Prospects for the defense supplemental winding up with the full $1 billion plus-up or close to that for ballistic missile defense depend on the Pentagon portion of the overall supplemental winding up at about $7.5 billion, congressional sources said yesterday. The $1 billion would be in addition to the $3.437 billion for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization in the fiscal 1999 defense appropriations conference report.
ISRAEL AIRCRAFT INDUSTRIES and Lockheed Martin will sign an agreement today to upgrade F-16s. An F-16 avionics upgrade program is being developed in Israel and, under the terms of the agreement, Lockheed Martin will help customize it and integrate the system onto the F-16. The upgrade team includes IAI, Elbit, Elta, El-Op, Ellsra and Rafael. On the government side are Israel's air force, defense ministry and finance ministry. Israel also is in the market for advanced fighters, looking to buy either more F-15Is, F-16s, or both.
ROCKWELL COLLINS, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has won a $12 million contract from U.S. Naval Air Systems Command for AN/ARC-210 hardware for the U.S. Air Force's C-5 airlifter. Deliveries began in August and are slated for completion in February 1999.
Europe's big new Ariane 5 rocket will get its third checkout flight Tuesday when the European Space Agency (ESA) and France's national space agency (CNES) plan to send the heavy lifter aloft with a dummy geosynchronous satellite and a reentry test vehicle that will generate data for the planned International Space Station Crew Return Vehicle. Liftoff is set for an hour-and-a-half launch window that opens at noon EDT Oct. 20. If the flight is successful, it will clear the way for commercial Ariane 5 operations by the Arianespace consortium.
Taiwan has been offered nine Boeing CH-47D Chinook helicopters in a $486 million foreign military sales deal by the U.S. government. The sale would include three spare T55-L-714A engines, chaff dispenser and radar warning receivers, according to the Pentagon.
The U.S. Air Force plans to award short term study contracts to support its analysis of alternatives for the Miniaturized Munition Capability program. The service has set aside $1 million for up to four contractors who would present concepts for miniaturized munitions, Lynda Davila, MMC concept study manager for the Air Armaments Center, Eglin AFB, Fla., said in a telephone interview yesterday. Proposals are due in November with a contract award expected in late January.
Controllers have reactivated nine of 12 instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), raising hopes among scientists that the U.S.-European probe can resume studying the sun despite a three-month loss of control that disrupted thermal conditions inside the spacecraft.
NASA has restructured its Office of Aeronautics and Space Transportation Technology and given it a new name to reflect changes that have taken place under its new associate administrator, retired USAF Lt. Gen. Spence M. (Sam) Armstrong. In a reorganization announced yesterday, the office long known as "Code R" for its headquarters mail designation will become the Office of Aero-Space Technology, with a structure intended to focus more on goals than specific programs.
Bell Helicopter Textron says FAA certification of its 609 civil tiltrotor should be completed in an 18-20 month program that would wind up by the first quarter of 2001. Bell and the FAA have agreed to begin the program without having completely defined the criteria, Ron Rener, responsible for 609 business development, said in Washington. "We've agreed where the bounds are," he said, but since this will be the first tiltrotor certification, details must be hammered out.
The Enhanced Fiber Optic-Guided Missile (EFOGM) fire system has withstood a congressional onslaught but now faces possible termination as the U.S. Army looks to reprogram the funds. Several congressional defense committees in their initial marks of the fiscal 1999 defense budget zeroed funding for the demonstration program under which Raytheon has built several of the weapons. In the end, however, appropriators provided $20 million to continue the demonstration program.
Primex Technologies Inc., St. Petersburg, Fla., signed a conditional agreement to acquire the CMS Group, an operating division of Germany's Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA). CMS, headquartered in Tampa, is a $100 million defense contractor. The company has seven facilities in the southeastern U.S., and the principal business areas include precision metal parts production, warhead development, explosive load, assemble and pack, and air and ground delivered weapon systems.
The Senate last week passed the conference package on the fiscal year 1999 intelligence authorization bill, which calls for expansion of ballistic missile intelligence and development of new reconnaissance systems based on small satellite technologies.
