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.
Russia is testing two new cruise missiles to upgrade the capabilities of its strategic weapons. One missile is intended for Tu-95MS (Bear-H) and Tu-160 (Blackjack) strategic bombers, while the other was developed for Tu-22M3 intermediate- range bombers.
Pentagon spending on service contracts for engineering, computers, management and construction has grown slightly over the past decade, even as the military spent less for equipment, according to a new General Accounting Office report on DOD spending trends.
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., Stratford, Conn., is being awarded a ceiling amount $22,000,000 undefinitized delivery order against a basic ordering agreement to provide supplies and services to perform engineering investigations, preliminary design, logistics studies and support, and tool fabrication to develop a CH-60 vertical replenishment helicopter. Work will be performed in Stratford, Conn., and is expected to be completed by December 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured.
Bulova Technologies LLC, Lancaster, Pa., is being awarded a $9,315,023 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for material change and production of the M762/M767 Electronic Time Artillery Fuze. Work will be performed in Lancaster, Pa., and is expected to be completed by Jan. 31, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There was an announcement on the World Wide Web on Dec. 17, 1997, and two bids were received. The contracting activity is the U.S. Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command, Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. (DAAE30-98-C-1086).
Royal Navy plans for two future aircraft carriers and their 100-120 new planes will comprise one of the largest current British military procurement programs, after the Eurofighter and the Trident submarine force. According to Sir Robert Walmsley, chief of U.K. defense procurement, the estimated purchase costs of the carriers and aircraft will total around 9.2 billion pounds ($15 billion), or about the same as the U.K.'s entire current annual military equipment expenditure.
AlliedSignal Inc., Torrance, Calif., acquired The Canaan Group Ltd., an aerospace management consulting firm. Terms were not disclosed, and Canaan will maintain its operational independence. Canaan, founded in 1986 and based in Park City, Utah, provides strategy development, market analysis and operations management for airlines, aerospace original equipment makers and service providers.
GTE Government Systems Corp., Needham Heights, Mass., is being awarded a $11,703,003 face value increase to a firm-fixed-price-contract to provide for procurement and installation of the Defense Improved Emergency Message Automated Transmission System (IEMATS) Replacement Command and Control Terminal (DIRECT) at seven operational sites and a Direct Software Support Facility. The terminal is used to compose Emergency Action Messages for transmission through the Defense Message System and the Higher Authority Communication Systems.
COLEMAN RESEARCH CORP., Orlando, Fla., has won a $20 million contract under the U.S. Army's Consolidated Theater Targets (CTTS) program. The award, CRC's first under CTTS, calls for the corporation's Coleman Aerospace Co. to provide three threat-representative ballistic missiles for use as targets for developmental testing of U.S. Navy Area Theater Ballistic Missile Defense systems. Under the indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract, Coleman Aerospace Co. competes with two other contractors.
Fairchild Dornier is expected to double the number of its employees - to a total of 3,600 people - within the next two years to match growing orders for its new 728Jet aircraft family, a top executive of the regional aircraft manufacturer said last week in Oberpfaffenhofen.
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.
