MACHATZ 1 CONTRACT: Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. has been awarded a contract worth more than $50 million to supply the Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system, called Machatz 1, to Israel's air force, the company said Sept. 11. IAI said it will deliver the first UAV soon and also will provide maintenance. The Machatz 1 can fly at up to 30,000 feet for more than 40 hours, the company said. It can carry multiple sensors such as maritime patrol radar, a synthetic aperture radar, and communications intelligence and electronic intelligence systems.
ARMY Rockwell Collins Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was awarded on Sept. 1, 2005, a delivery order amount of $5,700,000 as part of a $5,700,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Common Avionics Architecture System. Work will be performed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is expected to be completed by April 26, 2008. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on March 14, 2004. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (DAAH23-03-D-0015).
AWS CERTIFIED: The U.S. Navy has certified that the latest advancement of the Lockheed Martin-developed Aegis Weapon System, Baseline 7, has been approved for deployment, the company said Sept. 12. The Baseline 7 AWS contains the first complete commercial-off-the-shelf Aegis advanced processing computing architecture and the new AN/SPY-1D(V) radar.
TRANSPARENT ARMOR: BAE Systems said Sept. 12 that will provide more than 1,000 Transparent Armor Gun Shields kits and spares for U.S. Marine Corps vehicles under a contract modification worth as much as $40 million. The kits will be installed on Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement units, Humvees and Logistics Vehicle Systems starting in October and continuing through next February. The U.S. Marine Corps System Command has already funded $19 million under the modification.
L-3 Communications' Canadian aerospace unit has won a U.S. Coast Guard contract to provide depot-level maintenance for up to eight C-130H Hercules aircraft, the Guard's long-range surveillance and transport backbone platform. The contract, awarded after a competitive bid process, is worth up to $20 million for all eight aircraft, L-3 said Sept. 9. Repair work will take place at SPAR Aerospace Ltd.'s facilities in Edmonton, Canada.
The Northrop Grumman Corp.-EADS North America KC-30 tanker is geared toward more cargo ability than the earlier requirements for the Boeing Co.'s KC-767, a consideration not yet formally voiced by the U.S. Air Force but one that the KC-30 teammates expect to see. Martin Dandridge, Northrop Grumman sector executive vice president, told reporters at the Air Force Association's Air & Space Conference in Washington that the companies looked at the 2002 requirements for the KC-767 leasing and then anticipated newer requirements.
The Missile Defense Agency's ongoing Project Hercules is delivering five to 12 new missile detection and discrimination algorithms into developmental and operational missile defense systems every year, according to Gary Payton, deputy for advanced systems at MDA.
The U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command has given Bluefin Robotics Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., $6.6 million to design and develop the Battlespace Preparation Autonomous Undersea Vehicle, destined for the Littoral Combat Ship. Conceived as an autonomous unmanned system capable of bottom-mapping and gathering other oceanographic data to support the LCS' mine warfare mission module, it is intended for close-shore, clandestine intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and survey work.
BAE Systems reported a profit of GBP 344 million (USD $633 million, 1.8 dollars to the pound) on sales of GBP 6.8 billion, up from earnings of GBP 237 million for the same period last year. Sales were up 13.6%, the company said last week, and earnings before interest and taxes were up 20.4%. The London-based defense and aerospace company said its defense business should grow in 2005 as much as it did in 2004, including six months' worth of results from its acquisition of United Defense Industries in the United States (DAILY, June 26).
DRS Technologies Inc. announced Sept. 12 that the U.S. Navy awarded it several new contracts worth around $43 million to design and produce power conversion, distribution and control equipment for future and existing combatant surface ships and submarines. DRS said it already started working on the contracts, which will be carried out by the DRS Power & Control Technologies unit in Milwaukee, Wis., and Danbury, Conn. The company said it expects to work through March 2007.
NAVAL DISPLAYS: The U.S. Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. $10 million more for the replacement or repair of spares for the AN/UYQ-70 Advanced Display System, including for Australia, Spain, Egypt, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Lockheed Martin MS-2 Tactical Systems is expected to wrap up its contracted work by next March, the Navy announced late Sept. 9. The system is a family of displays, processors and networks currently fielded on the Navy's new Aegis destroyers, cruisers and other surface ships, as well as E-2C Hawkeye aircraft and attack submarines.
The U.S. Air Force plans to launch a program in early 2007 to examine weapons that could be adapted to destroy large, heavily defended ships at long ranges, an industry official said Sept. 12. Air Combat Command is spearheading efforts to begin the advanced concept technology demonstration (ACTD) program on maritime interdiction, said Ed Whalen, director of strike weapons business development at Lockheed Martin.
The U.S. Air Force's new chief of staff said Sept. 12 that he will be looking for ways to reduce the time it takes to acquire new weapon systems. Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley, who replaced Gen. John Jumper as chief on Sept. 2, said the lengthy development process for new systems has hampered Air Force efforts to replace aging aircraft. While the F-15 Eagle was first fielded in the 1970s only six years after its requirement was established, its planned replacement, the F/A-22 Raptor, is expected to need 14 years to take a similar path.
NG CRITICIZED: Buy American advocate Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is criticizing giant U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp.'s aerial refueling tanker transatlantic alliance with EADS North America, the U.S. wing of the European defense company (DAILY, Sept. 8). "The idea of shipping these jobs off to a country that's refusing to send troops to Iraq does not appeal to me," Hunter said last week, as confirmed by a spokesman.
TRAINING DEVICE: New York-based L-3 Communications said Sept. 9 that its Link Simulation and Training division has delivered an F-16C Block 52+ Aircrew Training Device (ATD) to Greece's air force. The ATD will enable pilots to practice their air-to-air and air-to-ground combat skills by acquiring and identifying targets to accurately deliver ordnance. Pilots will also be able to practice takeoffs and landings, aerial in-flight refueling, low-level flight and emergency procedures. The device will be housed at an operational base of the air force.
The Pentagon's top acquisition official has given the V-22 Osprey what seems to be a strong endorsement. In a Sept. 8 letter to congressional defense leaders that was obtained by The DAILY late Sept. 8 (DAILY, Sept. 9), Ken Krieg, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the Bell-Boeing tiltrotor aircraft has satisfied provisions of the fiscal 2002 defense authorization act that call for certain effectiveness and sustainability goals to be met before production rises above its minimum sustaining rate.
Lockheed Martin has announced its team for the U.S. Army's $20 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions (ITES-2S) program. ITES-2S is a nine-year, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity program that will provide the Army with technology products and services. The Army expects to award eight contracts under the program, four to large businesses and four to small businesses with 1,500 employees or less.
The independent Base Closure and Realignment Commission late Sept. 8 sent to President Bush its review of the Pentagon's desired changes to domestic military facilities. Copies of the report were delivered to congressional members Sept. 9, as well as to the Defense Department.
PHONING HOME: The European Space Agency has added a deep-space ground station to its ESA Tracking Station network to make it easier to communicate with far-flung spacecraft. The station, in Cebreros, Spain, will come online in time to communicate with Venus Express, Europe's next planetary probe, which is to be launched Oct. 26 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The Cebreros station will be the main ground station controlling the spacecraft and getting scientific data from it.
