Schumer, Clinton Announce Congressional Panel Backs $18.9 Million For Central New York Defense Projects

U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced that the Department of Defense Appropriations bill conference report filed late yesterday included approved $18.9 million for military projects in Central New York. The House and Senate must approve the bill before being sent to the President and signed into law.

"This is great news for Central New York," said Schumer. "Additional funds will not only boost the area economy, but also put Central New York and New York State at the forefront of defense technology. As the men and women of our military bravely serve our country all over the world, the funding for these Central New York defense projects will vastly improve national security technology and will give our armed forces an even greater edge."

This is wonderful news for Central New York. This is cuttingedge defense technology being made locally, supporting our men and women in uniform and our national security. These are important investments in local companies and research institutions that will in turn help the economy as well. I look forward to their final approval by the Senate, Senator Clinton said.

Funding in the FY 2007 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill includes

Source Sentinel Detection of Biological Agents in Water $1.5 million This funding will allow Source Sentinel to further their project on the Detection of Biological Agents in Water. This project will support the research, development, application and commercialization of basic and applied research to deploy biosensors to protect water and air systems against manmade natural toxin incursion with nearreal time alert, information fusion and automatic/manual response/reaction in order to assure protection of municipal water supplies. If implemented successfully, the project has the potential to provide detection and alert capability for the over 4,000 uncovered reservoirs and 15,000 water treatment facilities nationwide. Designed to be deployed on a buoy, on a submerged fixture or in a potable water pump station, the device provides continuous realtime monitoring via air and water quality sensors that are able to detect and provide ample nearrealtime warning of the presence of agents that are potential biological terrorism agents. These technologies will be able to provide ample near realtime warning of the presence of inorganic and organic chemicals and specific bacteria in air or water, and will provide an integrated response system that aids an alerted operator in the conduct of the correct emergency action plan measures and procedures in the event of a toxin incursion into the air and water supply from before or at the intake.

Rome LabsITT Space Systems MASINT Warfighter Tools $1.5 million This funding for Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Rome Research Labs and ITT Space Systems Division will help them to further their Measurement and Signals Intelligence (MASINT) project. MASINT offers huge benefits in identifying obscured and hidden targets, but the near term challenge is to integrate MASINT into existing and future information processing systems in a way that enables users to manage and display the information in time to take action. MASINT gathers measurements from unintentional radiation, effluent and debris sampling, acoustic signals, nonvisible imaging and other sources and then subjects that data to specialized processing in order to transform it into actionable intelligence for both national command and tactical users. This funding would allow the AFRL Rome Research Site to build upon the initial success of the MASINT Visualization Tools Program and allow an expansion into newer, less mature techniques such as hyperspectral, acoustic and overhead nonimaging infrared. It will also expedite the integration of MASINT into the information architectures of other national security agencies.

Syracuse Research Corporation Lightweight CounterMortar Radar Base Protection (LCMRBP) Systems $1 million The Lightweight CounterMortar Radar (LCMR) operates in the battlefield today, protecting the war fighter from mortars and rockets. By networking LCMRs and/or other sensors together in the Lightweight CounterMortar Radar Base Protection (LCMRBP) System, the safety of our soldiers will be increased and the accuracy of our responses will be greatly enhanced. The LCMRBP will provide scalable, low cost/high reliability forward operating base protection that can handle a variety of threat situations with greater reliability to warn and respond.

Syracuse Research Corporation Reasoning and Assessment of Intelligence for CounterNarcotics and AntiTerrorism (RAINCOAT) $1.7 million The Reasoning and Assessment of Intelligence for CounterNarcotics and AntiTerrorism (RAINCOAT) project provides the U.S. Air Force with an operatorfocused decision support tool. RAINCOAT is a software application that will assist in the detection, identification, and monitoring of drug, insurgent, and terrorism activities. RAINCOAT integrates information from multiple intelligence sources and compresses the intelligence reporting timeline for SENIOR SCOUT operators. This capability directly supports SENIOR SCOUT operators for their ongoing antiterrorism and counterdrug missions in the Middle East and South America.

The Cortland Companies Synthetic Material Arresting Cable $1 million This funding will continue existing efforts to investigate the use of lightweight, synthetic materials and novel cable construction to replace the steel cables that recover aircraft aboard U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers. This testing includes: fatigue testing and analysis at a Navy Test Site that is representative of shipboard gear, design improvements based on fatigue tests, development of synthetic material sheaves and model development and validation in order to quantify performance benefits associated with synthetic cable. Synthetic cables could improve the factor of safety of the entire system by 60%. Because the strengthtoweight of synthetic materials is 45 times better than steel, system inertia is significantly reduced, enabling the arresting gear to apply breaking force much earlier in the stroke. The use of synthetic cable also possesses a potential weight savings of 62 tons per carrier and increase arresting gear performance by 25%.

ATK Alliant Techsystems Air National Guard RC26B Modernization Program at Hancock Field $3.6 million The RC26B is a twin turboprop aircraft used by the Air National Guard in CounterDrug and border security operations. It supported national disaster relief in postKatrina missions by providing important realtime image collection to disaster relief agencies. The Air National Guard's RC26Bs also provides the Active and Guard components with ISR capabilities for a variety of missions. The aircraft need real time sensor and communications capabilities, improve reliability and operational flexibility. Funding is needed in FY07 to address Air National Guard modernization requirements for the aircrafts at Hancock Field.

Research Associates of Syracuse Increased Combat Effectiveness Using EW Sensors $1.1 million This initiative makes maximum effective use of our existing strike fighters, attack helicopters and bombers. The system uses existing sensors and datalinks on fighters and helicopters to find hostile surfacetoair missile sites that are hidden from other US/Allied sensors. This info is then immediately sent to combat operations centers. The system will also help train combat aircrews in electronic warfare, inexpensively, using the same onboard datalinks.

Progressive Expert Consulting, Inc. Special Operations Foreign Language Teletraining System (SOFTS) $1.1 million This project is a means of delivering foreign language instruction using personal computers and broadband internet connections. This training solution is a PCbased teletraining technology that enables all students and instructors to see and hear each other on screen while collaborating, share documents, and write in language accurate script, and have access to the web to have a shared view of authentic content such as newspapers and other content. USMCFLTS is an ideal training delivery system to conduct foreign language training.

Lockheed Martin Syracuse Surface Ship ASW R&D improvements (SQQ89) $ 6.4 million This project will integrate the very successful (but temporary addon system) into the SQQ89 A(V)15 surface sonar system on board DDG 51 class destroyers. This will provide a closed loop interface with the AEGIS Weapons System and the Over The Side Torpedo and Vertical Launch System weapons systems. The result of this development and integration will be providing a common fire control solution across multiple platforms. The implementation will be portable to future platforms and easily adaptable to future AEGIS and other Surface Ship Weapons Systems.