Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

F-16 UPGRADES: Lockheed Martin will support midlife upgrades to 17 F-16A/B fighter aircraft being transferred to Jordan's air force, the company said Oct. 21. The upgrades are the same as the ones being done for 400 F-16s operated by European air forces.

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Information Technology sector a three-year, $49.8 million contract to provide advanced IT upgrades to improve the sustainability and readiness of existing weapon systems, the company said Oct. 20. Northrop Grumman will provide data services, including applications software development, system testing, configuration management, database administration, help-desk support and government-furnished hardware operation, the company said.

The U.S. Defense Department is pooling similar weapon system programs into "communities of interest" (COIs) and directing each group to improve data-sharing among its members to increase interoperability.

Raytheon Co. has won a $79.7 million contract to provide sonar transmit group subsystems for the next series of Virginia class submarine shipsets, the company said Oct. 22. The transmit group sonar provides active, multisensor, high-power sonar that supports submarine underwater communication capabilities, anti-submarine warfare, mine hunting and depth sounding, the company said.

The European Space Agency and German space agency DLR have inaugurated a control center for the European elements of the International Space Station, ESA said Oct. 20. The center has been set up in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany. The Columbus Control Centre will conduct its first real-time observations next April, when Italian ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori is scheduled to visit the ISS for 10 days. An ESA/DLR team will control the scientific program of the European experiments aboard the ISS for the first time during his stay.

The Pentagon is staying the course with the Space Based Infrared System-High (SBIRS-High) after assessing alternatives to the often-troubled program. The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have completed an analysis of alternatives, and the Air Force "has been directed to continue to execute the SBIRS program of record," a program official told The DAILY Oct. 20 in a written response to questions.

Diehl BGT Defence GmbH & Co. of Uberlingen, Germany and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego have agreed to cooperate on unmanned aerial vehicles, which will include offering General Atomics' Predator to the German military. Both companies will have an equal workshare in building UAVs for the German market, Diehl said last week. The RQ-1/MQ-1 Predator achieved a milestone of 100,000 flight hours during a routine combat operation over Iraq, General Atomics announced last week (DAILY, Oct. 18).

BALLISTIC RECOVERY SYSTEMS, St. Paul, Minn. Mark B. Thomas has resigned as CEO. EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY, Paris Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's director general, has been named chancellor of the International Space University. METAL STORM LTD., Brisbane, Australia J. Dennis Heipt, a former SAIC senior executive, and Bruce McComish, chairman of the investment bank Burdett Buckeridge Young Ltd., have been named to the board of directors. Jim MacDonald has been appointed chief financial officer and company secretary.

Snecma and EADS Space are considering merging the launcher and satellite space propulsion operations of France's Snecma Moteurs and Germany's EADS Space Transportation to boost the technical and industrial capabilities of Europe's space industry, Snecma said Oct. 20. The merger could involve liquid-propellant propulsion for launchers and satellites and electric propulsion for satellites. These operations are based at Vernon and Villaroche in France and at Ottobrunn and Lampoldshausen in Germany, and involve 1,250 French employees and 450 German workers.

LASER FUTURES: In 10 years, the Department of Defense should be able to produce a 100-kilowatt, solid-state electric laser "that is fieldable, with a good beam control system, probably 20 percent efficiency, in about a 5,000- to 10,000- pound range," according to Ed Pogue, director of the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office. "And it will be capable of doing a number of things." The same laser should be able to perform a variety of missions, from imaging to attack, according to Pogue.

XCOR Aerospace has successfully pumped liquid oxygen through a cryogenic liquid oxygen pump it developed, reaching a significant milestone in its DARPA-funded Pump-Fed Rocket Program, the company said Oct. 20. DARPA's objective for the program was to develop a low-cost alternative to turbo pumps for high-performance propulsion systems, XCOR said. The company plans to focus now on securing government and private funding to continue development of a suborbital vehicle for space tourism, microgravity research and microsatellite launches.

The Joint National Training Capability (JNTC) is poised to experience sizable growth over the next 12 months or so, a program official said Oct. 20. The program, which recently achieved an initial operational capability, has linked 18 training sites and conducted four events, said Greg Knapp, head of the JNTC office. In fiscal 2005, the JNTC plans to grow to 32 sites and hold 15 events. The program still is evaluating the recently completed FY '05 defense appropriations and authorization bills, but any impact is expected to be slight.

