WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) – The Obama administration has proposed selling 600 “bunker buster” bombs and other munitions to the United Arab Emirates, which lies across the Gulf from Iran, to deter what it called regional threats.

Iran is widely suspected of seeking to develop nuclear arms through a program that Tehran says is for peaceful power generation only.

The proposed $304 million sale would include 4,900 tail kits built by Boeing Co that turn unguided free-fall bombs into guided weapons and 4,300 “general purpose” bombs, the Defense Department said in a mandatory arms sale notice dated Wednesday.

The deal would boost UAE’s ability “to meet current and future regional threats” and to help deter aggression, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in the note to lawmakers.

The BLU-109 “Hard Target Penetrator” bomb, or bunker buster, is a 2,000-pound (900-kg) weapon designed to smash into buried enemy command posts, munitions depots and other hardened targets before using a delayed fuse to explode.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are widely dispersed around the country, some of them in fortified bunkers underground.

Boeing’s Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, is a tail section containing technology that uses global positioning system (GPS) data to home in on a target from up to 15 miles away.

WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp said it received a boost to a contract for upgrades to its premier but problem-plagued F-22 Raptor fighter plane, raising the deal’s potential value to $7.4 billion through next year.

Clarifying U.S. Air Force information published last week, the Pentagon’s top supplier said on Tuesday that the previous lid on the 10-year “Raptor Enhancement Development and Integration” contract was $6 billion.

An Air Force spokesman concurred, saying the ceiling alone had been lifted “with no other changes to the contract.”

Last Friday’s announcement about a potential $7.4 billion contract “certainly was not clear,” said Daryl Mayer, spokesman for the F-22 program office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, referring to an Air Force item in the Defense Department’s daily contract digest.

The original contract, awarded in 2002 according to Lockheed and 2003 according to the Air Force, provided nine one-year options for the development of integrated software and hardware upgrades to the radar-evading F-22, the most advanced and costliest U.S. fighter.

The Air Force lists the unit cost at $143 million, a figure that does not include a research, development and testing tab that adds some $200 million to each of the 187 aircraft that will have been built when production winds up in a matter of weeks.

Over the last nine years, 82 contracts have been issued under the 10-year upgrade deal totaling $5.75 billion against the original ceiling of $6 billion, said Lockheed spokeswoman Stephanie Stinn.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is giving, not selling, two dozen second-hand F-16 fighter planes to Indonesia to strengthen security ties with an “important U.S. partner,” the Defense Department said on Monday,

Elaborating on an announcement on Friday by the presidents of the two countries, the department said Jakarta would cover an estimated up to $750 million to refurbish the late-model fighters and overhaul their engines.

The F-16 C/D models are decommissioned and no longer part of the U.S. Air Force inventory. Retooled and upgraded, they will contribute to Indonesia’s “interoperability” with the United States, Navy Commander Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Defense Department spokeswoman, added in an email to Reuters.

Interoperability is the extent to which military forces are able to communicate with each other and share information to achieve a common goal.

“Indonesia is an important U.S. partner and a leader in Southeast Asia,” Hull-Ryde said. “The Department of Defense is working to support the Indonesian military in their efforts to modernize the force.”

Developing ties with Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia and the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, is a priority for the Obama administration as it seeks to shape the economies and security of the region.

With arms transfers come training, closer military establishments and other ties.

By Jim Wolf

(Reuters) – The United States plans to supply 24 refurbished F-16C/D fighter aircraft to Indonesia, the presidents of the two countries announced in Bali on Friday on the fringes of an Asia-Pacific summit.

It was the second militarily significant announcement of President Barack Obama’s ongoing nine-day Asia-Pacific trip.

The upgraded Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) F-16s will give Indonesia a “much-needed” capability to protect its sovereign airspace, the White House said in a “fact sheet” that emphasized the relatively low price tag, put at $750 million by the Pentagon.

Under a separate tightening of ties with Australia, U.S. Marines will start rotating through northern Australia next year, eventually growing to a 2,500-strong task force, the two governments said during a visit by Obama before he flew to neighboring Indonesia for the summit with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Jakarta was seeking more capable F-16s able to carry out operations “in the outermost border regions of Indonesia.”

The air force’s existing fleet of 10 F-16 A/Bs cannot do this, the agency said in a mandatory notice of the tentative deal to the U.S. Congress. It put the estimated cost at $750 million. The aircraft are from excess U.S. inventory.

By Jim Wolf

(Reuters) – The U.S. military now has a legal framework to cover offensive operations in cyberspace, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command said Wednesday, less than a month after terming this a work in progress.

“I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind,” Air Force General Robert Kehler said in the latest sign of quickening U.S. military preparations for possible cyber warfare.

“I do not think there is any issue about authority to conduct operations,” he added, referring to the legal framework.

But he said the military was still working its way through cyber warfare rules of engagement that lie beyond “area of hostilities,” or battle zones, for which they have been approved.

The Strategic Command is responsible for U.S. operations in space and cyberspace. The U.S. Cyber Command, a sub-command, began operating in May 2010 as military doctrine, legal authorities and rules of engagement were still being worked out for what the military calls the newest potential battle “domain.”

The Defense Department, in a report made public Tuesday, ratcheted up its warnings, saying the United States reserves the right to retaliate with military force against a cyber attack and is boosting its ability to pinpoint network intruders.

By Jim Wolf

(Reuters) – The command responsible for U.S. military space operations lacks enough data to determine who interfered with two U.S. government satellites, anomalies behind perhaps the most explosive charge in a report on China sent to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.

