The German Bundeswehr is no longer the formidable force that some remember from the Cold War. The force has been downsized, significant quantities of its heavy equipment have been sold off, and Germany’s level of defense spending has fallen sharply over the past decade and a half. Is the German military transforming, or just shrinking?
In a January 2006 update to our original article covering the FALCON HTV hypersonic space plane, DID noted that the a Mach 15+ flight of HTV-1 was supposed to take place in September 2007. Now a Flight International article notes that changes in the FLACON program have led to a change in plans – and may affect the program as a whole.
DARPA and prime contractor Lockheed Martin have decided not to build and fly the two planned HTV-1 craft after subcontractor C-CAT experienced delamination problems with the curved leading edges of the carbon-based aeroshell. Instead, they have shifted efforts to a different HTV-2 design whose multi-piece aeroshell has thinner leading edges and will be easier to build because it’s less of a technical stretch. Meanwhile, thermal protection research will continue, as will research into the scramjet engines required. DID has updated our FALCON HTV anchor article to accommodate the resulting changes, add additional background, and cover a recent contract.
DRS Technologies, Inc. recently announced almost $10 million in new orders to produce Deployable Power Generation and Distribution Systems (DPGDS) for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army. DRS will provide power units, secondary equipment and spare parts to support the U.S. Army’s 249th Engineer Battalion and the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of prime power units. Work for these awards will be accomplished by the DRS Technical Services unit in Alexandria, VA, and deliveries are expected to be completed within 8 to 12 months. The contracts were awarded by the U.S. Air Force Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force Base, FL.
Our readers aren’t the only ones with electricity bills to pay. Governments of all levels get them, including the military. In addition, the military’s purchasing power often makes it easier and cheaper for federal civilian government agencies to include themselves in these contracts than to negotiate and manage their own. Individual locations like the Fermi National Accelerator Lab can rack up truly impressive annual bills – and see these March 2006 New Jersey & Maryland contracts as another recent example.
Unless otherwise specified, all electricity contracts are firm-fixed-price and were issued by the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) at Fort Belvoir, VA. They include over $290 million worth of contracts:
Manson Gulf L.L.C. in Houma, LA received a $16.9 million firm-fixed-price contract for Levee Enlargement in New Orleans, LA, which is expected to be complete by Nov. 30, 2007. Bids were solicited via the World Wide Web on Aug. 18, 2006, and 7 bids were received by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans, LA (W912P8-07-C-0003).