The Australian Defence Forces have awarded Atlanta-based FATS Inc. several contracts worth about $3.3 million for customized courseware, weapon simulators and virtual training systems for the country's army and navy units, the company said Oct. 19. FATS plans to deliver and install the equipment and train the ADF in March 2005. In 1997, FATS produced small arms trainers for the ADF for the first time. The company won a $2 million contract award in September to upgrade those systems.

Labock Technologies Inc. of Weston, Fla., has shipped nearly 300 vehicle armor kits and six armored buses to Iraq over the past three months under a $20 million contract to support the country's reconstruction, the company said Oct. 19. The U.S. Navy, Army, Coalition Provisional Authority and several civilian contractors have received the armor and buses, Labock Vice President Fred Williams said in a statement. More than 700 additional armor kits were shipped to Iraq in the previous six months.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has initiated several small research and development projects aimed at bringing down the weight and improving the performance of the Airborne Laser (ABL) system. The MDA Laser Technology Program consists of a variety of small, three-year projects aimed at enabling the use of directed energy for ballistic missile defense, according to Col. Ellen Pawlikowski (USAF), program director for the ABL. If successful, the technology developed in the projects will be picked up by one of MDA's active programs.

EARNINGS: General Dynamics reported $4.8 billion in revenues for the third quarter of 2004, up from $4.4 billion in 2003. Net earnings were $322 million, up from $262 million last year. Aerospace group earnings more than doubled, from $50 million to $117 million. Combat systems earnings increased 15.5 percent.

If EADS North America won a reopened U.S. Air Force tanker refueling contract, it would open another U.S. aircraft facility dedicated to that work but would choose another U.S. company as the prime contractor, according to EADS co-CEO Philippe Camus. Camus spoke Oct. 20 at the opening of the company's new 85,000 square foot Eurocopter facility in Columbus, Miss.

LAST ADJUSTMENT: The European Space Agency's SMART-1 lunar orbiter carried out a continuous thrust maneuver with its ion engine from Oct. 10-14 in a last major push to get it positioned to be captured by the moon's gravity, ESA said Oct. 18. SMART-1 will make two more orbits of the Earth before it enters lunar orbit, which is expected to occur on Nov. 13. It will spiral down to its final lunar orbit by mid-January 2005, and will begin a six-month survey of key chemical elements on the moon's surface.

Technical, cultural, and budgetary hurdles still stand in the way of a battlefield-ready High Energy Laser (HEL) weapon system, according to a panel of industry and government officials. An operational laser weapon "has been one of those dreams everybody's had since lasers existed," according to Ed Pogue, director of the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office. "I've got a videotape of things being blown out of the sky starting around 1972. And the question is, why aren't you there yet?"

Metal Storm Ltd. and Lockheed Martin have signed an agreement to conduct studies and demonstrations to establish the feasibility of a Metal Storm torpedo defense system, according to Metal Storm. It said the evaluations will be conducted over a four-month period. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The U.S. Defense Department is wrestling with a host of procedural issues that must be resolved before it can begin deploying the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system to destroy long-range ballistic missiles, an official said Oct. 20.

Lockheed Martin is gearing up to test a small, air-to-surface cruise missile that could be launched outside enemy air defenses and loiter over the battlefield looking for targets. The company plans to begin wind-tunnel tests of the Surveilling Miniature Attack Cruise Missile (SMACM) in early November to ensure the design is aerodynamic. Flight-testing is to begin by March 2005. The missile will ride aboard an aircraft to ensure it does not hurt the plane's aerodynamics. Lockheed Martin is deciding what aircraft to use.

PerkinElmer Inc.'s California-based Optoelectronics unit will provide two critical subsystems to Lockheed Martin for the Joint Common Missile, the company said Oct. 19. The unit will design and build the firing modules for the electronic safe and arm device (ESAD) fuze system and the power supply for the air-to-ground missile system. Production contracts for the work could be worth more than $100 million for domestic needs, with foreign military sales on top of that, the company said.