The U.S. Air Force is looking to cut funding for three of its newest Global Positioning Satellites in the latest budget drills, although there is a small chance that will change in coming months as the finishing touches are put on the fiscal 2000 budget request.
Navy divers operating from NASA's booster recovery vessels will use side-scan sonar to pinpoint wreckage on the ocean floor of the $1 billion National Reconnaissance Office signals intelligence satellite lost in the Aug. 12 Titan IVA launch failure, the Air Force said yesterday.
Colsa Corp., Huntsville, Ala., is being awarded a definitizing modification to a $59,104,142 firm-fixed-price letter contract for PATRIOT/Hawk Phase III, Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force C3 system integration. Work will be performed in Saudi Arabia (90%); and Huntsville, Ala. (10%), and is expected to be completed by Jan. 30, 2002. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on Jan. 30, 1998. The contracting activity is the U.S. Army Aviation&Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala. (DAAH01-98-C-0109).
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space Company, Sunnyvale, Calif., is being awarded a $75,351,942 face value increase to a cost-plus-award-fee-contract to provide for fabrication, assembly, integration, test, and support of nine Multi-Mission Mobile Processors in support of the Space based Infrared System. These units are designed to provide a mobile ballistic and strategic missile warning capability. Expected contract completion date is November 2006. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles, Calif., is the contracting activity (F04701-95-C-0017/-0046).
Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace, Kongsberg, Norway, is being awarded a $5,290,517 firm-fixed-price contract for FY 98 production requirements for the Penguin MK2 MOD 7 Missile. This will include the procurement of four missiles, 45 missile control test sets, canards/wings, umbilical release units, interconnecting cables, wing lanyards, power unit cables, umbilical cables, alignment power units, and missile power units. Work will be performed in Kongsberg, Norway, and is expected to be completed by January 2000.
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., and Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, Md., are being awarded a $9,000,000 (Total Program Value) indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity-contract to provide for studies and research projects in support of the Space Vehicles Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
Lockheed Martin will consolidate its domestic and international business development organizations into a single entity effective Oct. 1, the company reported yesterday. The new Corporate Business Development Group will be led by Robert Trice Jr.
GALAXY X, a new PanamSat Corp. satellite which will provide communications services in the U.S., is set for launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Aug. 24.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Rolling Meadows, Ill., is being awarded a $17,726,370 firm-fixed-price-contract to provide for eight shipsets of the Precision attack Targeting System (PATS) in support of the F-16 aircraft. Expected contract completion date is September 30, 2001. Solicitation issue date was May 15, 1998. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-98-C-2020).
Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) is expected to try again to redock the two sections of its seventh engineering test satellite (ETS-7) as early as today, but hope was fading that the ETS-7 target and chaser could be rejoined.
Russian Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka took the controls of Soyuz TM-28 as it approached the Mir orbital station Saturday and guided the three-man capsule to a safe manual docking after the station's Kurs automatic docking system failed. Padalka, Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev and Yuri Baturin, a former aide to President Boris Yeltsin who will spend 12 days as a researcher on Mir, were reported in good health after their two-day flight in the Soyuz, according to press reports from Moscow.
Koor Industries Ltd., Tel Aviv, reached an agreement to sell its holdings in its Soltam weapon systems and metalworking subsidiary to Michael Ltd., an Israeli defense company, Koor reported yesterday. Terms of the transaction, which is expected to be completed within 45 days, includes a cash payment of about $32.5 million and the transfer of Soltam's technology and other know-how to Michael. Soltam's basic business is development and production of specialty munitions and other weapon systems.
NICHOLS RESEARCH CORP., Huntsville, Ala., has won three contracts with a total potential worth of $118 million. One contract, a five-year pact with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), is valued at $42 million. The Surveillance and Phenomenology Technology and Engineering Services Contract calls for basic technology exploration and experiments to determine the best ways to meet advanced threats. Two other contracts involve work for the Naval Surface Warfare Center. One is worth $50 million and the other is worth $26 million.
Unsettled issues facing conferees on the fiscal year 1999 defense authorization include the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and production of the nuclear bomb material tritium, according to congressional sources.
UNITED AIR LINES will equip 473 of its aircraft with AlliedSignal's RDR-4B Forward Looking Wind Shear Radar, AlliedSignal reported. The system uses Doppler radar to detect downdrafts near thunderstorms, giving pilots as much as 90 seconds of warning so they can climb out of the dangerous condition.
Long-awaited plans to upgrade the Rolls-Royce/Turbomeca Adour turbofans of the Royal Air Force's Jaguar strike-fighter fleet are finally being implemented by a new $165 million contract to British Aerospace announced Friday. Although some 42 of the veteran Jaguars are currently being upgraded with new digital avionics by the RAF to operate with GEC-Marconi TIALD targeting pods for designation and delivery of precision-guided weapons, their future was in doubt until publication of the New Labor government's Strategic Defense Review.
Sales of satellite radio frequency components could reach the $4 billion level by 2001, with the market for RF semiconductors growing even faster, according to a market study prepared by Strategies Unlimited of Mountain View, Calif.
Although the Marines have been unable to fund the remanufacture of additional AV-8B Harriers, Byrum says the option will open until the production line shuts down. Boeing will be remanufacturing Harriers under an existing multi-year contract until 2002. The Marines need Harriers until 2020 but won't get there with the existing attrition rate. Several steps are being taken to offset attrition, such as better maintenance, a better engine management system, and going to an all F402-RR-408 engine fleet. If that's not enough, remanufacturing is a fall-back, Byrum says.
In the wake of the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, the U.S. Air Force is looking more closely at a series of experiments designed to showcase systems that could bolster the safety of American troops overseas. The scrutiny is being applied by the USAF's Force Protection Battlelab, established last year at Lackland AFB, Tex., after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 people.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., of Pasadena, Calif., have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at pushing technologies developed at JPL into the commercial marketplace. Under the arrangement Jacobs, a 50-year-old engineering and construction firm, will pursue commercial opportunities for a number of the technologies JPL has developed for deep space exploration.
Regional commanders-in-chief are likely to get their first direct say about what the Joint Strike Fighter will look like. The draft of the Joint Initial Requirements Document may be scrapped in favor of an interim Joint Operational Requirements Document at the request of the Joint Staff, says Brig. Gen. Bruce Byrum, Marine Corps assistant deputy chief for aviation. The main difference between the documents is that the regional CINCs and their staffs would be involved in an interim JORD.
The Pentagon continues to wrestle with the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile program and has another high-level Overarching Integrated Product Team (OIPT) meeting slated for next week. At the last OIPT meeting a decision was made to reclassify the 40 user operational evaluation system (UOES) missiles into test missiles that would be deployed only in case of emergency. Capitol Hill lawmakers have been briefed privately on the plan, but some final details are apparently being worked out.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will issue a request later this month for a solid-propellant rocket motor small enough to boost a lightweight "nanosatelite," according to a Goddard business opportunity announcement. The Maryland NASA field center said it expects to issue a formal request for offer on or about Aug. 28 for a prototype solid-fuel motor able to deliver a specific impulse of at least 280 seconds in vacuum with a package no longer than 24.1 centimeters and with a maximum diameter of 11.4 cm.
The U.S. Army is gearing up for a series of tests of the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) this fall at White Sands Missile Range, Army sources say. The tests will be first for the joint U.S.-Israeli weapon against launched targets. Under the current plan, an operational THEL would be deployed in Israel sometime next year. It is designed to defend against the Katusha rocket threat, and actual Katusha rockets will be used in the tests.
