According to Reuters news service, the Pentagon plans to cancel a planned Boeing-built sensor for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System in a restructuring effort to save the greatly over-budget program. The GAO told lawmakers last week in a written statement covering a range of space program problems that the Pentagon was “considering dropping some of its planned capability because of technology and design-related challenges.” According to Reuters, the plan now would be to compete a “less complex sensor package.”
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…