The U.S. Air Force will likely hold a competition involving at least Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Orbital Science Corp. to build a Space Maneuver Vehicle demonstrator, assuming the service decides to proceed with the program.
Moscow continues to perfect war plans to sabotage key targets in the U.S. by using small, man-portable nuclear weapons, a former Russian Intelligence Agency official told Congress on Tuesday. Hidden from the public and press behind a wall and with his face covered by a black shroud, Col. Stanislav Lunev - not his real name - described to the House National Security Committee's panel on research and development his mission as a spy before he defected in 1992.
Northrop Grumman's Electronics and Sensors Div. beat Alliant Techsystems in a competition to provide an advanced dual-mode seeker for the BAT anti-armor submunition. Northrop Grumman, which is also the prime contractor for BAT, made the selection with approval of the Army, the company said yesterday. The millimeter wave/infrared seeker will allow BAT to engage stationary targets as well as moving targets. Northrop Grumman said it expects to receive a contract for the BAT Continuous Modernization Program early next year.
Unless Congress decides to fund more than 13 E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft, the Pentagon's anticipated decision not to extend the production run will give the U.S. Air Force six more used Boeing 707s than it needs. The AF bought 19 used 707s because it was planning to convert them all to Joint STARS planes. But the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, anticipating a NATO order for 4-6 Joint STARS, reduced the fleet to 13. But the NATO order never materialized.
U.S. AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY, Hanscom AFB, Mass., is hosting a Sept. 23-25 conference on the High-Resolution Transmission (HITRAN) spectroscopic data base. At the conference, the AF said, scientists will address issues of molecular spectroscopic data bases. HITRAN, released to the public 25 years ago, is the atmospheric data base of spectroscopic parameters for the Air Force and Dept. of Energy atmospheric transmission codes, and NASA's remote sensing codes. Additional information is available through the web site: www.HITRAN.com
Rolls-Royce will offer a more powerful derivative of its Trent engine family for the 777, the company said yesterday. The 95,000-pound thrust Trent 895, which will be in the same production build at the Trent 892, will be certified in 1999 and ready for entry into service in 2000. The engine will be capable of 180 minute extended-range twin-engine operations (ETOPS) from entry into service, Rolls said. It also said the 895 will offer operators of existing Trent- powered 777s total commonality.
DRS Technologies Inc. and Raytheon Co. agreed to a deal in which DRS would buy part of Raytheon's Second Generation Ground Electro-Optical Systems business and part of its Focal Plane Array business, the companies said yesterday. The purchase price was not disclosed.
The British government is forming a high-level team to implement findings of the Strategic Defense Review, which was unveiled last month. It said the group "will be committed to leading through the new policy ...."
Wyman-Gordon and Titanium Metals Corp. have combined their titanium casting businesses into a jointly-owned venture. The joint-venture is owned 80% by Wyman-Gordon and 20% by TIMET. It consists primarily of Wyman-Gordon's titanium casting business, in Franklin, N.H., and TIMET's titanium casting business in Albany, Ore. The companies said the new joint venture will produce investment castings primarily for the aerospace market and will seek to develop new applications for titanium castings.
Northrop Grumman has completed flight testing of the Directed Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) system on a helicopter and concluded initial flight testing on a fixed-wing system. Helicopter testing of the AN/AAQ-24(V) was completed at Netheravon air base in the U.K., Northrop Grumman said Tuesday. DIRCM is being developed for use by U.K. aircraft and U.S. Special Operations Command C-130s. Further testing of the system will include a second series of fixed-
The European Commission yesterday approved a plan to channel ECU 136.3 million to 22 areas in France that are threatened by the restructuring of the defense industry there. The EC said 35,000 of the 670,000 defense jobs in France are likely to be lost in the next few years because of the restructuring. "The main objective of this new European program is to limit as far as possible the adverse effects of this restructuring on employment," it said.
