DEFENDING
THE HIGH FRONTIER
ENGINEERING:
The industry has captured at least $8.5 billion in research and
development contracts.
December
1, 1999
By
GARY ROBBINS
The
Orange County Register
| |
Boeing
FINAL
TOUCHES:
A worker at Boeing's Huntington Beach factory labors inside the
type of Delta II rockets that will soon launch a series of Global
Positioning System satellites into orbit for the military. |
A huge balloon built in Tustin will
be shot into space next month to serve as a laser target for
the Air Force. The launch comes as strategists in Anaheim work
on ways to destroy enemy missiles, and engineers in Seal Beach
design new spy satellites.
Military space projects have quickly become big business in
Orange County, where the aerospace industry has captured at least
$8.5 billion in research and development contracts in about 18
months.
The surge is being led by the Boeing Co., which was named
lead contractor on three high-profile programs that will be managed,
designed or built at its plants in Seal Beach, Huntington Beach
and Anaheim.
The highlights include a $4 billion-plus award to build secret
spy satellites and $1.6 billion to develop an experimental system
to shield the United States against nuclear missiles.
"Programs this big come along only once every decade
or so," said John Pike, an analyst for the Federation of
American Scientists, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that
monitors space and defense.
"It's quite striking that Boeing landed so many big contracts
in such a short period of time."
Additional business may be on the way.
Over the past three years, Boeing acquired Rockwell's aerospace
and defense businesses, and merged with rocket and plane maker
McDonnell Douglas. Boeing also placed its Space and Communications
Group headquarters in Seal Beach and has been aggressively pursuing
military, government and commercial contracts. In Orange County
alone, Boeing will soon employ more than 11,000 people.
Small companies also are thriving. L'Garde Inc. in Tustin
built the target balloon that's scheduled to be launched from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc in January. Once in space,
the balloon will inflate to 12 feet in diameter and go into orbit
about 430 miles above the Earth. The U.S. Air Force will fire
low-powered lasers at the balloon from southern New Mexico to
refine its ability to track satellites in space.
"The balloon looks like a humongous ball-bearing,"
said Koorosh Guidanean, the L'Garde engineer who managed to get
the inflatable structure designed and built in 3 1/2 months for
less than $500,000.
The balloon is the smallest on a list of projects that has
burnished the county's image as an engineering mecca and could
stabilize the aerospace work force well into the next century.
The projects include:
• National Missile Defense: Boeing-Anaheim won
a $1.6 billion contract in April 1998 to coordinate the development
and testing of a prototype system that detects, tracks and destroys
long-range ballistic missiles fired at the United States. The
system will use satellites and radar to detect an enemy attack.
The U.S. would respond to an attack by launching interceptor
rockets that collide with the warheads, destroying them in space.
The interceptors are equipped with "exo-atmospheric kill
vehicles" that separate from the rocket, identify warheads
traveling among decoys, then smack into the missiles.
Boeing first tested the interceptor in October, firing the
rocket at a dummy missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force
Base. The interceptor's kill vehicle struck and destroyed the
dummy 140 miles above the central Pacific. The interceptor and
kill vehicle are scheduled to be tested at least two more times
before the Clinton administration decides next summer whether
to continue developing the program. If further development is
authorized, a minimum of 20 interceptors will be stationed in
Alaska, with the first going into operation in 2005. Such development
would lead to additional large contracts for Boeing and its major
subcontractors, which include TRW and Raytheon.
• Future Imagery Architecture: In September, Boeing-Seal
Beach was awarded a $4 billion-plus contract by the National
Reconnaissance Office to design and build a new generation of
spy satellites. Most of the work will be performed in Seal Beach
under a contract that lasts through 2010.
The details of the contract are classified for military reasons.
But Pike and other defense analysts say Boeing will likely build
two types of satellites — one dominated by sophisticated
radar, the other by powerful television cameras and infrared
sensors — to improve upon this country's existing Lacrosse
and Keyhole spy satellites.
• Delta IV boosters: In October 1998, Boeing won
a $1.38 billion Air Force contract to build and launch 19 Delta
IV boosters, a new generation of rockets that have yet to fly.
The Air Force will pay Boeing an additional $500 million to help
underwrite the development of the Delta IV, which will be designed
in Huntington Beach and built in Decatur, Ala. The "D-4"
will come in three sizes to handle varying payloads. The largest
D-4 will place just under 29,000 pounds of cargo in orbit. That
makes the booster about seven times more powerful than Boeing's
widely used Delta II rocket.
The 19 Delta IVs will launch satellites for the Air Force,
starting in 2002. Boeing also has contracts to build up to 17
Delta II boosters that will launch Global Positioning System
(GPS) satellites through 2003. Those contracts are worth upwards
of $700 million.
• Global Positioning System satellites, Block II-F:
At a cost of $400 million, Boeing-Seal Beach is designing
and building six next-generation Block II-F Global Positioning
System satellites to provide more-accurate guidance and navigation
data to military and civilian users. Among other things, the
new satellites are expected to improve the guidance of the sort
of cruise missiles the United States fired during the Kosovo
war. Boeing will deliver the first of the new satellites to the
Air Force in 2005, and may receive orders for an additional 27
"birds."
In October, Boeing-Seal Beach also was appointed to oversee
an $887 million contract to command and control GPS satellites
in orbit through 2012. Boeing will be aided by subcontractors.
• X-37 space plane: Boeing-Seal Beach is designing
this experimental, unpiloted space plane to test materials and
equipment that might be used on future spacecraft, including
vehicles that could carry military weapons or spy sensors. The
$173 million project is jointly funded by Boeing, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Air Force, all which
are looking for cheaper reusable space vehicles.
Major pieces of X-37 will be built in Seal Beach and Huntington,
and a vehicle will begin flight tests in late 2001 when it is
released by a B-52 aircraft above the Mojave Desert. The X-37
is designed to glide onto a runway like a plane. If the test
is successful, the X-37 will be carried into orbit by the space
shuttle, where it will be released to test its maneuverability.
The X-37 would later return to Earth, touching down like the
shuttle.
• Space-Based Laser: TRW Inc. continues to conduct
basic research at its Capistrano Test Site, east of San Clemente,
on a high-energy chemical laser. An experimental hydrogen-fluoride
laser was test-fired inside a chamber there this year, and more
tests are planned for 2000. But years of additional development
are needed before TRW and its partners, which include Boeing,
could place a satellite-borne laser in space for a demonstration
firing. The Defense Department says it is conceivable that a
constellation of satellite-borne lasers could be placed hundreds
of miles above Earth and used to shoot down ballistics missiles
more than 1,500 miles away.
Register science
writer Gary Robbins can be reached at (714) 796-7970. E-mail:
grobbins@link.freedom.com.
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