department still fighting for aggregated satellite architectures, or has disaggregation won the day?
There are multiple Analyses of Alternatives and discussions around multiple architectures. If you think about the 1990s, it was kind of the decade of aggregation. The Space Based Infrared System and the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite program are two Lockheed Martin examples. There are other programs that competitors have. I wouldn't use the word "disaggregation," which is kind of like, "I'm going to take the same thing I got, and just split it." I don't think that meets the needs of the government's future capability and/or ability to operate in space. I think they're looking for additional new capabilities, proliferated capabilities.
What do you talk about instead?
We talk about convergence: commercial and defense systems are coming together at some level. We're driving innovation in high-throughput satellites and flexible payloads. It's the same as some of the attributes that the government's looking for in the future. Is that going to be a 10-percent convergence, or 50 percent? We don't know. The beauty is, by thinking about it that way, it tells us what we've got to be investing in. At first you saw us invest in our modernized A2100 satellite bus because I had to get down to more common buses. We also stood up two payload centers, that I put in almost equal money, both electro-optical and radio-frequency payloads. In the future we can be extremely smart buyers of payloads and capacities, and pick out the real talented attributes. This is where I hope I can pull from Silicon Valley.
As the head of an established aerospace contractor, what do you make of Defense Secretary Ash Carter in Silicon Valley saying the Pentagon needs to embrace new companies and new capabilities?
We would claim we were in Silicon Valley in the early days. I like the entrepreneurialism brought in at this stage, because you bring the ideas out, you test, fail fast, find out what's going to work and what's not going to work and move forward. We belong to the Silicon Valley Alliance. At any given time I've got two or three open projects with companies in Silicon Valley, or some private equity [investors] trying to bring ideas in. A lot of times they don't play out. The beauty is, I incorporate the learning into our own capabilities.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems underwent significant reorganization in 2014. What can you do now that you couldn't do then?
There are a lot of capabilities in that area. If we go back to 2013 everyone was talking about sequestration, continuing resolutions, budget reductions, and it was very de-focusing to the people. So we took a position, we banned that language.
Literally. We banned that language. We told our employees this is just a fact of life. Budgets are coming down. We have critical programs to the country. Treat it like hyper competition. How do we get the recurring cost down? That's why we went in, number one, and started replanning the programs, and then invested in a technology refresh of the A2100 bus. We've taken $2.6 billion out of the cost of major programs spread out over the program life cycle. Then with SBIRS, we're putting SBIRS 5 and 6 on our modernized A2100 platform. We think we can get it at least another 25 percent out of the SBIRS 7 and 8.
Has the reorganization led to reduced costs?
On a satellite level, 35 percent cost reduction was the target, and that's what drove the investment in the modernized A2100, and 25 percent cycle time reduction. Now, we're not all the way there yet, but for instance, against the 25 percent we're probably 15 to 18 percent. On the cost side maybe 20 to 25 percent, that's what we're bidding forward now. The other thing I'm after is a 40 percent first article cycle time reduction, because that's kind of the Holy Grail. If a customer needs a new capability, new mission, you don't want to take 10 years to get it in the hands of a warfighter or one of our commercial customers to provide service to their clients. That's the one I'm most excited about.
Part of that cost reduction is based on additive manufacturing and 3-D printing. Are you pushing that on your suppliers?
We're not pushing it; we're encouraging it. We don't want to be overbearing on the other businesses' methods, but we subcontract to big companies, so we've got to respect their systems, but this is going to enable some exciting things in the industry. This year we should have our 26-inch propulsion tanks that are additively produced, and we're starting to work on more complicated features, such as some limited printing of circuits, RF components, and those things. On a propulsion tank, you go from a 24-month cycle down probably to three months or lower.
You established two Payload Centers of Excellence in recent years. What kind of fruits should come from that investment?
One of the reasons we stood up the RF payload center is when we ran into problems with the GPS-3 payload, and we actually found there was kind of a shortage of RF high data rate engineers. We did a search, and we found nationally they're in short supply, even when I tried to surge people in. A lot of the schools weren't graduating these type of engineers, because they're all wanting to go do Internet and digital. One of the reasons we stood up this RF payload center was to compensate for that, retain knowledge, generate the next generation of engineers, but also help us with all of our communications. On electro-optical, we're heavily focused on lower-cost missile warning or futuristic missile warning capabilities. We're starting to support a sponsorship program up at University of Colorado Boulder to help train some new engineers coming out that we can plug into this payload center and work with our senior engineers. We've hired 30 engineers outside of Lockheed Martin to help populate this.
