INTEL EQUIPMENT: DRS Technologies Inc. of Parsippany, N.J., has received $44 million in orders to provide advanced intelligence equipment used to collect communications intelligence and signal intelligence signals, the company said Jan. 28. Various intelligence agencies, U.S. government organizations, and domestic and international defense contractors awarded the contracts. DRS will provide high-performance tuners, receivers, demodulators and direction-finding equipment. The company's DRS Signal Solutions unit in Gaithersburg, Md., will do the work.
Raytheon Co.'s Complementary Low Altitude Weapon System (CLAWS) completed its development testing by scoring a direct hit on a surrogate cruise missile target, the company said Jan. 27. A series of flight-tests culminating in the direct hit were conducted at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., and demonstrated a "family of systems" weapons architecture, including the use of a Thales Raytheon Systems MPQ-64 Sentinel Radar, which provided a close air picture and tracking data, Raytheon said. CLAWS had its first flight test in September (DAILY, Sept. 2, 2004).
R&D SPENDING: South Korea plans to more than double its defense spending on research and development by 2015 to introduce high-tech weapons into its armed forces, the Korean Information Service says. The ministry of national defense says it will hike annual R&D funding from the current 4.5% of total defense spending to 5.3% in 2006, 7.8% in 2010, and 10% by 2015. The 4.5% of R&D defense spending represents 929 billion won ($904 million) out of a total annual defense budget of 20.8 trillion won ($20 billion).
A panel studying whether the Air Force should sustain or retire its aging fleet of more than 500 KC-135 tankers is expected to complete its review by summer, a service spokeswoman said Jan. 28. The assessment, begun in mid-October 2004 by the Air Force Fleet Viability Board, already has prompted the Air Force to ground 29 KC-135Es (DAILY, Sept. 17, 2004). The Air Force determined that struts that hold the engines on those aircraft need major repairs for corrosion.
SALES UP: Honeywell reported that its fourth-quarter sales were up 7% over the same period for 2003, reaching $6.6 billion, and sales for the full fiscal 2004 were up 11%, to $25.6 billion. Fourth-quarter sales in the company's Aerospace unit were up 7% compared with 2003, driven by 10% growth in the Commercial segment and 4% growth in the Defense and Sales segment. Part of that was due to a $40 million Department of Defense contract to develop an Organic Air Vehicle for surveillance and reconnaissance (DAILY, Nov. 30, 2004).
Even before the winner of the prestigious VXX presidential helicopter competition was to be announced late Jan. 28, the Government Accountability Office was ready to begin one related investigation: how does the Defense Department ensure the loyalty of non-U.S. spouses to those supporting presidential programs? A team of congressional auditors is ready to begin its investigation, assuming no protest bids are filed with GAO, according to Derek Stewart, GAO's director of military and civilian personnel issues.
BOUGHT THE REST: Sweden-based Saab AB has purchased the remaining 51% of Finnish defense firm Elesco Oy, making Saab the sole owner, Saab said Jan. 27. Saab bought 49% of Elesco last year. "Buying the remaining 51 percent of Elesco will further strengthen Saab's presence on the important Finnish market," Dan-Ake Enstedt, president of the Saab Systems business unit, said in a statement. Elesco focuses mostly on systems integration for the Finnish armed forces.
Louisiana and metropolitan New Orleans officials are offering the Defense Department a free "state-of-the-art" basing facility, worth up to $200 million, for its New Orleans-area assets, economic development officials told The DAILY Jan. 27. The plan, called "Federal City," has the "full weight and resources" of Gov. Kathleen B. Blanco, according to a Nov. 12, 2004, letter she sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "This plan allows DOD to leverage approximately $200 million nonfederal dollars to immediately build new and efficient facilities."
The U.S. Air Force has delayed releasing a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the Personnel Recovery Vehicle (PRV) from January until March, saying it needs more time to refine the document. A service spokesman told The DAILY Jan. 27 that the cause of the two-month delay is "administrative" and is not due to any lingering debate about technology needs for the aircraft. Taking more time to fine-tune the draft RFP should ultimately streamline the competition by lessening the number of questions that industry will have about the document, he said.
