Sierra Nevada Corporation

In 2007, the Las Vegas Sun noted SNC was "adept at targeting campaign contributions at elected officials who can help it", also noting its active Sierra Nevada PAC, which was created in July 2001.[18][19][20][21]

In 2004, then-Nevada house representative and Armed Services Committee member Jim Gibbons promoted SNC to receive a $4 million no-bid helicopter technology development contract. In the same timeframe, SNC was making political consulting payments to Jim Gibbons' wife, Dawn Gibbons. Dawn was also paid by Jim's political campaign, and a nonprofit set up by the couple also paid Dawn money. These payments were exposed in 2007 by The Wall Street Journal, who also said a grand jury had convened for this and another corporation Gibbons had been entangled with.[22][23][24]

In 2009, SNC was tied to lobbying scandals from the PMA Group and Indiana congressman and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee member Pete Visclosky. SNC paid PMA Group $280,000 in 2006 for lobbying, and PMA was exposed in a large lobbying scandal. A grand jury suponead Viclosky for documents and later declined to charge him. He was also cleared by the House Ethics Committee, though Visclosky declined to be interviewed by the committee, and there were "troubling aspects" uncovered in the probe. An email from SNC's Dave Klinger justified their requested contribution amounts to Viclosky, stating "He has been a good supporter of SNC. We have gotten over 10M in [earmarks]". Referring to the Klinger email, Steven V. Roberts and Cokie Roberts called the PMA/SNC relationship "a bribe by any other name".[25][26][27][28][18][29][30]

On February 1, 2010, Sierra Nevada Corporation was awarded[33] $20 million in seed money in phase 1 of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program for the development of the Dream Chaser. Of the $50 million awarded in the phase 1 CCDev program, Dream Chaser's award represents the largest share of the funds.[34]

On August 3, 2012, NASA announced new agreements with the Sierra Nevada Corporation and two other companies to design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflight capabilities, enabling a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next five years. Advances made by these companies under newly signed Space Act Agreements through the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative are intended to ultimately lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers. As part of this agreement, Sierra Nevada Corporation was awarded $212.5 million, ostensibly to continue development and testing of its Dream Chaser spacecraft.[35] The Dream Chaser is a revival of NASA's HL-20 Personnel Launch System lifting-body design.[36]

On July 24, 2014, Sierra Nevada Corporation signed a letter of cooperation with Tuskegee University to collaborate on efforts related to SNC's Dream Chaser.[37]

On August 1, 2014, Lockheed Martin and Sierra Nevada Corporation unveiled the composite airframe of the Dream Chaser which will be used to conduct the first orbital launch in 2016.[38]

Internally the Dream Chaser program team is frequently referred to as the “Dream Team.” The team includes well-known aerospace industry partners such as Lockheed Martin and United Launch Alliance, NASA centers and universities across the United States, small businesses such as Craig Technologies, as well as the European, German and Japanese.[39]

On September 16, 2014, Sierra Nevada Corporation lost the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract to SpaceX and Boeing, which were chosen by NASA as the two companies that will be funded to develop systems to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station. Boeing won $4.2B and SpaceX won $2.6B to complete and certify their spacecraft by 2017.[40] NASA deemed SNC's proposal as less mature than the others.[41] In the selection statement, Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human exploration and operations directorate, explained the decision by stating that “a winged spacecraft is a more complex design and thus entails more developmental and certification challenges, and therefore may have more technical and schedule risk than expected,” and "I consider SNC's design to be at the lowest level of maturity, with significantly more technical work and critical design decisions to accomplish. [...] SNC's proposal also has more schedule uncertainty."[42] Director Mark Sirangelo said the team was "devastated", and called it "like a death in the family", and Washington Post said SNC "entered a realm particular to the world of government contracting: that of the big-time corporate loser."[43]

SNC filed a protest to the GAO against the selection, which was rejected.[44][45] Washington Post called the moves to preserve the program "straddling the fine line between faith and delusion, persistence and masochism". While the Dream Chaser was designed to carry passengers, SNC modified it for cargo, worked through Thanksgiving 2015 to meet a January 2015 bidding deadline.[46] On January 14, 2016, SNC were awarded a Commercial Resupply Services contract during CRS-2 for resupply to the International Space Station between 2019 and 2024, guaranteeing a minimum of six launches.[43] [47] SNC will use United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket as the launch vehicle for Dream Chaser's cargo configuration starting from 2021.[48]

