First run of a BMW Rolls-Royce engine modified for Britain's Nimrod MRA4 aircraft has been completed on schedule, the company announced. It said the BR710 ran successfully at BMW Rolls-Royce's Development and Assembly Center at Dahlewitz, near Berlin.
ECHOSTAR COMMUNICATIONS CORP. has completed primary testing of its EchoStar IV direct-broadcast satellite and is moving it into position at 148 degrees West longitude. From that vantage point it will provide such niche services as foreign language, educational and data in the Western U.S. Launched May 8, the satellite was originally intended for 119 degrees West longitude, with EchoStar I to be moved to 148 degrees. But one of the solar arrays on EchoStar IV didn't deploy properly, cutting power to some of its transponders.
The Pentagon's Defense Science Board will spend the next year looking at the effect of the "Revolution in Military Affairs" on coalition warfare. Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques Gansler has chartered the study. Allied and NATO military officials have expressed concern in the last couple of years that they may not be able to fight side-by-side with the U.S. as it fields increasingly advanced systems.
House-Senate conference on the fiscal 1999 defense authorization is in its early stages, but issues in contention so far are House restrictions on the export of communications satellites and missile components to China, Bosnia funding and intelligence funding. Conferees have been working in panels focusing on segments of the bill, but will shift to the overall conference setting this week.
The USAF expects to get the green light next January to begin production of the AN/APG-63(V)1 radar upgrade for the air-to-air F- 15C/Ds. The -63(V)1 is basically a reliability and maintainability upgrade intended to take the mean-time-between-failure rate from 12 hours to 120 hours. Testing has proceeded despite some glitches, an AF official said. The system appears to be meeting its requirement of achieving the performance of the F-15E's APG-70 radar, he said. The AF is budgeting for 148 of the improved radars.
SPACEDEV INC., the San Diego-based company that is setting up for commercial exploration and possibly mineral exploitation of asteroids (DAILY, Sept. 10, 1997), is drawing interest from the scientific community in its plans to sell instrument space on its proposed Near Earth Asteroid Prospector (NEAP) probe.
The USAF plans to make the E-3 AWACS aircraft compliant with future Global Air Traffic Management (GATM) requirements - but not right away, an AF official says. GATM "is a huge bill...not just for AWACS," the official says. The AF plans to start spending AWACS money on GATM avionics around 2004-2005. Until then, the planes will have to operate either with military waivers or fly alternate, less efficient routes. AWACS would be affected only in transit to and from a theater, not while flying air surveillance tracks.
Brig. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, director of the National Missile Defense Joint Program Office, leaves his post on Thursday to become the U.S. Army's assistant deputy chief of staff for operations within the Force Development directorate. Cosumano has headed the NMD program since the start-up of the NMD JPO, and managed the NMD Lead Systems Integrator competition. His replacement, Brig. Gen. Willie Nance, now heads the program executive office for tactical missiles at Army Missile Command, Huntsville, Ala.
German denials late last week of press reports here concerning merger discussions between British Aerospace and Daimler-Benz Aerospace came against a background of French government moves toward long- awaited industry privatization. A DASA spokesman confirmed talks with BAe, but said they were similar to bilateral discussions held with other groups from France, Italy and Spain. "If you are talking about a merger," he said, "you can only talk about the creation of a single European aerospace and defense company".
AVL SYSTEMS, a Huntsville, Ala., software firm, is marketing vehicle- tracking software that has been adapted from software originally developed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight center to handle large data flows from Spacelab missions on the Space Shuttle. The AVS software - Quality Research Track System - costs $500 to $1,000, plus an annual maintenance fee and allows users to keep track of vehicles equipped with a variety of communications devices.
Iran's Shahab-3 missile, tested last week, is " system we can't beat," says Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). "Our Patriot system can't take it out." The PAC-3 Configuration 2 is in the U.S. inventory, but it lacks the PAC-3 missile. PAC 3 Configuration 3 is scheduled to be deployed, but not for more than a year. The 800-mile range of the Shahab-3 makes it a potential threat to most countries in the Middle East. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Director Lt. Gen. Lester L. Lyles has told Congress that the U.S.
Richard Schwartz, chairman of the board and CEO of Alliant Techsystems, will retire Sept. 1., the company said Friday. Peter A. Bukowick, president and CEO, will serve as acting chief executive pending the board's consideration of a permanent successor.
