Lawmakers have rejected dozens of Pentagon-proposed changes to reallocate prior-year funds, forcing the U.S. military to scrap plans to immediately shift nearly $600 million between programs -- including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Ground-based Midcourse Defense efforts -- while protecting funds for key Army radio and helicopter modernization projects.
Space Alert
October 17, 2014 |
Daily News
October 16, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Pentagon comptroller has withdrawn plans to allocate $100 million to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program in the final version of the fiscal year 2014 omnibus reprogramming action, crippling Air Force plans to add an extra EELV launch mission in FY-15 and thereby giving SpaceX an additional opportunity to compete against incumbent United Launch Alliance.
October 16, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Air Force has made some headway in developing a contracting mechanism for sending government payloads to space on commercial satellites, but industry and service leaders said this week that program-level officials need incentives to adopt these practices for current and future architecture augmentation.
October 16, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
As part of an effort to build an integrated network of space situational awareness assets and to ensure long-term viability of the enterprise, Air Force Space Command is looking for contractors capable of sustaining and modifying its ground-based optical and radar sensor systems.
October 16, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The completion of the merger of Orbital Sciences and ATK, two major players in the defense industry's space systems sector, could face a slight delay due to external regulatory processes.
October 09, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Air Force is on track to submit the results of a Space-Based Infrared System Follow-on analysis of alternatives to the Pentagon's acquisition executive by December and will continue reviewing those findings through mid-2015.
October 09, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Space and Missile Systems Center's revised acquisition strategy for a key sensor sustainment contract has moved through a critical approval, the Air Force announced this week.
October 08, 2014 |
Daily News
The Defense Department recognizes the imperative to centralize funding of commercial satellite communication services and develop standardized metrics for evaluating its bandwidth needs, but a DOD report delivered to Congress late last month emphasizes that developing a long-term strategy will take substantial initial investment and experimentation.
September 25, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
Air Force Space Command has a vision for a
three-satellite Space-Based Space Surveillance system follow-on constellation,
but its plan has not yet made it through the budget process, according to the
command's top officer.
September 25, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
Lockheed Martin said this week that the navigation payload for the first next-generation Global Positioning System satellite is moving through key acceptance tests that should be completed by the end of the year, with the tests contributing to the planned 2015 delivery of the satellite to the Air Force in 2015.
September 24, 2014 |
Inside the Pentagon
An investigation by the Defense Department Inspector General
found that there were no significant gaps or weaknesses in acquisition policies
and procedures for necessary systems engineering, design, quality and safety,
also known as mission assurance, dealing with spacecraft and strategic systems.
September 18, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
As industry teams announced this week their intentions to participate in the Air Force's advanced rocket engine development program, service officials stressed the urgency of gathering market input and developing an accelerated acquisition plan as soon as this fall.
September 18, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The commander of Air Force Space Command said this week that the service has increased the resources it is allocating toward SpaceX's certification as an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle provider with the goal of having the company eligible to fly national security space launches by the end of the year.
September 11, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Weather Center of Excellence expects that a broad agency announcement issued in the spring could yield, among other things, new approaches for understanding the impact of the space environment on U.S. space assets.
September 11, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center is working with other government space agencies to establish a plan to better leverage the benefits of solar electric propulsion in U.S. space systems and hopes to have a plan in place next year.
September 04, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board has been directed to examine the way forward for remotely piloted aircraft as the service looks beyond current operating environments to more heavily defended airspace.
September 04, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
Although the Air Force's new Space Fence is being designed to operate primarily in low-earth orbit, a pair of studies the service issued last winter, prior to the program's entry into the engineering and manufacturing development phase, reveal that the system can provide valuable medium-earth orbit observation without compromising its primary mission.
September 04, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
SpaceX has, to date, completed eight of the 19 engineering review boards required for certification of its Falcon 9 rocket booster as an approved national security space launch provider, and the Air Force continues to eye a December 2014 deadline for completing the company's certification process.
September 04, 2014 |
Inside the Air Force
As the Space Fence program moves forward through the engineering and manufacturing development phase, the Air Force's primary logistical focus is on preparing the radar system's future site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands for groundbreaking early next year.
September 03, 2014 |
Inside the Pentagon
U.S. Strategic Command has recently entered into a new space situational awareness data-sharing agreement with a European organization that provides weather and climate-related satellite products to users.