NASA's Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) won't be shipped from TRW's plant in Redondo Beach, Calif., until the U.S. space agency's chief engineer completes a review of the troubled project. Chief Engineer Daniel R. Mulville is scheduled to complete his review by mid-January, at which time the agency will set a date for the big orbiting x-ray telescope to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., for launch.
Boeing Co. and Israel Aircraft Industries will form a strategic relationship to jointly pursue business opportunities, the companies said yesterday. Moshe Keret, president of IAI, and Harry Stonecipher, president and chief operating officer of Boeing, will sign the agreement Thursday. It will lead to creation of a 14-member steering committee co-chaired by the two senior executives, with an equal number of representatives from each company. The committee will increase cooperation between the companies and work on plans to pursue future business.
The U.S. and its NATO allies will rely heavily on airborne reconnaissance to enforce the latest agreement with Yugoslav authorities to stop fighting in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Reconnaissance aircraft - including U-2s, P-3s, unmanned aerial vehicles and Canberra PR9s - will be available to inspect Yugoslav compliance with the agreement, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Michael Doubleday said yesterday. Only non-combat reconnaissance aircraft will be used, he said, which effectively rules out fighters fitted with reconnaissance pods.
A U.S. Army update of requirements for the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter has added the need for a laser spot tracker and emphasized greater endurance, but left most of the basic performance parameters untouched. The last update of the Comanche's Operational Requirements Document took place in 1993, and the latest scrub was intended to put new focus on missions the system is now most likely to face, such as Bosnia-like scenarios or a Korean conflict, Brig. Gen. Joseph Bergantz, the Army's Comanche program manager told reporters yesterday.
Controllers at Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) sent a termination command to the JERS-1 Earth resources Monday after the satellite suffered a malfunction on Sunday, NASDA reported yesterday. The satellite, launched Feb. 11, 1992, was designed for a two-year service life. Following the malfunction, NASDA's Okinawa ground station could not receive the spacecraft's signal as scheduled on Sunday and the Japanese space agency relayed a termination signal through its Santiago Station in Chile.
The U.S. Army expects Defense Secretary William Cohen to decide this month the fate of the Medium Extended Air Defense System, said Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, the service's top acquisition officer.
CONGRESSIONAL APPROPRIATORS formally notified NASA late yesterday that the U.S. space agency will be allowed to reprogram $60 million in fiscal 1998 funds to help Russia meet near-term needs of the International Space Station program (DAILY, Oct. 13). But in a letter to Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, the appropriations panels said the funds would not be released "until the Congress receives a plan which eliminates [U.S.] reliance on Russia at the earliest possible date."
The international Sea Launch venture has decided to launch a dummy Hughes HS 702 satellite as its first payload to demonstrate the capability of its Zenit-based floating launch services system. The launch from Odyssey, Sea Launch's oceangoing pad, will take place in March 1999, according to the Boeing-led partnership. The demonstration payload will have the same mission and physical characteristics as an HS 702.
In the run-up to a decision on the U.K.'s Airborne Stand-Off Radar (ASTOR) battlefield surveillance program, expected next spring, Lockheed Martin U.K. Government Systems, as leader of the mainly British TeamASTOR, is confident of its chances for this $1.26 billion fixed-price Ministry of Defense contract. Under Lockheed Martin U.K. leadership, TeamASTOR includes Racal, Logica, Marconi Defense Systems (formerly GEC-Marconi), Marshall Aerospace, MSI Defense Systems and CAE Electronics.
Pemco Aeroplex has decided to sue the U.S. Air Force over the service's decision to move forward with a contract award to Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill AFB, Utah, to take on depot work now conducted at the Sacramento Air Logistics Center, McClellan AFB, Calif. The civil suit was filed yesterday by Pemco after the Air Force late last week announced its intention to proceed with the contract to a team of Ogden and Boeing (DAILY, Oct. 12).
Congressional negotiators late yesterday appeared close to wrapping up defense supplemental appropriations of some $7.5 billion that included $1 billion for ballistic missile defense, congressional sources said. The $1 billion would be for generic ballistic missile defense and would be spread among a range of programs under the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, including the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program, sources said.
