Airlines India, Indian Airlines

Boeing will be docked an undetermined amount in performance-based fees by the Air Force for cost overruns of at least $266 million and three years of delays on a Global Positioning System satellite contract, according to the program manager.

Boeing has exceeded its original $215.8 million development contract by about $80 million, or 37 percent, and its $195 million initial production contract by $186 million, or about 95 percent, Colonel Wesley Ballenger said Wednesday.

“It is a large overrun and we take that seriously,” Ballenger said. “The government is clearly holding Boeing accountable.” Air Force Under Secretary Ronald Sega also has communicated that message to Boeing, Ballenger said.

While the Air Force will have to pay for the overruns on the GPS satellite program because they occurred under so-called cost-reimbursable contracts, Boeing will lose award fees for failing to meet performance criteria, Ballenger said. The exact amount hasn’t been determined yet, he said.

Boeing, the second-biggest U.S. defense company, has contracts totaling about $2.5 billion to build the first 12 GPS IIF satellites and the ground stations that control the platform, Ballenger said. The satellites, which are used for civilian and military navigation, are being developed at Boeing’s El Segundo, Calif., facility.

Boeing spokeswoman Diana Ball declined to comment Wednesday on the potential award-fee reductions, instead repeating an earlier statement that the company “has taken aggressive steps to resolve technical issues on GPS IIF, issues that were not atypical for advanced spacecraft development projects.”

Boeing’s first GPS IIF satellite will be delayed almost three years from the original June 2005 date it was to have been available for the Air Force to launch, Ballenger said. The Air Force now anticipates the new date under the best scenario is May 2008, with January 2009 as the worst case, he said.

The Air Force said Tuesday that the first satellite is about 16 months late from a revised first launch date of January 2007 — not the date it was expected to be available.

“We track when a satellite will be available for launch,” such as when all testing is complete, Ballenger said. Against this benchmark, Boeing is at least three years late, he said.

The delays on the satellite program stem from “the complexity designing a new integrated circuit,” the “magnitude of the effort required for assembly, integration and testing,” and late deliveries of navigation hardware by subcontractor ITT, the Air Force said in a statement Tuesday.

The service said “management organization issues” also were to blame for the lapses.

“Boeing stepped up and made specific changes in program management and laid in a new program plan,” Ballenger said. “I am satisfied with the renewed senior management commitment to get the IIF program back on track. We’ve had a lot of dialogue.”

Boeing’s past performance will be scrutinized by the Pentagon during an upcoming competition for the GPS III program, Ballenger said. The first launch of the GPS III satellite is scheduled for 2013, he said.

There are 28 GPS satellites orbiting the earth, Ballenger said. The new IIF Boeing satellites will contain an extra channel for improved civilian accuracy.

IF all goes as planned, the strategically significant Indian Air Force (IAF) station somewhere in the western sector will be shifted, along with all its paraphernalia shortly. The station comes in the way of the multi-crore upgradation and modernisation project of the Rajasansi International Airport. The Airport Authority of India (AAI), managing the airport, has prepared an ambitious Rs 60 crore scheme to shift the IAF station to some suitable place, with all necessary infrastructure.

The green signal has come forth from the Union Ministry of Defence to execute the plan, without any further delay. IAF sources disclosed that they have acceded to the proposal of AAI as the increasing civilian movement at Rajasansi has been proving to be a security threat for the defence station, which is extremely crucial in case of any war or a foreign aggression on the western border.

The AAI’s proposal hinted that its expansion plan for the airport, catering to more and more domestic and international flights off late, had hit a roadblock with the IAF station spread over 700 acres coming in the way. They even desire to bear the cost of developing buildings, housing facilities, offices and other infrastructure facilities for the IAF station, to come up at an alternative site, to be selected by the Defence Ministry.

Top IAF sources confirmed that the Ministry has even given the go-ahead to the project but added the matter would be discussed at a high-level meeting to be held shortly at Delhi. ‘‘Given the security considerations, the proposal is receiving positive response all through the Defence Ministry corridors,’’ said the sources, adding that civilian operations were not even desired by them in the close proximity and they wanted the operations to be separated with independent facilities.