U.K. AIRPROX BOARD will be launched later this year to assess near-midair collisions, the British government said. Such incidents are now reviewed by separate and independent organizations, the Ministry of Defense said. The Airprox Board will combine the efforts, whether they are civil or military, or whether they are filed by pilots or air traffic controllers.
The Pentagon, which has a policy of considering a contractor's past performance in awarding new contracts, has been having trouble figuring out how to deal with mergers and acquisitions. One of the issues is how to rate a company's division if one the units absorbed into it had good past performance and another had poor performance, a Defense Dept. official told reporters in a briefing last week.
The U.S. retained its lead in worldwide arms transfers in 1997, although more narrowly than the year before, France made a substantial gain from 1996, moving from third place to second, and Russia dropped from second to a competitive third, according to a Congressional Research Service report on worldwide conventional arms transfers. The report, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1990-
Despite Pentagon attempts to create more realistic outyear funding plans in the Quadrennial Defense Review last year, the General Accounting Office says the fiscal 1999-2003 plan that resulted still contains a lot of risk.
The U.S. Defense Dept. has issued a letter of offer to Greece for the sale of 1,322 Stinger-RMP Block 1 shoulder-fired missiles. The foreign military sale that would include Stinger support equipment would be worth about $150 million, the Pentagon said Monday. Greece already uses the Raytheon-built Stinger and is likely to buy the new missiles. The Pentagon noted that Greece would buy the weapons under its five-year modernization program.
The U.S. Navy has completed the critical design review of the supersonic Fast Hawk cruise missile, and is now trying to sort out the future program schedule to allow it to meet its technical objectives. The CDR was "highly successful," a Navy official said recently. The review addressed a wide range of technical issues and was able to overcome some early problems, which means Boeing can move forward more aggressively and build the missile.
Controllers from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have made intermittent contact with the lost Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), apparently picking up a carrier signal from the $900 million probe as it rotates slowly in its halo orbit at the Lagrangian L-1 point almost 1 million miles from Earth.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) has enlisted the support of influential Democrat Rep. John M. Spratt (S.C.) on legislation calling for deployment of a national missile defense without the Administration's usual qualifications, The DAILY learned yesterday. Spratt is a middle-of-the-roader on NMD, generally close to the Administration's three-plus-three position, under which a decision to deploy would be made in 2000 and deployment itself would take place 2003, if necessary.
Starting in the year 2000, the U.S. Air Force will operate as an Expeditionary Aerospace Force (EAF) that relies on regularly organized rotations of Air Expeditionary Forces (AEFs) to carry out missions in all but the largest operations.
NASA's Johnson Space Center has asked industry for information on "new capability" to reboost the International Space Station after 2001 and on commercial communications services between the Station and the ground via a phased array antenna system, according to requests posted electronically at JSC.
Boeing Co. says it could start an engineering and manufacturing development program for a hypersonic missile around 2004 if it is successful in the Affordable Rapid Response Missile Demonstrator (ARRMD) program sponsored by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Boeing recently received a $10 million contract for ARRMD (DAILY, June 15, July 14). In announcing the contract on Monday, Boeing said that an operational missile could be fielded for the U.S. Navy and Air Force by 2010.
BOEING 757-300 made its first flight Sunday from Renton Municipal Airport, Renton, Wash. Boeing Commercial President Ron Woodard said the aircraft has the "best seat-mile costs of any single-aisle aircraft on the market." It can carry 240 to 289 passengers and has transcontinental range. Condor Flugdienst of Germany launched the aircraft with an order for 12 in September 1996.
Orbital Sciences Corp. Sunday launched eight more Orbcomm "little LEO" communications satellites on a Pegasus rocket flying out of Wallops Island, Va. Early indications had all eight alphanumeric message relay platforms in their proper 510-mile orbits, with the satellites "performing precisely as planned" after a series of initial tests, Orbital announced in a press release Monday.