Ключевые слова: Система Space Based Infrared System, Платформы серии A2100, Lockheed Martin, Harmonic
|House panel wants more details on new space battle management system
|2016-04-25 18:04:11
WASHINGTON – The House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee wants to withhold $18 million from the U.S. Air Force's 2017 budget until it provides a clearer plan for a new battle management system meant to help detect and respond to threats in space.
The battle management system is being developed as part of a broader program to modernize the the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
The program, known as the JSpOC Mission System (JMS), is a three-phased, $1 billion initiative to replace or upgrade the hardware and software currently used for space surveillance, collision avoidance, launch support, and providing more precise and timely orbital information.
The final set of upgrades, known as Increment 3, is expected to provide a battle management system. That program would help the Air Force prepare for threats to its satellites and bolster the Defense Department's space-event monitoring, planning, tasking, execution and post-event assessments.The Air Force asked for $24.8 million for increment 3 in its budget request for the 2017 budget year that starts Oct. 1, but members of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee are skeptical about the direction of the program.
"We really have not seen clear requirements or an acquisition strategy from the Air Force on that program," a HASC committee staffer said.
In a draft version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, the subcommittee fenced $18 million for the Increment 3 program until the Air Force provides a detailed report on the program's future.
In short, the panel wants to restrict the funding "until they come up with a plan," the staffer said.
"The report would include the acquisition strategy; requirements; funding and schedule; the strategy for use of commercially available capabilities, as appropriate, relating to such increment to rapidly address warfighter requirements, including the market research and evaluation of such commercial capabilities; and how it relates to other applicable activities and investments of the Department of Defense," report language accompanying the draft bill said.
Accelerating Increment 3 was a key part of the White House's budget strategy last year to combat emerging space threats from China and Russia. Defense Department leaders frequently highlighted the program as part of a $5.5 billion shift to space protection spending.
But since then, industry and government officials have questioned how Increment 3 will fit into the Defense Department's long-term plans, especially in light of the new Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center, or JICSpOC, that coordinates DoD and intelligence community space operations. Located at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the JICSpOC has been experimenting with some of the same capabilities that are included with Increment 3.
"Experimentation being done at the JICSpOC has highlighted the requirement for continued interagency integration and Space Battle Management and Command and Control (BMC2)," Army Lt. Col. Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command, said in an email to SpaceNews. "These lessons learned are helping us understand the requirements for future BMC2 capabilities. With regard to JMS Increment 3, we are working to define the associated requirements. Our analysis will help inform program decisions moving forward for both the JICSpOC and JSpOC."
Gen. John Hyten, the head of Air Force Space Command discussed some of these issues and concerns during his April 12 speech at the 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
"How do you do advanced Battle Management Command and Control? The way we've been acquiring command and control is wrong" he said in in his speech. "We're gonna build prototypes; we're gonna use Air Force Research Lab and build prototypes and then we'll build a system engineering project and transition that to programs of record, but not until we understand how the prototype works in a real operational environment because BMC2 is the key piece of this puzzle."
The subcommittee's mark comes after the Air Force briefed lawmakers on delays with the current batch of improvements to the JSpOC, known as Increment 2. Increment 2 is aimed at weaning the Air Force from the legacy Space Defense Operations Center, or SPADOC, that Air Force officials say is dated and increasingly difficult to maintain. Increment 2 is now expected to be complete in mid-2018, about 19 months later than expected.
Meanwhile, the subcommittee's draft bill also asked the Pentagon's comptroller general for a review of all the Defense Department's software-intensive military space system acquisitions by July 1. This review includes a report on JMS as well as the ground control system for the Air Force's next generation GPS satellites, known as the Operational Control Segment or OCX.
That program, which U.S. military officials have labeled the Defense Department's most-troubled development program, is expected to be completed in July 2021, or about six years later than original projections.
The delays in both programs "may indicate that the Department's acquisition policies, processes, and oversight are not adequately structured to deliver critical capabilities in a timely and cost effective manner," the draft version of the bill said.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Orbital ATK, Навигационная система США
|Pentagon begins revising national security space policy
|2016-04-14 15:04:26
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Pentagon is in the early stages of revising U.S. national security space policy, a move that would provide an updated framework for how the Defense Department's space enterprise operates, according to government and industry sources.
The revisions would flesh out the Defense Department's guidance on several topics including how to best take advantage of rapidly evolving commercial capabilities and how to protect military and spy satellites from attack, these sources said. The changes may also incorporate a more thorough policy on offensive space tactics, they said.
