U.S. Navy Adm. Vernon Clark, chief of naval operations, and Royal Australian Navy Vice Adm. Chris Ritchie, chief of the navy, recently extended their statement of principles for "enhanced cooperation" between the navies on submarines for at least another five years, the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command said. The agreement is designed to make the two countries' submarine forces fully interoperable and sustainable.
By June 6 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to release a request for proposals for the Oblique Flying Wing (OFW) advanced technology demonstration program. "The goal of the OFW program is to expand the design space for future aircraft concepts, particularly for those missions that demand both supersonic speed and long endurance," DARPA said. The program will build a supersonic, tailless X-plane demonstrator.
JSOW CABLES, HARNESSES: Raytheon Missile Systems has awarded LaBarge Inc. of St. Louis a seven-year contract worth up to $24 million to provide cables and harnesses for Raytheon's Joint Standoff Weapon system, LaBarge said June 1. About $1.65 million will be released under the contract for 2005. The cables send electronic data signals throughout the weapon, which uses Global Positioning System data to find its target and can change its path during flight. The cable assemblies are used to perform tests for JSOW functionality.
DIVIDEND: General Dynamics' board of directors has announced a regular quarterly dividend of 40 cents per share, payable Aug. 5 to shareholders of record as of July 1.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the concern of some U.S. officials over technology transfer issues still is "a point of contention," but with Bush Administration support, progress is being made. "It's a bit more the [Capitol] Hill here than the Administration," the NATO leader said during a June 1 Defense Writers Group breakfast meeting before he was scheduled to meet with President Bush. "It is Congress, which is perhaps more strict in that sense than the Administration."
TARGETING: BAE Systems announced June 1 that it would provide geopositioning software for Defense Department applications under the U.S. Navy's Common Geopositioning Services Project (CGSP). The contract, awarded by the Naval Air Warfare Center, is valued at $4.6 million and includes options through 2008. Specifically, BAE Systems will develop a modular set of software geopositioning services capable of calculating accurate, three-dimensional geographic coordinates for weapons targeting.
By the end of 2006, Sikorsky Aircraft plans to build and fly a demonstrator for a new class of co-axial helicopters capable of cruising at 250 knots, the company announced June 1. Coaxial helicopters feature two counter-rotating sets of helicopter blades on the same vertical axis. Known as the X2 Technology demonstrator, the helicopter will be flown at Sikorsky's Schweizer Aircraft subsidiary in Elmira, N.Y. Preliminary design work is finished and parts are being built, according to the company.
Defense electronics and support company Engineered Support Systems Inc. overcame a financial hit suffered by a key military program by posting revenues from other business segments and recently acquired subsidiaries. The St. Louis-based company reported record net revenues of $263.8 million for the quarter ended April 30, a 25% increase compared with the same period last year, the company said June 1.
Raytheon Co. will be the leading supplier of air defense missiles over the next decade, according to a new report from Forecast International, heading a market that will reach revenue of $22.8 billion between 2005 and 2014. More than 88,000 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) will be produced around the world in that time.
DOUBLY SMART: EDO Corp. said June 1 that it was awarded an $11 million contract for the first production lot of 135 BRU-55 dual-carriage, "smart" bomb racks for the U.S. Navy's F/A-18 aircraft. The deal runs roughly two years and includes an option for additional production units. The BRU-55 works with the GBU-38 (500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition) and doubles the smart-weapon carriage capacity of an F/A-18, EDO said. Cmdr.
Boeing's Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) had it longest flight to date in a test conducted last month, flying more than 55 miles and coming within 34 inches of its target, the company said June 1. In a May 11 test, conducted near Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., the SDB was launched from an altitude of 30,000 feet, flew its record distance and hit a target barge in the Gulf of Mexico.
ATV PURCHASE: The Netherlands has agreed to buy 74 BvS10 All Terrain Vehicles worth 43 million pounds ($77.8 million) for its marines from BAE Systems Land Systems Hagglunds, the company said June 1. The ATVs will come in four variants: troop carrier, command, repair and recovery, and ambulance. They will be used as logistics vehicles to carry troops and equipment. Deliveries of the ATVs will begin in January 2006 and be finished by April 2007. The British Royal Marines currently are using the vehicles, and they are being tested by the French and Finnish militaries.
Glen Kassan, Warren G. Lichtenstein, Gen. Richard I. Neal (USMC Ret.), and Frederick M. Strader have been elected to the board of directors. Kassan is executive vice president of Steel Partners Ltd. Lichtenstein is president and CEO of Steel Partners Ltd. Strader is UIC president and CEO.
TANKER REPORT: Top Defense Department officials said June 1 that the department's inspector general's report on the now-failed Boeing 767 tanker lease-buy contract has been sent to Congress. The IG probe is a response to a letter sent to the Pentagon late last year by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), ranking member Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The senators complained about what they said was an atmosphere devoid of accountability or oversight that led to the deal.
The U.S. Navy said late May 31 that it was awarding multiple-award contracts to 503 contractors for support services for all phases of weapon systems acquisition and life-cycle support, including research and development, prototyping, logistics, modeling, test and evaluation trials and engineering.
NASA is considering testing a free-floating camera for future inspections of the space shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) in orbit. Developed at Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Miniature Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera (Mini AERCam) is a free-flying robotic inspection vehicle derived from the AERCam free flyer that flew as an experiment aboard the shuttle in 1997. The spherical Mini AERCam is 7.5 inches across and weighs about 10 pounds.
The U.S. Defense Department has given its final blessing to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program's strategy for fixing the aircraft's weight problems. In a two-sentence statement, DOD said June 1 that Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Wynne has approved a detailed version of the "re-plan" that is intended to overcome JSF's weight woes. Wynne's decision follows a May 5 Defense Acquisition Board review of the program (DAILY, May 6). A more conceptual version of the re-plan received DOD's endorsement in 2004.
JUNO: NASA announced June 1 that the proposed Juno mission to Jupiter will proceed to a preliminary design. The second mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, Juno would place a spacecraft in polar orbit around Jupiter to investigate the existence of an ice-rock core and study the planet's atmosphere and magnetic field. To launch before mid-1020, the mission will be capped at $700 million.