SNC was the prime contractor on RocketMotorTwo for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, and designed the rocket engine for Scaled Composites, including the one used for SpaceshipOne.[49] On April 29, 2013 SpaceShipTwo completed its first powered flight test using RocketMotorTwo.[50]

After losing the bid for NASA commercial crew, Sierra Nevada reduced staff working on RocketMotorTwo in September 2014. In late November, SNC announced the permanent closure of their Poway, California propulsion development facility as they intend to consolidate all propulsion activity in one location, at the facilities of Orbital Technologies Corp.[51]

As announced on Tuesday, October 14, 2014, the United States Department of Defense awarded Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems with a contract to develop and build a next-generation science and technology demonstration satellite, known as STPSat-5, for their Space Test Program.[52]

SNC’s Space Systems, working with Dynetics, participated in some early HLS design studies under NASA's HLS Appendix E program. They submitted a HLS proposal to NASA for HLS Appendix H, which was one of three proposals selected for further study, along with Blue Origin and SpaceX. NASA's Stephen Jurczyk identified the fuel drop tanks and low crew module as innovative strengths, but the propulsion system (identified by Scott Manley as SNC's Vortex engines) was a low-maturity risk. Overall, their technical rating and management rating were listed as "very good", making the Dynetics proposal the highest-rated project.[53][54][55]

In 2001, SNC was producing landing gear for the Predator drone.[18]

In 2009, SNC converted the Polish PZL M28 Skytruck into the C-145A Skytruck for the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). One crashed beyond repair in Afganistan in 2011, and 11 were retired in 2015. In 2016, three were sent to Kenya, two to Costa Rica, two to Nepal, and two to Estonia.[56][57] SNC took over maintenance of the AFSOC planes in 2017.[58]

On January 2, 2015, SNC announced that the United States Army awarded a $17 million follow-on Low Rate Initial Production contract to manufacture Mobile Tower Systems (MOTS), replacing the Army's aging AN/TSW-7A air traffic control (ATC) towers.[59]

Beginning in 2013, SNC partnered with Embraer to sell the Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano as a Light Attack/Armed Reconnaissance aircraft under the USAF's A-29 Super Tucano designation.

Operators:

• Afghan Security Forces: 26 aircraft delivered from 2014-2017. One part of the contract was for $1.8 billion.[60][61][62]
• Lebanon: 6 aircraft delivered in 2017-2018.[63]
• Nigeria: 12 aircraft with weapons packages. The $593 million contract had been on hold since 2015 over human rights issues, but was discussed between President Donald Trump and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in February 2017 and approved later that year. The first plane was completed in 2020.[64][65][66]
• United States:
  • Air Force Special Operations Command's combat aviation advisors: 3 aircraft. The initial two were in a $129 million contract.[66]

Gorgon Stare is a remotely controlled, aircraft-based Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance (WAPS) system. Gorgon Stare includes the USAF's only operational day/night persistent wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) capability. The system has flown long-duration sorties daily in multiple theaters since March 2011, providing thousands of hours of direct combat support.

In Spring 2014, the U.S. Air Force deployed the latest generation of Gorgon Stare. The fully upgraded system simultaneously provides a four-fold increase in area coverage with a two-fold improvement in resolution compared to its predecessor. The system features two state-of-the-art imaging sensor turrets—an electro-optical (EO) sensor derived from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) ARGUS technology and an infrared (IR) sensor integrating the largest IR arrays available.[67]

SNC's Transport Telemedicine System is a new capability that captures and communicates patient care and condition information beginning at the point of injury and continuing until arrival at a medical facility. On September 24, 2014 at the inaugural Nevada Telemedicine Summit, SNC successfully demonstrated the capability for the U.S. Army Medical Material Agency. The Nevada Army National Guard MEDEVAC unit flew the demonstration mission.[68]

