The U.S. Air Forces in Europe may get their own rapid-reaction security force unit. Gen. John Jumper, USAFE commander, is considering setting up a unit dedicated to support quick response force protection needs for the command, an AF official says. The unit would be modelled after the 820th Security Force Group at Lackland AFB, Tex., which provides a world-wide rapid-reaction force.
Lockheed Martin sold its Price Systems business unit to Price Systems LLC, a company in Mount Laurel, N.J., formed by former management employees of the Price business unit. Financial terms were not disclosed. Price designs, develops and markets a family of computer-aided parametric estimating (CAPE) software tools and services used by companies and government agencies focusing on the aerospace and defense industry to estimate the cost to develop and make hardware and software projects and to establish product development schedules.
U.S. Navy specialists are gearing up to help the Air Force's National Reconnaissance Office retrieve its $1 billion signals intelligence satellite from the shallow water east of Cape Canaveral where it fell after last week's Titan IVA explosion. Military authorities clamped a security cordon around the area where most of the debris fell, banning water traffic and overflights while the salvage operation gets underway to recover any secret hardware lying on the sandy ocean floor.
The U.S. Air Force is adding in-flight reprogrammability to the Hard Target Smart Fuze, which will now be used on more weapons than initially planned because of the way Alliant Techsystems structured its winning bid. Alliant on Tuesday won a $16 million contract for engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) of the burst-point optimizing fuze (DAILY, Aug. 12). The AF initially thought it would have to pay $20 million - $30 million for EMD, according to Frank Robbins, the AF's system program director for precision strike weapons.
Alliant Defense Electronics Systems Inc., Clearwater, Fla., has been certified under the U.S. Dept. of Defense Contractor Self-Oversight (CSO) program, becoming one of only two U.S. defense contractors to earn the certification, Alliant Techsystems reported. The CSO program allows defense contractors to conduct their own manufacturing and product assurance oversight on government contracts, a task normally performed by on-site representatives from the Defense Contract Management Command (DCMC).
France's national space agency (CNES) is studying two smaller Earth remote sensing satellites as a cost-saving way to continue the SPOT line after SPOT-5. Under a program known as "Suite du Systeme SPOT" ("3S"), CNES is studying a 500-kilogram platform that could be ready as early as 2002 to fill the demand for imagery provided by the present three-metric-ton SPOT platforms. A second lightweight system would provide 1-meter imagery to cut into the market presently service by aerial photography.
Crews at NASA's Kennedy Space Center are finishing up processing work on the pressurized node that will be the first U.S. element of the International Space Station. Dubbed "Unity," the node is scheduled to be loaded aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on Sept. 13. The next day NASA must deliver its initial fiscal 2000 budget request to the White House Office of Management and Budget for Administration reworking through the fall. The FY '00 request will contain the U.S.
U.S. Marine Corps planners believe future air campaigns won't require escort jammers, a position that could lead the service to forgo replacing its EA-6Bs once they are retired. In the future, "the requirement for escort [jamming] is not there," Brig. Gen. Bruce Byrum, the Marine Corps' assistant deputy chief of staff for aviation, said in an interview.
Air traffic control software NASA has developed to help controllers maximize the number of planes that can use a given airport could save as much as $800 million a year by cutting an average of two minutes off each flight, according to the agency's Ames Research Center.
American Airlines has ordered 15 more Boeing 777-200ERs valued at $2.1 billion, bringing its total 777 orders for 34, all powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines. Boeing, announcing the deal Friday, said deliveries will begin in March 200 and continue through August 2001. American in November 1996 identified Boeing as its preferred airplane supplier and announced orders for Boeing products over the next 20 years.
Raytheon laid off 261 manufacturing employees at its Andover, Mass., facility, which is responsible for Patriot and Hawk missile work, due to a drop in the volume of work, a Raytheon spokeswoman confirmed. "We are working very hard to try and win new business," she said. "The growth in these sorts of products primarily is in international markets. There are a couple of potential contracts out there, but they're not in hand yet."
