SV2 Vest

Protective Apparel Corp. of America in Jacksboro, TN received a $13.5 million firm-fixed price delivery order for body armor. This is an off GSA contract for the Government of Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior security forces.

Work will be performed at Jacksboro, TN and is expected to be complete by Sept 1/08. Bids were solicited via the Web with 15 bids received by the Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq’s Joint Contracting Command – Iraq, (MNSTC-I/JCC-I) in Baghdad, Iraq (GS-07F-9075D).

X-ray vs. ZB
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American Science and Engineering’s Z Backscatter Van™ (ZBV) is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV employs AS&E’s patented Z Backscatter technology, which reveals contraband that transmission X-rays miss – such as explosives (including car bombs), plastic weapons, and people – providing photo-like imaging for rapid analysis.

The Z-Backscatter Van is also capable of identifying low levels of radioactivity from both gamma rays and neutrons with optional Radioactive Threat Detection (RTD) technology. Here’s how it works…

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CGC Sanibel
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On Sept 16/05, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Lockheed Martin/ Northrop Grumman joint venture Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS) completed the preliminary design review for the 58 Fast Response Cutters (FRC). “The FRC is being designed to provide the Coast Guard with a state-of-the-art patrol craft that is capable of conducting simultaneous missions,” said ICGS Deepwater’s FRC program manager Mike Duthu.

In February 2006, however, the Deepwater Program ‘temporarily’ suspended design work on the FRC-A program due to technical risk. That suspension remains in place, and it soon became clear that Congress was unwilling to fund further FRC design work. In August 2006, National Defense magazine was reporting that the Coast Guard was looking at off-the-shelf patrol ships instead. On March 14, 2007, the Coast Guard announced that it had terminated ICGS’ responsibilities for the Deepwater Fast Response Cutter-B off-the-shelf acquisition, and reassigned the project to the Coast Guard’s Acquisition Directorate. They expected to release a formal RFP for the 12 FRC-B patrol boats in May 2007, but that didn’t happen until the summer. FRC-A remains in limbo.

More than 2 years after the Coast Guard asked ICGS to accelerate the Fast Response Cutter (FRC) program timeline by more than 10 years to hasten replacement of their rapidly deteriorating Island Class patrol vessels, the Coast Guard is still waiting for replacements of any type to arrive. The 30-year old patrol boats soldier on, less the 8 “upgraded” ships whose hull cracking has made them unfit for service. Another 41 Island Class vessels still ply US and international waters.

What happened? What will happen next? DID reviews, including a GAO report that seems to indicate the end of the FRC-A program, and an RFP for off-the-shelf FRC-B cutters to finish in 2008…

• Behind the Programs: The Modernization Imperative
• Down on the Islands: The Suspended Modernization
• Not-So Fast Response: The Catch With Composite Cutters
• March 2007: What Next?
• Program Updates & Contracts [new]
• Additional Readings: Background
• Additional Readings: News, Official Reports & Statements
  
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RB-M
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MarineLog reports that the Manitowoc Marine Group has been awarded an additional $35 million delivery order for 18 RB-M vessels by the U.S. Coast Guard. The new vessels are part of a $600 million Coast Guard contract for up to 250 Response Boat-Medium (RB-M) vessels, and Manitowoc is the prime contractor and program manager for this multi-year project. Thus far 30 boats are under contract, including this order. Manitowoc will share the construction of these 18 boats equally with its RB-M team partner, Kvichak Marine Industries of Seattle, WA. Delivery will begin in Q3 2009.

Manitowoc is also part of Lockheed Martin’s Littoral Combat Ship team (as Marinette Marine), and is a participant in the Improved Navy Lighterage System.

Watchkeeper 450
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“Will UAV Proliferation Create Unfriendly Skies for Other Aircraft?” addressed the critical issue of ‘deconfliction,’ as well as ‘swarming’ algorithms currently under development. Meanwhile, flying restrictions aimed at avoiding aerial collisions have put a serious crimp in the tactical usefulness of UAVs at the battalion level and below, as detailed in “Field Report on Raven, Shadow UAVs From the 101st.”