On July 23, 2014, SNC's Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) business area located in Centennial, Colorado won a competitive contract to provide and operate two Multi-Mission Aircraft (MMA) for the State of Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC).[69] Based on the Pilatus PC-12, the DFPC aircraft are equipped with electro-optical sensors and communications equipment that allow firefighters to detect small fires before they grow into large incidents that severely affect Colorado's lives, property, and resources. As a result of the integration of SNC's technology and modifications, the MMA are providing advanced fire detection, location, and behavior monitoring capabilities. Additionally, the aircraft feature a communications system that allows the aircrew to send collected information to all wildfire response personnel using the Colorado Wildfire Information Management System (CO-WIMS), a web-based collaborative information sharing tool that allows any firefighter immediate access to fire location, behavior, and other critical pieces of information. Colorado has also successfully employed the aircraft in search-and-rescue and environmental assessment missions.

Operators:

• US Army Task Force ODIN
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection, at least some of their 25-plane King Air fleet; 12 of the aircraft were provided in a $280 million contract in 2016.[70][71]
• Royal Saudi Air Force, four planes for $185 million[72]
• Jamaica Defence Force, one plane acquired in 2018[73]
• Kuwait Air Force, four planes ordered in 2018 for $259 million with Seaspray 7500 AESA, WESCAM EO-IR imaging, communications, AN/AAR-47 missile warning system, and AN/ALE-47 countermeasures.[74][75]

A Dornier 328, 2006

In 2015, Sierra Nevada Corporation acquired 328 Support Services GmbH (328 SSG) and with it the maintenance rights and type certificates for the Dornier 328 and Fairchild-Dornier 328JET.[76] Later in 2015 an agreement was reached for the Turkish government to build the aircraft in Turkey as the T328 and TR328 and for Turkey to develop enlarged 60-70 seat "628" models, under the Turkish Regional Jet project.[77] First flights were anticipated in 2019, but the project was abandoned in 2017.[77] SNC and 328 SSG would continue exploring revivals of the 328 and 328JET.[77]

SNC's MACE published a report (titled "MACE E-PAI COVID-19 ANALYSIS." with a stylized graphic of a one-eyed god on the cover) on the origins of coronavirus, tracing it to an October 2019 event at the Wuhan virology lab. MACE said it was produced "in coordination with the [Department of Defense]", which the department denied.

NBC also tentatively linked a May 6 tweet from Marco Rubio to the report, and a May 3 statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on ABC's This Week was linked to it by The Daily Beast; Pompeo stated "there's enormous evidence" linking it to "failures in a Chinese lab". The Daily Beast also noted that President Trump said "somebody was stupid" at the lab.[78][79][80]

On May 8 2020, NBC News uncovered this report, stating "U.S. spy agencies are reviewing the document".[78][81] Later, The Daily Beast said that committees briefed on it included Senate Armed Services Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and that "multiple congressional committees" asked to review it. Sources in the Senate and House said it didn't "pass the smell test", and "not based on actual intelligence".[80]

On May 19 2020, The Daily Beast debunked the report. Using Maxar Technologies satellite images and images from an Airbus satellite, Daily Beast was able to confirm that these roadblocks weren't in place due to a laboratory accident, but were most likely due to the nearby highway construction, showing that the traffic patterns were only temporarily reduced. Secondly, a lack of personnel in an "18 day gap" occurred across a holiday week. Next, MACE had interpolated geolocation data from seven cell phones to validate this gap, but with such a small sample size other large gaps in dates could be seen.[80]

The report also stated a November 2019 conference appeared to have been cancelled after this event. Daily Beast also had Nick Waters of Bellingcat review the report, and stated "within minutes" he was able to disprove this, showing selfies from a scientist who was at the conference, including at the laboratory's Biosafety level 3 facility itself. Waters joked about the cover of the report, stating "Perhaps the authors should have spent more time testing their analysis rather than working out how to crop the eye of Sauron into a logo copy-pasted from the internet."[80]

Daily Beast confirmed their analysis of this data with Jeffrey Lewis of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, who said "it was filled with apples-to-oranges comparisons, motivated reasoning, and a complete refusal to consider mundane explanations or place the data in any sort of context."[80]

It also appeared that a laundered version of the report was the origins of The Daily Telegraph's five-page "Bombshell dossier" story about the viruses' origins at the lab.[80]