EDO Corp. has won a $10 million contract from Hughes Space and Communications Co. for infrared Earth Sensor Assemblies for Hughes' family of geosynchronous telecommunications satellites.
Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), head of the House appropriations national security subcommittee, and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its defense subcommittee, yesterday asked congressional leaders to raise the Pentagon supplemental request from $5 billion to $7 billion, congressional sources said. There was no immediate indication that congressional leaders would go for the higher number.
Boeing Co. has formed three new business units within its Commercial Airplane organization as part of a plan to restructure and realign operations and fix nagging financial and production problems, the company reported yesterday. The three new units will be the Single-Aisle Airplane Business Unit, the Twin-Aisle Airplane Business Unit, and the Customer Services Business Unit.
The House on Tuesday approved, by a 409-14 vote, the fiscal 1999 NASA appropriations conference report which contained $13.7 billion for NASA, including $2.270 billion for the International Space Station.
Depending on the outcome of next month's elections, Congress could lift budget caps on defense spending for fiscal year 2000 and beyond, perhaps by as much as $15 billion, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters yesterday. While there undoubtedly will be some budgetary relief for the military services, many factors will come into play in determining the final figure, particularly the elections, McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told defense reporters at a breakfast in Washington.
British Aerospace is waiting to see how the merger of Daimler Benz and Chrysler will affect Germany's approach to industry consolidation. "It will be interesting to see whether the recently announced merger of Daimler Benz and Chrysler has any impact on the approach to consolidation in Germany," BAe Chief Executive Officer John Weston said yesterday in Washington.
DUCOMMUN INC. said Norman Barkeley, chairman of the board, will retire Dec. 31 completing the company's long-term succession plan. Barkeley, 68, will remain on the board of the Los Angeles company and become chairman emeritus. He has served as chairman since joining the company in July 1988, and has also served as president and chief executive officer. Joseph Berenato, 52, currently president and CEO, will assume the additional position of chairman effective Jan. 1, 1999. Berenato joined Ducommun in 1991 as vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer.
The U.S. Air Force is moving to increase capabilities of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft by adding a hyperspectral sensor and a system to fuse data from various sensors. Early next year, the AF plans to issue a request for proposals for the first phase of the Multi-Sensor Agile Reconnaissance System (MARS) program. SAIC is already conducting a study for the AF to develop detailed MARS requirements.
The global market for electronic warfare equipment is poised for major growth in the 10-year period between 1995 and 2005, but several factors make it a tough battleground, according to a new study from Frost&Sullivan.
Congress and the White House probably should kill the International Space Station program if an extra $1.2 billion can't be found to make up for the shortfalls in Russia's contribution to the orbiting laboratory, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told a packed House Science Committee hearing yesterday.
The U.S. Air Force conducted its first hands-on Year 2000 interoperability test, artificially rolling dates forward in key systems during the biennial Combat Challenge '98 communications and information exercise. Air Combat Command Y2K program chief Teresa Salazar said four systems in particular were tagged for Y2K interoperability tests because of their importance to deployable communications operations - the Theater Deployable Communications, Network Control Center-Deployed, Network Operations Security Center-Deployed and Joint Air Operations Center.
ALASKA AEROSPACE DEVELOPMENT CORP. has won an FAA license to carry out commercial space launches from the southern tip of Kodiak Island. Spaceports in California, Florida and Virginia already have won FAA space launch site operator's licenses.
Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit said yesterday that it has delivered the first four Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) Radio Frequency Countermeasures (RFCM) on-board systems in the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase. Sanders, with its teammate ITT Avionics, is producing the IDECM RFCM system, set for initial deployment on U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F and U.S. Air Force B-1B aircraft. The system is an integrated RFCM suite which consists of an on-bard techniques generator and an off-board Fiber Optic Towed Decoy.
Veridian, Washington, D.C., said that Paul Kaminski, U.S. under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology from 1994 to 1997, has been appointed to its board of directors. Kaminski previously served on the board of Pacific-Sierra Research Corp., which Veridian acquired on Oct. 1.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. said its Integrated Systems and Aerostructures sector site in El Segundo, Calif., has won two awards in the annual Single Process Initiative (SPI) recognition program sponsored by the U.S. defense Contract Management Command.
Daniel Burnham, president and chief operating officer of Raytheon Co., unveiled "a plan of impressive growth in sales, earnings and cash generation" yesterday as part of the company's plan to grow its existing businesses and move into emerging areas. Most of the plan involves further consolidation of business operations, job cuts and closing of excess facilities and manufacturing space within Raytheon Systems Co. (RSC).
The Rotorcraft Pilot's Associate, a cockpit management system designed to improve the effectiveness of helicopter pilots in combat, flew for the first time Oct. 2 in a modified AH-64D Longbow Apache. The flight at Boeing's Mesa, Ariz., facility lasted about two hours and validated that the RPA cockpit has been successfully integrated into the Apache Longbow.
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE ORGANIZATION confirmed a three-month delay in the next flight test of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense missile (DAILY, Oct. 5). The time is needed to replace parts of the THAAD seeker and carry out ground testing. The contaminated seeker component is the operational amplifier, which could have caused a short circuit.
LOCKHEED MARTIN has awarded New York-based EDO Corp. a $1 million contract for long-lead materials needed to build the F-22's AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile launcher. EDO will build the AMRAAM Vertical Eject Launchers slated to go on all 339 F-22s.
The U.S. Justice Dept. has joined a $70 million law suit filed against Northrop Grumman Corp. for alleged impropriety while refurbishing aircraft under a U.S. Air Force contract. The suit was brought by two individuals under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act in 1995, and the Justice Dept. has now decided to partially join the suit.
By voice vote, the House on Monday gave final congressional approval to the Commercial Space Act, which provides for encouraging the development of a commercial space industry in the U.S. Under the bill, for the first time, U.S. companies would be allowed access to licenses to send reusable lunch vehicles into space. Current law prohibits such licenses for private companies.
