Lockheed Martin hasn't started a trend with its Sept. 20 announcement that it plans to acquire Comsat Corp., but, an analyst said, don't be surprised to see more such moves in a young market ready for consolidation. "It's been going on for a while," Marco Caceres, space analyst with the Teal Group of Fairfax, Va., said in a telephone interview. "It's no surprise to anybody who knows that service is where the money is to be made. Motorola, with Iridium, saw that years ago."
AeroMet Corp., Eden Prairie, Minn., won the first year of a planned two-year evaluation contract from Northrop Grumman's Military Aircraft Systems Div. The contract is to prove the commercial feasibility of fabricating titanium aircraft structural components using AeroMet's laser-based rapid fabrication technology. Completion of the study could lead to a production contract for certain military airframe components by 2001, said Aeromet, a subsidiary of MTS Systems Corp.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense this week will start marking up the Program Objective Memoranda (POMs) submitted by the military services. Give the tight fiscal environment, the process is expected to lead to several changes in the submittals, a military official says.
The Joint Requirements Oversight Council's decision on how to proceed with the Outrider UAV has slipped. Scheduled for last week, a decision is now expected this week. The JROC is likely to allow the Navy and Marine Corps to pull out of the program, but the Army will be allowed to continue alone.
For the first time, a defense authorization conference report has come out with a binding cap on American contributions for the expansion of NATO. The conference on the fiscal 1999 defense authorization enacted an amendment that would limit the U.S. share of the costs of enlarging NATO to include the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to 25% of the commonly funded costs or $2 billion, whichever is less, for fiscal years 1999 through 2011.
The Dutch government is considering procurement of a fire-and-forget, medium-range, ground-launched anti-tank weapon, a development that has opened the door for the first international sale of the U.S. Army's Javelin missile system. The Dutch parliament has set aside 50% of the country's anti-tank weapon budget for a fire-and-forget system, according to an industry official. As a result, Javelin, built by a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, will participate in winter trials in the Netherlands.
Lockheed Martin hopes to begin a short engineering and manufacturing development program for a Minimum Collateral Damage Weapon with a blast fragmentation warhead next year, just as a kinetic energy counterpart would become available for operational use. The MCDW is based on the Laser Guided Training Round (LGTR) that Lockheed Martin has been building for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps for several years. A new, reinforced version can be used as a training round or kinetic energy weapon, a Lockheed Martin official said.
Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), ranking Democrat on the House National Security Committee, Friday sent President Clinton a letter urging $14 billion in additional fiscal year 1999 defense spending and $20 billion more in FY 2000. Skelton, responding to a Clinton letter of Sept. 22 supporting more funding for the U.S. military, noted that Clinton did not mention an additional amount for 2000 and the future years defense program.
The U.S. Army's decision to pull funding out of its Follow-on to TOW missile program has left industry hoping there may be some future program after FOTT has been fully terminated.
The fiscal 1999 Senate defense authorization conference report would have provided a requirement for a permanent Quadrennial Defense Review, as well as a National Defense Panel to critique the QDR, but the issue died in conference when the House refused to accept it.
The Sense and Destroy Armor Munition (SADARM) recently completed a series of operational tests. Results are "going to be confusing in the analysis," says the U.S. Army's top acquisition officer, Lt. Gen. Paul Kern. The tests may not have been flawless, but Kern says when a SADARM round is fired, it engages the target "as advertised," and defeats countermeasures.
Although key congressional appropriations chairmen know basically what they want to put in a $5 billion fiscal 1999 defense supplemental appropriations, they can make no commitments until the House and Senate leadership decide on the size of the Defense Dept. portion of the supplemental, congressional sources said Friday.
Sikorsky next month plans first flight of a production version of the S-92 transport helicopter. The Helibus isn't being designed for military customers, although the Air Force is looking at the system for combat search and rescue and the Marines for White House support.
Turkey's defense ministry and Israel Aircraft Industries signed a $70 million contract Thursday for the upgrade of 48 Turkish F-5A/B fighters, IAI reported Friday. The F-5s will be configured as lead-in trainers for Turkey's F-16s, a job that will involve changes in cockpit layout, controls and displays. The jets will be modified over a three-year period.
Regional Airlines of France has placed firms orders for five ERJ-145s and five ERJ-135s, Embraer announced Thursday at the European Regions Airline Association meeting in Hannover, Germany. The Brazilian manufacturer said the deal was worth about $150 million. Regional Airlines, which was the launch customer of the 50-seat ERJ-145 and which already operates six of the aircraft, will take delivery of its first 37-seat ERJ-135 in October 1999. The -135 flew for the first time on July 4.
BDM INTERNATIONAL was selected by the U.S. Navy as leader of a group to streamline processes and practices for Team CX, which consists of Naval Sea Systems Command's Surface Ship Directorate (SEA 91), the Program Executive Office for Expeditionary Warfare (PEO EXW) and the Program Executive Officer for Carriers. Ceiling value of three-year agreement is $300 million. The Navy hopes the effort will achieve cost savings in managing the delivery and maintenance of ships and weapon systems.
Inmarsat's assembly of member governments, meeting in Rhodes, Greece, on Thursday, agreed that the internationally-owned cooperative will become a public limited company on April 1, 1999. The new structure, agreed to by the assembly last April (DAILY, May 1), will consist of two entities - a public limited company that will seek an initial public offering within about two years of formation, and an intergovernmental body to ensure that Inmarsat meets its public service obligations.
RICHARD (DICK) VAN OSTEN, 80, a veteran aviation journalist, died Sept. 21 in Bad Homburg, Germany after a brief illness. He is survived by his wife Monica and two children from a previous marriage who now live in Brussels.
The U.S. drive to know everything about its battlespace hasn't been ignored by other countries, which now may try to block the goal. "China, Russia and India may invest in leap-ahead technologies, [including] major investments toward directed energy, EMP [electro-magnetic pulse], HPM [high power microwave], and cyberweapons systems designed specifically to undermine the U.S. concept of dominant battlefield knowledge warfare," according to the latest "Strategic Assessment" by the National Defense University.
The Pentagon Comptroller's office estimates it will cost several hundred million dollars more for the future class of amphibious ship, the LPD-17, than the Navy is projecting, and says this could threaten delivery schedules or number of ships to be bought.
Kaman Aerospace International Corp. said ground was broken Friday on what will become a support center for the Royal Australian Navy's future fleet of SH-2G(A) Super Seasprite helicopters. Kaman will be the first tenant in the new Aviation Technology Park located next to HMAS Albatross near Nowra, New South Wales, the air station where the Super Seasprites will be based. Work on the 33,000-square-foot facility is slated to be completed in September 1999.
Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) is pushing the U.S. Navy to upgrade the SPY-1 radar to be ready for prototype testing in support of the Navy Theater Wide, or Upper Tier, missile defense system. Saxton is a senior member of the House National Security Committee and its procurement subcommittee.
At least one military planner isn't too keen about the Pentagon's habit of freeing up funds by revising inflation adjustments. The assumptions are already optimistic, and "we hope they do not get more optimistic," he says. The problem: If inflation outpaces assumptions, the modernization accounts will suddenly be short of money.
The U.S. Marine Corps will complete its two-year Urban Warrior experiment to explore operations in urban terrain next March with an assault of about 3,000 sailors and marines on San Francisco and surrounding areas. The objective will be to destroy a notional biological weapon. The Marines are interested in seeing if they can project the tactical picture on the battlefield to forces afloat.