The Pentagon is using the September 2015 white paper "Space Domain Mission Assurance: A Resilience Taxonomy" as "the foundation of updating and revising national security space policy," a spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Crosson, said in a written response to a SpaceNews query seeking confirmation that a space policy review is underway.
That white paper was written by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security.
"National and Departmental guidance call for bolstering resilience and making resilience a consideration in all architectural planning and evaluation, as well as in all system planning and development activities for DoD space capabilities," Crosson wrote.
Doug Loverro, the deputy assistant defense secretary for space policy, made no direct mention of a formal space review during an April 13 panel discussion at the 32nd Space Symposium here. However, he alluded to several current policy debates within the national security space community, which government and industry sources say are some of the same topics the revisions would likely address.
"Our job right now is to figure out how do we create policies that enhance rather than hamper" the Defense Department's space capabilities, Loverro said. "More often than not, we find ourselves with policy challenges we had not anticipated."
Chief among those concerns is how to ensure the Pentagon has access to national security satellites at all times and can operate those satellites in the face of an attack.
Defense and intelligence officials have become increasingly concerned over what they see as an emerging threat to U.S. satellites from China and Russia. In recent years, the Pentagon has shifted billions of dollars in the Air Force's budget to counter those efforts and caused a broad rethinking of how the Air Force operates in space.
Pentagon officials say part of that solution could entail better incorporating commercially available capabilities and increasing reliance on industry partners.
Loverro said it was important for the Defense Department to "harmonize policy and the use of commercial space." He added that current space policy is based on the fact that most satellite capabilities come from government-owned systems and not commercial companies.
He also said the Pentagon is discussing export policy changes geared toward easing the transfer of certain space capabilities to international partners in the name of enhanced resiliency.
"How do we take what was viewed as a national security risk previously, which is the export space capabilities, and turn it into a national security benefit?" Loverro said. The export of space capabilities "to our allies helps us far more than it hurts us."
Loverro said the Pentagon is also considering the implications of using international navigation satellites to guide U.S. weapons, which would add a layer of protection if GPS satellites were jammed or unavailable.
"This is a policy we have not addressed yet because we have not had to address it yet. We see it right around the corner," he said.Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Навигационная система США
|En route to Space Symposium, Deputy Defense Secretary talks milspace with reporters
|2016-04-13 00:04:29
BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — At last year's Space Symposium, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work gave a speech during a classified session that many attendees described as a "call to arms" for the military space community.Перейти к новости
Since then, Work has been an instrumental figure in creating the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSpOC), an venue for the Defense Department and the intelligence community to experiment with closer collaboration.
He also led a reorganization of the Pentagon's space enterprise, re-designating the Department of Defense executive agent for space as the principal DoD space adviser and naming Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James to the post.
Work, a former Marine who did a stint at the National Reconnaissance Office in the early 1990s,has traveled to Colorado Springs six times since he became the deputy secretary in April 2014.
On his flight Tuesday from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, to Colorado to speak at the 32nd Space Symposium, Work spoke with SpaceNews' Mike Gruss, Breaking Defense's Colin Clark and Reuters' Andrea Shalal. A portion of that group interview appears below.
What changes led to the creation of the JICSpOC?
For most of the last 20 years in the post Cold War period we viewed space as a sanctuary. We now believe if we ever got into a war, war would extend into space because it provides our warfighting force with such enormous advantages and all of our potential competitors know that. We now assume our space constellation will be under threat from the earliest moment. If that's the case, then you have to be able to fight through attacks. You have to look up and know what threats are coming and you have to maneuver and provide to support to the warfighter while under attack. The only way you can do that is having the IC and DoD guys sitting right next to each other and coordinating all of their efforts. The JICSpOC assumes unity of effort, not unity of command.
Are the experiments at the JICSpOC like tabletop exercises?
These are actually where you pretend there is a threat against a particular asset, say a communications satellite. You say, OK, this is the threat, how would you respond? What authorities would we need to respond? Who controls the satellite? Who would ultimately say move it? Is it the IC or DoD? These are the things you have to consider for battle management command and control, what we call BMC2. This will help us define our BMC2 system. It's the first time you're doing live experiments.
You're actually moving satellites?
In some cases, yes. There are some satellites that are up there, as you know, that don't have a lot of useful life left. We can use those and say, 'let's pretend this thing is a satellite. What will happen?'
