WASHINGTON During the Cold War, U.S. and European military forces strived to make their weapon systems and communications networks compatible, but the goal was never fully achieved. With the advent of the war on terror and “netcentric” concepts of “plug and play” interoperability, the goal is becoming more critical and more elusive.

WASHINGTON The Pentagon is finalizing its strategy on how to meet the military's future airborne communications intelligence needs after failing in an earlier attempt, but it still is looking for the money to jump-start the effort. The decision to again pursue an airborne comint project was made after months of deliberations at the Pentagon, with the Army and Air Force vying to lead the effort.

WASHINGTON The U.S. Navy has chosen Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to begin development of the Pentagon's future narrowband satellite communication system, but now the focus shifts to executing the program expeditiously or risk having troops face a gap in UHF satcom coverage.

WASHINGTON NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) will not continue funding the hydrogen-fueled rocket engine it has had under development by Pratt & Whitney and Aerojet, opting instead to push development of kerosene-fueled rockets for a future reusable launch vehicle (RLV).

LOS ANGELES The NTSB has concluded that fatigue cracks caused the wing failures of both firefighting airplanes that crashed this year—a Lockheed C-130A near Walker, Calif., and a ConsolidatedVultee PB4Y-2 near Estes Park, Colo. In a related move, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive on the C-130A last week.

Los Angeles A Minuteman III was launched Sept. 19 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., as part of USAF’s Force Development Evaluation Program to test reliability and accuracy of the ICBM. Two instrumented dummy warheads hit targets 4,200 mi. away in the Kwajalein Missile Range after a half-hour flight.