The AAI on the other hand wants to construct a maintenance hub for the repair of aircraft stationed at the airport here as they had to be either taken for service to Delhi or the engineers needed to be flown in from national capital in case of any emergency. ‘‘If we plan the new infrastructure we need more land. There is no land available and we want the station’s land and even some infrastructure to be requisitioned,’’ confirmed AAI Director J S Sandhu.

Saying that there were positive signals from the IAF over the matter, Sandhu said that if they visualised the potential traffic by 2025, they could foresee a huge number of airlines starting their operations from here as the airport caters to the Punjabi diaspora visiting the city of the Golden Temple. There has been tremendous response to direct flights to London by Jet Airways, to Singapore by Singapore Airlines and to the UK and Canada by Air India, in the last six to eight months, he said.

The IAF top brass had been looking for some suitable site at a certain strategic place and meetings in this regard had also taken place. ‘‘It will take some time. An alternative site is to be selected and developed at some suitable place for which the land would be needed,’’ said top IAF sources, requesting anonymity.

The present airport is spread over 1,100 acres of land and they need about 1,000 acres more for the airport to be developed to international standards. The air traffic has increased from a mere three flights a week to 55 now and the number is on the upswing. ‘‘Land is the major problem. This is too small an airport to house the latest facilities including a widened runway, parallel taxi ways, additional terminals and more parking places,’’ said Sandhu.

He also said that to house the new IAF station about 40 acres of land was required but said the final decision in this regard was to be made by the IAF itself.

170 passengers stranded again
Over 170 passengers scheduled to travel to the UK were stranded again at the Rajasansi Airport as the Air India Delhi-Toronto-Birmingham flight that goes via Amritsar left without them today. Charging the airlines staff with inefficiency, the stranded passengers held a protest at the airport for having been left behind despite having purchased tickets for travel, whereupon the airlines’ authorities promised to take them by the flight scheduled for Friday. Sources cited overloading and slow operations of the airline’s staff as the reasons for the oversight. They added that similar incidents had taken place yesterday and a week before, in which over 30 passengers had been left behind.

Lockheed Martin Systems Integration in Owego will supply the U.S. Army computers that provide Apache Longbow helicopter pilots enhanced situational awareness and threat warning.

The contract is valued at $16 million for 37 systems. Seven systems will supplement the current U.S. Army inventory and the remaining 30 systems will be sold to the United Arab Emirates.

“Our system increases the lethality and survivability of the helicopter, helping pilots do their job effectively,” said Dan Rice, director of products at Lockheed Martin Systems Integration-Owego.

Lockheed Martin has delivered more than 330 similar systems to the U.S. Army and international military customers.

The system is designed for precision strike and armed reconnaissance missions by passively detecting, accurately identifying and precisely locating devices that emit radar, Lockheed representatives said. The system identifies such threats as surface-to-air missile sites or radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery.

THE Pentagon said on Wednesday that its inspector general is investigating whether officials provided “knowingly false” information to a special commission that investigated the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A secret inspector general`s report in May 2005 concluded that Defence Department officials provided inaccurate information about the air defence response to the attacks, but did not say whether it was “knowingly false,” said Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka.

The inspector general “will be issuing a report in the near future that will directly address the question of whether the testimony was knowingly false,” he said.

A magazine, meanwhile, published a detailed account of the air defence response drawn from audiotapes made in the north eastern command center of the North American Aerospace Defence Command as the attacks unfolded.

The tapes show that no command was given to shoot down United Flight 93 as implied by Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials, the magazine said.

The airliner crashed in a field in Pennsylvania before anyone in the military chain of command even knew it had been hijacked.

Cheney was not informed of the possibility that the United flight had been hijacked until 10:02 am, just one minute before it impacted the ground.

Among other inaccuracies, Major General Larry Arnold and Colonel Alan Scott testified they began tracking United Flight 93 at 9:16 am, but the plane had not been hijacked at that point.

