Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., and Ceradyne of Costa Mesa, Calif., have received orders for more body armor for U.S. troops, the companies said Sept. 20.
ARMY Rotair Industries, Bridgeport, Conn., was awarded on Sept. 9, 2005, a $7,506,235 firm-fixed-price contract for Stabilator Amplifiers. Work will be performed in Bridgeport, Conn., and is expected to be completed by Oct. 9, 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on June 1, 2005. The U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command, Fort Monmouth, N.J., is the contracting activity (W15P7T-05-C-F011).
Aerospace company Honeywell said it will sell Indalex Aluminum Solutions to an affiliate of private investment company Sun Capital Partners for $425 million in cash and the assumption of liabilities, including pension funds. Indalex was part of United Kingdom-based Novar, which Honeywell bought earlier this year for $2.4 billion (DAILY, April 1), but the aluminum company "does not fit with our portfolio," Dave Cote, Honeywell's chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
Engineers in Japan have successfully test-fired the MB-XX upper-stage rocket engine, a joint venture of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Nagoya Guidance and Propulsion Systems Works. Pratt & Whitney supplied the fuel turbopump for the engine, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the Nagoya Works' parent company, provided the thrust chamber assembly, valves and oxidizer turbopump. Both companies share the design and system engineering work on the demonstrator, Pratt & Whitney said last week.
Foster-Miller Inc. has received $133.3 million more for lifecycle support and spare parts for additional small robot systems under the Man Transportable Robotic System program. The contract modification comes on top of recent awards worth around $95 million each to Foster-Miller and iRobot Corp. for their respective unmanned, autonomous systems for ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (DAILY, Sept. 16).
NASA's new human spacecraft, with solar panels deployed, is shown docked to the lunar lander in orbit around the moon in this artist's conception. The capsule has an Apollo-like shape but is three times larger, allowing for a larger crew, NASA said. Illustration by John Frassanito and Associates, and courtesy NASA.
ENGINE WORK: General Electric Aircraft Engines will provide rotors used in F-414 engines under a $12 million order from the U.S. Naval Inventory Control Point. The engines power the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The work is to be completed by August 2007, the Department of Defense said.
South Korea's military plans to deploy a domestically produced portable anti-air missile system in October following a successful test last week, the Korean Overseas Information Service said Sept. 19. The KP-SAM system's God's Bow missiles hit a low-flying target in a Sept. 16 test, the country's Defense Quality Assurance Agency said. The Agency for Defense Development (ADD), a state-run research institute, is in charge of the system in partnership with South Korean defense companies. ADD plans to produce hundreds of God's Bows every year.
On Sept. 19 in Washington, Administrator Michael Griffin formally unveiled NASA's plan for returning astronauts to the moon and laying the groundwork for trips to Mars, which the agency expects to cost $104 billion between now and the first targeted lunar mission in 2018.
The U.S. Army has awarded a Bell Helicopter/Boeing team a $3.45 million 18-month contract to perform conceptual design and analysis of its Quad Tiltrotor aircraft for the Joint Heavy Lift program. The Army's Cargo Helicopters project management office is overseeing JHL with participation from the other services. Several more study contracts are expected, with a development and demonstration program to follow in fiscal 2007 (DAILY, July 26).
BOMB KITS: Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $50 million contract to manufacture GBU-12 laser-guided bomb kits for the U.S. Air Force in 2006, the company said Sept. 19. The contract will fulfill more than half of the Air Force's requirements for the current fiscal year. GBU-12 kits are used on 2,000- and 500-pound bombs and have been used in Iraq and the war against terrorism.
SHIPBUILDING AGAIN: Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Ship Systems subsidiary has resumed shipbuilding production on a limited basis. The company restarted operations at its Gulfport, Miss., and Tallulah, La., facilities on Sept. 19. The shipyards at Pascagoula, Miss., and New Orleans began shipbuilding production last week for the first time since Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast region (DAILY, Sept. 12). Most of Ship Systems' major shipbuilding equipment in the region weathered the hurricane, but buildings were damaged (DAILY, Sept. 6).
AIRCRAFT DELIVERED: Sikorsky Aircraft said Sept. 19 that it delivered the 26th refurbished Black Hawk UH-60A helicopter to the Army two weeks ahead of schedule. A ceremony was held at the Corpus Christi Army Depot, Texas. The work was done under the Recap or A to A program, a recapitalization of the UH-60A aircraft to a like new A model condition.
Kimberly Johnson, Airports editor for our sister publication Aviation Daily, has embedded in Iraq with the 2nd Marine Division for three months. She is reporting for The DAILY from there, covering the performance of specific weapon systems, the realities of warfare in Iraq and other topics important to our readers. She also writes and takes photographs for "Mother of All Blogs," a Web journal about her experiences. It is located at http://www.moab-iraq.blogspot.com.
As part of the $8.7 billion, fiscal 2006 Coast Guard authorization bill that it passed without dissent last week, the House has again required the homeland security service to provide lawmakers with a detailed report on its aging legacy aircraft and ships.
OSPREY DELIVERED: Boeing/Bell Helicopter has delivered the first production CV-22 Osprey to the U.S. Air Force at the Bell Helicopter production facility in Amarillo, Texas, the Boeing Co. said Sept. 19. Produced jointly by Bell Helicopter and Boeing Co., the CV-22 is the Air Force Special Operations variant of the V-22. It will be used for long-range special operations missions, contingency operations, and evacuations and maritime operations.
Raytheon Technical Services Co. said Sept. 19 that it has agreed to team with San Antonio-based M7 Aerospace to perform global maintenance operations for the U.S. Army's Future Cargo Aircraft program. M7 Aerospace will staff field sites and provide field teams to service aircraft away from their home bases and at some overseas locations. M7 also will perform major inspections, maintenance and modifications and be responsible for maintaining a high operational readiness rate for the fleet.
CUTTER COMM: The Thales Group's communications subsidiary announced Sept. 19 that it won a potentially 10-year, $32 million contract to complete the upgrade of the Coast Guard's medium-endurance cutters with newer high-frequency equipment. Under the award, Thales would outfit five cutters with its Series HF transceivers, power amplifiers, couplers, modems and associated spares. Thales previously fitted the systems to the eight other 270-foot cutters.
The U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research has chosen Oceaneering International Inc. to design, build and prove the High Capacity Alongside Sea Base Sustainment Large Vessel Interface Lift On/Off (HiCass LVI Lo/Lo) concept, which would support the Navy's proposed Maritime Pre-positioning Force (Future) MPF(F) ships.
DEPLOYABLE ANTENNAS: Melborne, Fla.-based Harris Corp. said Sept. 19 that it has been awarded a four-year contact worth up to $100 million to produce Large Aperture Multiband Deployable Antennas (LAMDAs) for the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps. Up to 200 antennas may be delivered. The contract was awarded by the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command, Fort Monmouth, N.J. The LAMDA is an enhanced version of the Harris Lightweight High Gain X-band Antenna (LHGXA) and operates with DSCS, WGS, NATO, Skynet, XTAR, and Intelsat satellite constellations.
The U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command has chosen Northrop Grumman Corp. for the Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar's Increment I system development and demonstration. The contract, announced Sept. 16, is worth almost $8 million and runs through September 2009. Northrop Grumman beat out at least four other offers for the medium-range air surveillance competition, according to the Pentagon's announcement.