Russia launched its next-to-last Soyuz capsule to the Mir orbital station yesterday, sending two cosmonauts and a bureaucrat from President Boris Yeltsin's defense staff aloft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff of the Soyuz TM-28 came at 5:43 a.m. EDT, carrying Cosmonauts Sergei Avdeyev and Gennady Padalka and former Defense Council secretary Yuri Baturin to a planned Saturday docking with Mir.
ELBIT SYSTEMS LTD., Haifa, Israel, reported earnings of $6.8 million on sales of $100.1 million in the second quarter of 1998, compared to earnings of $5.1 million on sales of $87.2 million in the same period a year ago. Elbit said its backlog stood at $681 million at the end of June, up from a backlog of $670 million at the end of 1997.
Software development is seen as the greatest challenge as companies bid for a U.S. Air Force program to upgrade the flight control system and add air traffic management systems to the service's fleet of 126 Lockheed Martin C-5 airlifters. In a risk assessment made for the C-5 modernization program source selection process, the AF said it is "highly probable" that software development time won't match the acquisition schedule. That, it said, would represent a "major showstopper," which would require an alternative path.
Northrop Grumman has demonstrated control of multiple, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles with a single operator. Four unmanned aircraft flew last month at the Naval Weapons Test Center, China Lake, Calif., during which the system operator was only minimally involved. Most of the control was handled by Northrop Grumman's Cooperative Aggregate Mission Management System (CAMMS), the company said.
ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS yesterday opened a new composite structures manufacturing plant in Mississippi, where it will build nose cones, interstages and other large structures for Boeing's planned Delta IV space launch vehicle. The facility in Iuka was originally built to manufacture the defunct Advanced Solid Rocket Motor for NASA (DAILY, July 8).
COMSTRON, a division of Aeroflex Inc., Plainview, N.Y., won awards from Lockheed Martin worth about $6.3 million to make synthesizers and other instrument products for the U.S. Navy's Consolidated Automated Support System (CASS). Shipments are expected to be completed within two years.
Silicon Graphics, a supplier of visual computing and high performance systems, has shipped the third module of what will become a supercomputer to help maintain confidence in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal without the need to test the weapons in detonations. The Mountain View, Calif., company said the "Blue Mountain" supercomputer "represents the first real stride in a race to build computers with enough sustained power to run complete-physics nuclear weapon simulations."
Boeing finalizes $300 million investment in Ellipso system Boeing finalized its investment in Ellipso Inc. and intends to provide financing which could lead to a debt and equity package for the company of up to $300 million.
Boeing has raised its estimated cost overrun on the International Space Station by a little more than 30%, as work on the orbiting laboratory enters the testing and checkout phase. A spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Station program is managed, said Boeing's August progress report boosted the overrun estimate at completion from $600 million to $783 million.
The Boeing/Lockheed Martin/TRW team working on the U.S. Air Force's Airborne Laser (ABL) program took a major step in producing a turret window for the laser when it accepted delivery in May of the largest piece of optical quality glass ever manufactured, the team said yesterday.
Mechanical Dynamics Inc. (MDI), Ann Arbor, Mich., acquired the Design Analysis Group (DAG) of H.G.E. Inc., Toronto, for about $2 million in cash, MDI reported.
Saab posts profits of $41.1 million Sweden's Saab, in its first financial report since being listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, announced earnings of 332 million crowns ($41.1 million) on sales of 3.9 billion crowns ($482.8 million) in the first half of 1998, compared to earnings of 119 crowns ($14.7 million) on sales of 4.6 billion crowns ($569.5 million) on a pro forma basis in the first half of 1997.
The U.K. will develop its own next generation of military satellite communications systems, concentrating on a "national solution" instead of entering the project definition stage of the TRIMILSATCOM collaborative program with France and Germany, Lord Gilbert, the U.K. Minister of State for Defense Procurement announced. Gilbert said Wednesday that the U.K. considered a range of procurement options for meeting the Skynet 5 requirement, and that collaboration with allies had been the preferred option.