Raytheon Co. has been awarded a $112.5 contract modification to provide three shipsets of Aegis Weapon Systems to the U.S. Navy, the company said Jan. 27. The equipment will be installed on the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers DDG110, DDG111 and DDG112. Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) will provide one shipset of hardware for each DDG, the company said. Each set consists of a SPY-1D(V) transmitter, three FCS Mk99 transmitters and shipboard spares.
Electronic products maker LaBarge Inc. of St. Louis set company records for net sales and net earnings increases for the second quarter and first six months of fiscal year 2005, the company said Jan. 27.
Orbital Sciences Corp. said it has completed designing, building and testing the Telkom-2 C-band satellite it is supplying to Indonesia's state-owned PT Telkomunikasi Indonesia Tbk (PT Telkom). The satellite is based on the company's STAR-2 platform and carries 24 C-band transponders. Dulles, Va.-based Orbital also designed, built and tested the communications payload and will furnish a complete ground station.
NASA plans to launch a satellite in 2008 that will make the first map of the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space, the agency announced Jan. 27. The $134 million Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission was competitively chosen for launch under NASA's Small Explorer program. It will carry two neutral atom imagers designed to detect particles from the solar system boundary, known as the "termination shock." The Voyager 1 probe is thought to be near this area, approximately 100 astronomical units (9.3 billion miles) from the sun.
Ball Corp. of Broomfield, Colo., posted record net earnings and sales in 2004, the company said Jan. 27. The firm reported 2004 net earnings of $295.6 million, or $2.60 per share, on sales of $5.44 billion, the company said. Ball Corp.'s previous highs, set in 2003, were net earnings of $229.9 million, or $2.01 per share, on sales of $4.98 billion.
Northstar Aerospace Inc. won an $8 million U.S. Army contract to provide repair, overhaul and spare parts for the AH-64 Apache helicopter on the heels of delivering its 150th new-build transmission assembly for the attack helicopter, the company said Jan. 26. The transmission assembly delivery wraps up a contract awarded to Northstar in 2001. The majority of the new work will be completed at Northstar's Chicago facility with support from the company's plants in Milton and Windsor, Ontario, and Phoenix, Ariz.
Smiths Aerospace recently delivered mission display system hardware and software to the Boeing Co. for the U.S. Air Force's C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP), the company said Jan. 26. The equipment - collectively known as the mission display processor - is the main computing environment for the AMP, Smiths said. The processor will host software, from Boeing, Smiths and others, for flight management, radio control applications and other functions.
COCKPITS: Kaman Aerospace Corp. will manufacture 84 cockpits for models of Sikorsky's UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, the company said Jan. 27. The $27.7 million contract calls for cockpits for UH-60L, MH-60S, UH-60M and S-70A helicopters and will allow Sikorsky to "free floor space" for other operations in Connecticut, a Sikorsky official said in the Kaman announcement.
A demonstrator of Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Hunter II unmanned aerial vehicle has completed the first phase of its flight-testing, the company said Jan. 27. The company-funded flights took place from Dec. 27 to Jan. 12 at Cochise College Air Field in Douglas, Ariz., and demonstrated the Hunter II's endurance, communications and air-to-ground surveillance capabilities, Northrop Grumman said.
The U.S. Navy's EA-18G program has met or exceeded expectations in the initial part of its ongoing development phase, a program official said Jan. 27. Greg Drohat, the Navy's deputy program manager for the electronic attack jet, said the EA-18G's preliminary design review (PDR) in October was "very successful" and uncovered "no significant design issues." Software development and other design activities are on schedule, and the aircraft is a comfortable 200-plus pounds below its 33,096-pound weight ceiling.
The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will begin beta testing its information standards in the coming months and ensuring compatibility with the network-centric architectures already being developed by the military services.
STILL THE SAME: All House Armed Services Committee subcommittee chairmen and ranking minority positions should remain the same. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), HASC chairman, on Jan. 27 formally announced that all six sitting GOP subcommittee chairmen retained their posts. Democrats will complete their ranking positions next week, but no changes are expected, according to a spokeswoman. The HASC has changed the name of its Total Force subcommittee to Military Personnel, which "clarifies its focus," the committee said. Democrats welcomed Reps.