Deconfliction issues have also prevented civil UAV markets from reaching anything close to their full potential for border patrol, land surveying, et. al. Management is not impossible – for instance, the Hermes 450, which is the basis of Britain’s Watchkeeper Mk450 system, is now civil certified in Israel. Which is why a May 2007 EUR 500,000 (then about $672,000) European Defence Agency initiative could be significant…

• The EDA’s Goals
• Air for All
• Contracts and Events
  
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Anibal

Spain’s armed forces have recently placed a wide range of orders for vehicles, radios, ammunition, and other supplies and services, which are worth about EUR 250 million (currently $363 million) taken together.

Items include:

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(Images fixed)

Ikhana image
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A recent DID article explained the differences between the smaller MQ-1 Predator and MC-1 Sky Warrior UAVs, and their more advanced cousin the MQ-9 Reaper hunter-killer that can fly at 50,000 feet. As we noted at the time, however, the MQ-9 is also the basis for other UAVs, some of which are used for research. One is NASA’s Ikhana unmanned research aircraft (pron. ee-kah-nah, Choctaw language, means “intelligent”). NASA has also been intelligent, running wildfire related exercises and missions since August. Ikhana flew over several of the Southern California wildfires Wednesday, Oct 24/07, using its payload capacity to carry special thermal-infrared imaging equipment that can look right through smoke and haze to record high-quality imagery of key hot spots.

NASA’s Ikhana
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Each flight is being coordinated with the US FAA to allow the remotely piloted aircraft to fly within the national airspace while maintaining separation from other aircraft. The imagery is processed on board, downlinked, and overlaid on Google Earth maps at NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California, Then it’s made available by the National Interagency Fire Center to incident commanders in the field to aid them in allocating their fire-fighting resources. The mission was controlled by pilots remotely from a ground control station at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. The above 3-D image was taken at 10:21 a.m. PDT over the Harris Fire in San Diego County, looking west. The hot spots (in yellow) are concentrated on the ridgeline in the left center of the photo.

Nice work. The UAV continued its flights Thursday, and more MQ-9 Ikhana images can be found via this NASA page. You can also look at Ikhana’s page of past photos, which includes one detailing its wildfire sensor package.

NECD
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During the 1960s, the Newport Chemical Depot (NECD) in Indiana produced the nerve agent VX until a unilateral decree halted American (but not Soviet) production and transportation of all chemical weapons. In the aftermath of 9/11, the US Department of Defense re-evaluated their chemical weapons disposal program, looking at where they might accelerate destruction of the USA’s stockpile in order to remove potential targets.

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency has a number of storage and disposal sites, each of which has its own prime contractor. Prime contractors hold the design, build, operation and closure portions of the contract, while subcontractors to the prime contractors vary by site. This post covers the still-ongoing work at Newport, Indiana. The following is a list of the prime contractors at each CMA disposal site:

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USMC LCpl Cheema & AK
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In September 2006, “Up to $750M in Weapons & Support for Iraq” described Iraq’s order for a number of American small arms, as well as helicopters and blast resistant vehicles. A subsequent update to that piece shed more light on the process Iraq used to select US weapons over the Soviet-derived alternatives that are so common in the country as a legacy of the Saddam era. There are some programs to refurbish those weapons, but the new direction seemed clear.

Iraq has just made a request for follow-on equipment, but US small arms manufacturers are finding that it’s hard to keep customers exclusively loyal if you can’t perform. Iraq continues to request US weapons, but the Washington Post reports that Iraq is also preparing to buy over $100 million in Soviet-derived small arms from… China. As the Post article notes:

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Golan w. Samson Jr. RWS
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Remotely-operated Weapons Systems (RWS) like Recon/Optical’s CROWS, Kongsberg’s Protector, Thales’ SWARM, BAE’s LEMUR, and larger versions like RAFAEL’s RCWS-30 and Elbit’s ORCWS have become popular attachments for combat vehicles. They allow an operator inside the vehicle to look at a screen displaying visual feeds from the RWS sensors, then move and fire the weapon from inside the vehicle.

Which leads to the logical next question: why does the operator have to be that close? South Korea, and now Israel as well, have thought about this and decided that in some cases, the answer is “no reason at all”...

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