BECHTEL NATIONAL INC., San Francisco, won a $27 million contract from the U.S. Defense Special Weapons Agency to destroy 46 former Soviet SS-24 ICBM launch silos and five launch control centers in Ukraine. The contract, the latest in a series for the company, will provide services to the Weapons Agency and the Ukraine Ministry of Defense's 43rd Rocket Army. Bechtel said it calls for elimination of facilities in Pervomaysk, about 200 miles south of Kiev.
An An-12 cargo aircraft burned on a runway of the Pushkino airport near Saint Petersburg Friday following a sudden engine fire that erupted during takeoff. Preliminary investigation indicates that the accident was caused by a ingestion of a bird.
The Pentagon today is expected to announce selection of a commercial rocket concept for the ground based interceptor (GBI) element of the national missile defense (NMD) system, sources told The DAILY. The other option is to upgrade the first stage of Minuteman III missiles. Boeing, selected as lead system integrator for the NMD program, presented both options in its LSI proposal (DAILY, May 1). The NMD JPO required both to be evaluated and said it would decide within 90 days of the LSI award which one to choose.
The U.S. Air Force's National Air Intelligence Center predicts that increasingly sophisticated cruise missiles could someday overwhelm air defenses. While the advent of stealthy cruise missiles has been predicted by U.S. intelligence for several years, the NAIC said in an unclassified report completed earlier this year that "Some developmental systems may incorporate chaff or decoys as an added layer of protection."
SPACE SYSTEMS/LORAL has taken over from Matra Marconi Space as prime contractor on the Orion 2 satellite to be placed over the Atlantic region in mid-1999. Loral Space&Communications bought Orion earlier this year (DAILY, March 27), and decided to shift the satellite contract to SS/L to enhance its capabilities, according to a Loral spokesperson. The spacecraft will now carry 38 high-power Ku-band transponders, eight more than originally planned, for a planned 16-year lifetime at 12 degrees West longitude.
Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the special House committee investigating technology transfers to China, acknowledged Friday that the panel was having trouble obtaining documents from the Clinton Administration. Cox didn't blame the heads of the agencies involved, but instead faulted the slowness of lower level officials in responding to committee requests. He told The DAILY in an interview that "we have had difficulty only because various parts of the Administration did not respond" to requests.
Northrop Grumman "strongly denies" allegations contained in a shareholders' action filed Thursday in Los Angeles, the company said Friday. An analyst said the suit held little merit legally, but could help to polarize stockholders.
Funding cuts in the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile program means the U.S. Air Force will likely not be able to test it against real targets, says AF program director Judy Stokley. The service has high confidence in AMRAAM even though it has been tested only against representative threats. But the availability of real foreign target systems opened the opportunity to get that last bit of confidence in the missile, she said. The AF may propose such testing later.
Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) may be headed toward cutbacks, if the early going of a top-level space review panel on is any indication. Participants in the first meeting of the group, headed by Prof. Masatumi Saito of Tokyo University, charged NASDA is trying carry out too many programs for the size of its staff and overreaching its technical understanding. Blaming the recent spate of failures NASDA has suffered on carelessness born of the overload, panel members suggested the space agency may have to scale back.
The merger of the defense businesses of Lagardere and Aerospatiale (DAILY, July 23) may be the move that again makes France a major player in the consolidation of the European defense industry, observers said.
General Dynamics Ordnance Systems and Mason&Hanger Corp. activated their new joint venture, American Ordnance LLC. The companies said American Ordnance will have two operating units - the Milan Army Ammunition Plant in Milan, Tenn., and the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown, Iowa. They said the U.S. Army has awarded a five-year contract with a potential value of $340 million to operate the two facilities. The contract is set to become effective on Oct. 1, and transition teams are preparing American Ordnance for operation on that date.
Boeing has completed the first flight of an F-15E dual fighter with a commercial processor as part of the "Bold Stroke" program to integrate lower cost commercial hardware into military systems. The July 22 flight of the Advanced Display Core Processor took place at Boeing's St. Louis facility. The ADCP replaces the central computer and multi-purpose display processor on the F-15E, Boeing said. It said the system provided the same capability as the two legacy computers.