“What I have seen is inconclusive,” General Robert Kehler, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said in a teleconference from Omaha, Nebraska, home to the military outfit that conducts U.S. space and cyberspace operations.

The congressionally created U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission said in its 2011 annual report that at least two U.S. environment-monitoring satellites were interfered with four or more times in 2007 and 2008 via a ground station in Norway.

China’s military is a prime suspect, the bipartisan, 12-member commission made clear, though it added that the events in question had not actually been traced to China.

The techniques “appear consistent with authoritative Chinese military writings” that have advocated disabling a foe’s satellite control facilities on the ground in a conflict, the commission said.

Kehler spoke to reporters during a conference hosted by his command on cyber and space issues. He was asked by Reuters whether he could assign blame for the possible efforts to take control of the Landsat-7 and Terra AM-1 satellites, as reported by the commission.

WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) – China’s economy is moving up the value chain and its currency could “mount a challenge” to the U.S. dollar in five to 10 years, a congressionally created commission reported Wednesday.

Gone are the days when Beijing was content to be the low-end factory of the world, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its 2011 report to the U.S. Congress.

China’s planners are intent on joining the realm of advanced technology products. high-end research and development and next-generation products, the bipartisan, 12-member body said in a 406-page report.

“Similarly, it no longer seems inconceivable that the RMB could mount a challenge to the dollar, perhaps within the next five to 10 years,” the commissioners said, 10 years after China joined the World Trade Organization.

RMB is short for renminbi, also known as the yuan.

The Chinese authorities are laying the groundwork for internationalization of the currency via bilateral arrangements with foreign companies and financial centers, particularly Hong Kong, the report said.

Goldman Sachs representatives told commissioners that Hong Kong had been tapped to be China’s offshore currency platform “because Beijing would be able to fully control the terms of the market,” the report said. Hong Kong was returned by Britain to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The sun’s abundant energy, if harvested in space, could provide a cost-effective way to meet global power needs in as little as 30 years with seed money from governments, according to a study by an international scientific group.

Orbiting power plants capable of collecting solar energy and beaming it to Earth appear “technically feasible” within a decade or two based on technologies now in the laboratory, a study group of the Paris-headquartered International Academy of Astronautics said.

Such a project may be able to achieve economic viability in 30 years or less, it said, without laying out a road map or proposing a specific architecture.

“It is clear that solar power delivered from space could play a tremendously important role in meeting the global need for energy during the 21st century,” according to the study led by John Mankins, a 25-year NASA veteran and the U.S. space agency’s former head of concepts.

The academy is headed by Madhavan Nair, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. The study was billed as the first broadly based international assessment of potential paths to collecting solar energy in space and delivering it to markets on Earth via wireless power transmission.

The study said government pump-priming likely would be needed to get the concept, known as space solar power, to market. Private-sector funding is unlikely to proceed alone because of the “economic uncertainties” of the development and demonstration phases and the time lags, the study said.

Both governments and the private sector should fund research to pin down the economic viability of the concept, the study said, amid concerns about humankind’s continuing reliance on finite fossil fuels that contribute to global pollution.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The sun’s abundant energy, if harvested in space, could provide a cost-effective way to meet global power needs in as little as 30 years with seed money from governments, according to a study by an international scientific group.

Orbiting power plants capable of collecting solar energy and beaming it to Earth appear “technically feasible” within a decade or two based on technologies now in the laboratory, a study group of the Paris-headquartered International Academy of Astronautics said.

Such a project may be able to achieve economic viability in 30 years or less, it said, without laying out a road map or proposing a specific architecture.

“It is clear that solar power delivered from space could play a tremendously important role in meeting the global need for energy during the 21st century,” according to the study led by John Mankins, a 25-year NASA veteran and the U.S. space agency’s former head of concepts.

The academy is headed by Madhavan Nair, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. The study was billed as the first broadly based international assessment of potential paths to collecting solar energy in space and delivering it to markets on Earth via wireless power transmission.

The study said government pump-priming likely would be needed to get the concept, known as space solar power, to market. Private-sector funding is unlikely to proceed alone because of the “economic uncertainties” of the development and demonstration phases and the time lags, the study said.

Both governments and the private sector should fund research to pin down the economic viability of the concept, the study said, amid concerns about humankind’s continuing reliance on finite fossil fuels that contribute to global pollution.

WASHINGTON, Nov 10 (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy said Thursday it was penalizing shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc for management lapses on a destroyer program.

The Naval Sea Systems Command said 5 percent of progress payments were being withheld on a $697.6 million contract awarded in September for a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

The Navy did not specify the sum being held back. It cited deficiencies in the company’s “Earned Value Management System,” said Christopher Johnson, a command spokesman, referring to a federal contracting performance yardstick.

The penalty amounted to millions of dollars under new Defense Department rules aimed at boosting contractors’ performance, said Inside the Pentagon, a trade publication that was the first to report the sanction.

The Defense Contract Management Agency found deficiencies representing “systemic and material internal control weaknesses” under 19 of the 32 “guidelines,” Jacqueline Noble, an agency spokeswoman, told Reuters.

The agency uses the yardstick to obtain auditable data on contract status. The problems at Huntington Ingalls crossed each of the five overall areas at issue — Organization; Planning, Scheduling, and Budgeting; Accounting Considerations; Analysis and Management Reports; and Revisions and Data Maintenance, Noble said in an emailed reply.

Huntington Ingalls does not anticipate that this issue will impact its financial outlook, said Jerri Dickseski, a company spokeswoman.