Will these BMC2 capabilities be part of the JICSpOC or the Joint Space Operations Center?
We haven't decided. The experiment will tell us. Right now we have the old JSpOC, Joint Space Operations Center out at Vandenberg and then we have this experimental platform that is out at Schriever. I would say resiliency has to extend to our command and control centers, just like it has to extend to space. So having two locations is very, very advantageous.
Last year's classified speech at Space Symposium was characterized as a call to arms. Besides the JICSpOC, what have you seen as a result of that speech?
The call to arms was really to the space warriors. I wanted them to start thinking as space warriors. In the 25 years where space wasn't really a threat, we started to think of space as a function. That it was always there, that we just provided weather and [space-based positing, navigation and timing]. You have to start thinking of this as a mission. We have a space tactics and doctrine forum. That's been very helpful. What you have is a virtuous cycle where the JICSpOC does experimentation and feeds into the Joint Space Tactics and Doctrine Forum. The top space warriors talk about it. Cecil Haney. John Hyten. Jay Raymond. They then say, 'well, what about this?' and they feed it back in to experiment with this. We're actually figuring out tactics and doctrine.
And you didn't have that before?
We did not have that before.
How does DoD think about the threat to national security satellites differently now?
We have a pretty good idea what our potential adversaries are developing. It's across the board and it includes jamming, dazzling, spoofing, cyber attacks, on-orbit attacks and direct ascent [anti-satellite] attacks. We can no longer think of space as a sanctuary. You have to think about space resilience, which means the ability for a constellation to survive attacks. You have to think about battle management command and control. And of course you have to remember the whole reason we put stuff in space is to help people on Earth. If you lose that, you lose a big advantage.
Are you confident Raytheon has reached its arms around the problems on the GPS OCX?
I haven't reached confidence yet. All of our space warriors are all over this problem. We're not happy where we are. We're not happy how we got here. Before I say I'm confident, I'm going to have to see more data. But we have decided that we are going to stick with OCX for the time being. What we have heard from Raytheon and what we have seen has convinced us we should try to get OCX through; that we will not jettison it. It's an absolutely critical capability.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said last week he wanted to use U.S. Strategic Command to employ space more in the fight against ISIL. Can you elaborate at all?
I prefer not to. They have to do with authorities and all sorts of classified capabilities. There's a whole lot of things we can do using space capabilities. The secretary has been extraordinarily innovative in the use of our capabilities against ISIL.
Do you have the necessary policies needed for the JICSpOC or do you need to revise national security space policy?
Absolutely. This all started with a presentation at the White House by Secretary Carter when he was the deputy secretary. He said, 'Look, we have serious threats evolving to our space constellation and we have to get after it.' He caught the attention of the entire national security staff and the president. The president has been extremely supportive from the very beginning and he has told us, 'You've got to get more resilient. You've got to protect our assets in space.' We've had several meetings with the president on our space capabilities and strategies.
Ключевые слова: Навигационная система США, Raytheon
|SmallSat Boom Outpacing Regulators in the US
|2016-04-08 21:04:45
[Via Satellite 04-08-2016] U.S. regulators are grappling with how to ascribe the most appropriate policies for small satellites as their proliferation becomes more significant. Agency representatives and private sector executives, the latter of which have already orbited or plan to orbit hundreds of SmallSats, discussed ways to craft the best regulatory regime to preserve and protect the space environment at the Washington Space Business Roundtable in Washington, D.C April 7.
Government officials admitted off the bat that they are currently playing catch-up with the commercial sector. U.S. startups, universities and other players have introduced swarms of SmallSats in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) well ahead of a fully rounded out regulatory framework for all of their operations.
"From the State Department perspective, we work on a daily basis to push forward possible norms of responsible behavior in space so we can work to catch up to the present space environment," said Mallory Stewart, deputy assistant secretary for emerging security challenges and defense policy, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification & Compliance at the U.S. Department of State.
George Nield, associate administrator of commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said the United States' current regulatory framework was not designed to handle some of the "nontraditional" operations that have grown in popularity. Citing the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which more than 100 countries have since ratified, Nield said signers of the treaty have agreed to authorize and supervise the activities of non-governmental entities from their countries in outer space. In the U.S., different agencies handle different aspects of this responsibility. The FAA handles launch and reentry, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) covers radiocommunications, and NOAA addresses remote sensing. NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD) are not regulatory agencies, and Nield said neither do they want to be, but some oversight of the commercial industry has fallen on their shoulders, particularly the DOD.