NORAD`s north eastern headquarters was not notified of the hijacking for another 51 minutes, the magazine account said.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States uncovered the inaccuracies during the course of its investigation, and the Pentagon corrected the 2003 testimony in May 2004, Maka said.

A leading newspaper had later reported that some staff and commission members concluded that the inaccuracies were a deliberate attempt to mislead the commission, and debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.

A previously secret US government report has revealed that defences for civilian airliners against shoulder-to-air missiles are still currently inadequate, but that the technology is progressing.

Laser-based counter-Manpads (man-portable air defence systems) can protect airliners from missile attacks, but prototype units have so far only partially met US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) performance requirements and show some limitations to being adapted to the commercial aviation environment.

In a report to the US Congress dated July but only now being released, the DHS’s study of the completed first and second phases of its two-year counter-Manpads trial also stresses that testing of the military directional infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) systems adapted for commercial use by programme participants BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman is not complete, and further analysis of “integration complexities” is still required prior to final assessment.

Testing and analysis will be pursued during phase three of the programme, which is expected to formally begin in the next few weeks, involving the operational evaluation of counter-Manpads installed on aircraft operated by US cargo carriers.

BAE and Northrop are already preparing for this final part of the programme, which is expected to last about 18 months and cost the US government about $110 million.

During phase two, Northrop tested its Guardian laser jammer on a FedEx Boeing MD-11 and later on a Boeing 747-300. The manufacturer has already received a US Federal Aviation Administration supplemental type certificate (STC) on the MD-11 and expects a 747 STC by the end of August.

Northrop is also modifying the first of 11 FedEx aircraft at the freight operator’s Los Angeles facility, and FedEx could have this Guardian-equipped aircraft in operation as early as next month, pending the DHS’s formal award to proceed with phase three, the manufacturer’s director of infrared countermeasures business development Jack Pledger tells Flight.

BAE, meanwhile, flight tested its JetEye commercial DIRCM system on an American Airlines Boeing 767-200. It now expects to receive a STC on the aircraft type within days.

For phase three, BAE will install JetEye on a 767 aircraft operated by US cargo operator ABX Air. “The installation activity has already begun,” says business development manager, counter-Manpads Steve duMont. BAE will also continue to fly the American 767 as a test platform.

The two manufacturers’ initial performance assessments indicate that a counter-Manpads system “in either a distributed or pod configuration” can protect commercial aircraft selected and tested during phase two, says the DHS in its report.

But the regulator caveats this validation by noting that additional design, development, testing and operation in the commercial environment is required “to improve reliability, reduce drag and weight, incorporate technology protection, enhance producibility, and incorporate additional event notification capabilities”.

It notes that if narrowbody and regional jets are to be equipped to protect against missiles, further design refinements, integration, and tests must also be undertaken.

While the DHS acknowledges it is feasible to transition selected military technology to the commercial aviation environment, it cites challenges “from logistics, cost, export control, and, to some extent, from a liability perspective”.

Substantial affordability implications are raised by the proposed prototype units. “The risk remains moderate to high that the commercial airlines’ economic business model, which emphasizes high reliability and low cost, would be adversely impacted by the current prototypes,” says the agency.

The DHS, however, warns that its cost threshold of $300 per flight is not being met, although it notes that its goal of reducing total costs to $1 million by the the 1,000th installation does appear attainable by at least one of the two current contractors.

It also says that until a significant number of counter-Manpads units are installed and maintained by airlines, uncertainty with regard to operations and maintenance costs will remain.

“Successful countermeasures deployment can only occur if export controls, air carrier insurance considerations, future countermeasure certification, and international operations are addressed,” it says.

Another significant factor in deciding to deploy counter-Manpads is the acquisition timeline necessary to produce and install the equipment. “Even with expedited acquisition procedures, it would take 18 to 24 months to begin producing the countermeasures equipment, and to begin installation on a significant portion of the US fleet,” notes the DHS.