Through the Air Force's Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), much of industry receives updates about collision risks between satellites and space debris. This, however, falls outside of JSpOC's primary mission to serve U.S. military needs. Nield said the FAA is open to handling regulatory requirements for satellite operators, particularly of SmallSats, to both fill the void that no other agencies are in, and to address aspects of managing the space environment that fall outside the domain of agencies that are handling them today.
"The FAA has expressed our willingness to take on responsibility for overseeing commercial activities in space that are not already regulated by the FCC or NOAA, should the White House and Congress decide that that would be appropriate," he said. "The goal would be to enable those new nontraditional operations in space without creating a huge new regulatory burden that would make U.S. companies less competitive, or in the worse case, would actually drive them off shore in search of a more business-friendly regulatory environment."
Nield said there is much greater awareness of the "contested" and "congested" space environment today, but reminded that debates on some of these issues go back for several years now with limited tangible progress. In light of this, representatives of new commercial operators said they have borne the mantle of handling many of their affairs in space as their own responsibility.
"Early on we recognized that the regulatory environment has yet to catch up with the changing industry and the number of satellites that are being launched, so we recognized that we had to take it upon ourselves to be responsible operators and design into our system safeguards and make sure that we are not making it more difficult for other operators and ourselves," said Mike Lindsay, fleet operations manager at OneWeb.
Lindsay listed redundant GPS capabilities, propulsion systems for collision avoidance, and an intentionally shorter deorbit time than the accepted 25-year rule as steps OneWeb is taking in designing its constellation of roughly 650 satellites. He said the company is aiming for less than five years for disposal of satellites, and also intends to be transparent with data, having met with JSpOC a year ago to discuss the safe operation of its satellite program.
Rich Leshner, director of government affairs at Planet Labs, said greater collaboration should be a priority so satellite operators are aware of each other's activities, thus boosting Space Situational Awareness (SSA).
"From the industry side we have our own reasons and our own desires to make sure the space environment is well maintained," he explained. "We have a business model that depends on our assets being able to survive, and that is true whether you are in the business of large constellations, small constellations or only one-off satellites."
Paul Welsh, VP of business development at Analytical Graphics Inc. (AGI), said there is incentive for operators to write the ground rules for operations in space, and that they can benefit by sharing information through organizations like the Space Data Association (SDA). He said industry could be "80 to 90 percent of the solution." AGI is seeking to be part of that solution through its Commercial Space Operations Center (ComSpOC), which is on schedule to match JSpOC's public catalog of space objects by the end of this year.
An AGI video of Resident Space Objects (RSOs) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Stewart highlighted the importance of having a government role in forming national standards, however. She said this would be critically important for getting the international community to accept such standards.
"I think the government's role is crucial in trying to establish the international nature of these norms," she said, cautioning that without international agreements, efforts to protect the space environment could mimic the "race to the bottom" seen in certain efforts to preserve the Earth's natural environment. "It's very hard to get to best practices when other nations are doing bad things, [and] we can't get to norms when we are working on different definitions."
International collaboration will be essential, as the events that have caused the most space debris are the 2009 collision between Iridium 33 and the defunct Russian Kosmos 2251 satellite, and a Chinese Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test in 2007. Iridium now receives regular updates from JSpOC, as do multiple other operators, to prevent such accidents, and DOD even joined the SDA in 2014. But SSA collaboration among many of the world's top space powers is weaker than would be preferred. The U.S., Russia and China are all leading nations in space, but are sometimes hesitant to work together for political reasons.
"I think we need to have greater conversations with the major space players including Russia and China," said Stewart. "The State Department leads a number — up to 15 — space security dialogues, and we are constantly looking to expand those dialogues."
Maj. Gen. Roger Teague, director of space programs for the office of the assistant secretary for acquisition at the DOD, said that JSpOC fields calls from around the world related to conjunction assessments and other SSA concerns on a daily basis. He said for tactical day-to-day operations, those conversations are occurring, but that additional work is clearly needed.
"Most importantly, a large debris-generating event must absolutely be avoided," added Welsh. "We really cannot even afford one more of those."
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Ключевые слова: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Космическое агентство США, WorldVu Satellites Ltd, Planet Labs
|Genedrive supplies field test units to US DoD
|1970-01-01 03:01:00
Manchester-based diagnostics company genedrive announced on Monday that it has supplied Genedrive units and assays to the United States Department of Defense for field trials, as part its $7.8m development programme for a handheld device to allow for the Перейти к новости
Ключевые слова: Министерство обороны США