Industry ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden have agreed on a late October deadline for proposals to set a framework for a new European Aerospace and Defense Company (EADC).
A 1995 sounding rocket flight from Norway reportedly triggered a Russian nuclear alert that could have resulted in a retaliatory response had the Black Brant XII not returned to Earth in the Arctic Ocean before the Russians reacted. A television documentary scheduled to be broadcast today by Britain's Channel 4 reports that Russian early warning system operators mistook the Jan. 25, 1995, sounding-rocket launch from the Andoya range in Andenes, Norway, for a Trident missile launched by a U.S. submarine.
Pioneer UAV, Inc., Hunt Valley, Md., is being awarded a $10,635,360 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-97-C-0010 for the procurement of 15 Pioneer unmanned air vehicles spares. Work will be performed Hunt Valley, Md., and is expected to be completed in February 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.
Communication problems and poor information led to a mishap involving an AGM-129A Advanced Cruise Missile during a Dec. 19, 1997, test at the Utah Test and Training Range, according to the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command. After completing the main test objective, ACC said in an investigation report, the stealthy cruise missile hit the ground in the middle of an unmanned astrophysical observation site run by the University of Tokyo under the auspices of the University of Utah. Two unoccupied trailers were damaged.
NAVMAR Applied Sciences Corp., San Diego, Calif., is being awarded a $5,267,809 indefinite-delivery, cost-plus-fixed-fee pricing contact for research and development engineering, and management support services for current and anticipated near term avionics, shipboard navigation systems engineering, communications systems engineering, and configuration management related to the global positioning system program. This contract contains two options which, if exercised, will bring the total cumulative value of this contract to $9,049,542.
Brazil's Embraer said it welcomed the decision of its government to return a dispute with Canada over aircraft subsidies to the World Trade Organization. Brazil and Canada previously asked the WTO to mediate their long- standing disagreement on subsidies, but were asked by the organization to try to resolve the dispute. Negotiations between the two nations had been going well, but recently reached an impasse. Bombardier and Embraer have a virtual lock on the multi-billion-
BALL CORP. relocated its corporate headquarters from Muncie, Ind., to Broomfield, Colo. The building is the former home of Ball Aerospace&Technology Corp., a Ball subsidiary now based in Boulder, Colo.
Omnitech Robotics Inc., Englewood, Colo., is being awarded a $3,314,930 increment as part of a $15,250,000 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development Phase of the Vehicle Tele-
Raytheon Co., Electronic Systems Division, Bedford, Mass., is being awarded a $29,075,411 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for Classification, Discrimination, and Identification Phase III (CDI3) for the PATRIOT system. Work will be performed in Andover, Mass. (35%); Waltham, Mass. (31%); Sudbury, Mass. (15%); Tewksbury, Mass. (10%); Quincy, Mass. (5%); and Bedford, Mass. (4%), and is expected to be completed by May 31, 2003. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on June 24, 1997.
BOEING CO. yesterday received a $665.5 million contract from the U.S. Navy for the multi-year advanced acquisition of 44 remanufactured AV-8B Harrier aircraft. The contract includes logistics support, spares and repair parts. Work on the contract is to be completed by November 2003.
A newly declassified General Accounting Office report says that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is having trouble verifying whether North Korea is complying with all aspects of the 1994 agreement with the U.S. in which Pyongyang agreed to suspend its nuclear-weapons- related program in return for alternate energy from the U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), a critic of the agreement who requested the report, said, "We may never know how much bomb-grade plutonium the North Koreans have diverted to their weapons program."
Engineers at Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) have completed detailed design of the first H-2A upgraded launch vehicle for commercial service, and MHI workers have started assembling the prototype. NASDA has scheduled hot-fire tests of the vehicle's stages and its solid rocket boosters before the end of this year. Work on the ground test vehicle is scheduled to start late this year at the Tanegashima launch facility, and the first H-2A flight is scheduled in the January/February slot of 2001.
Honeywell Inc., Phoenix, Ariz., was awarded on July 6, a $5,288,347 firm- fixed-price-requirements contract to provide for repair of the Multi Function Display and related items applicable to the F-16 aircraft. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There were 8 firms solicited and 2 proposals received. Solicitation began June 1998; negotiations were completed June 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill AFB, Utah, is the contracting activity (F42620-98/D-0087).
Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA), pleased with the results of its first automatic docking test on the latest Engineering Test Satellite (ETS-7), will activate a laser radar to gauge closing distances on the next in a series of five more docking experiments between now and next February.
Lockheed Martin's Federal Systems unit will build 62 AN/APR-48A radar frequency interferometers and spares for British WAH-64 Apaches under a $30 million multi-year subcontract from Northrop Grumman's Electronic Sensors and Systems Div. Hardware delivery will begin this December and run through February 2003, Lockheed Martin said yesterday. The APR-48A is used to detect ground and airborne radars and prioritize targets. The passive system is mounted above the rotor blades to provide 360 degree coverage.
KELLY SPACE&Technology Inc. has hired two former Aerojet executives to develop the company's reusable launch vehicle plans. Bob Davis, former vice president and chief technology officer at Aerojet, will become president and chief executive, replacing founder Michael Kelly in those roles. Kelly will continue as chairman and chief technology officer. Marc Constantine, another former Aerojet executive, will become president and chief executive of Kelly Aerospace, a division set up to build the company's "Astroliner" reusable space launch vehicle.
The U.S. Marine Corps is looking to buy commercial transport aircraft to replace the aging CT-39Gs Sabreliners it uses for operational support airlift. The initial order will be for up to two aircraft. The Marines want a two-pilot, six passenger, fixed-wing, multi-engine commercial transport aircraft that could be delivered within 18 months, Naval Air Systems Command said in a July 8 Commerce Business Daily solicitation. The projected aircraft utilization rate is 75 flight hours per aircraft per month with three sorties per day.
HOMESTEAD AFB, Fla., is attracting attention as a potential spaceport for reusable space planes that would use its runway to return to Earth after orbiting small satellites. Space Access LLP and Kelly Space&Technology have both proposed operations at the base south of Miami, which the Air Force is leaving. Space Access would use liquid hydrogen to propel launch vehicles that take off like conventional transport aircraft, while Kelly's proposal calls for towing its launch vehicle with a Boeing 747 to ignition altitude to reduce takeoff weight.
Lockheed Martin said it has begun installing the inlet duct on its two X-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concept Demonstrator Aircraft. Installation in the CDA assembly tool is taking place at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility at Palmdale, Calif., where the two demonstrator aircraft are being assembled. The inlet duct is a four-piece, fiber-placed graphite-epoxy composite structure built by Alliant Techsystems at Magna, Utah, Lockheed Martin said.
Norway won't buy C-130Js, at least not this summer. A Norwegian military official said the procurement decision, which was deferred earlier this year, has been put off again for affordability reasons. To address the cost concerns, he said, Lockheed Martin has now proposed leasing the planes to Norway. A Lockheed Martin official would say only that the company has adjusted its C-130J offer to Norway to deal with the country's fiscal concerns.
Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, may have signalled what is happening to the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program in the U.S. Lyles said last week that the Pentagon is "fully committed" to the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program even though it has failed five intercept attempts in a row. He said he hoped the Airborne Laser will join the fold of theater missile defense programs. But for MEADS, Lyles could only say that "perhaps" it will be a future TMD system.
Two contracts for work on the F-22 fighter program awarded to Lockheed Martin by the U.S. Air Force (DAILY, July 6) have a potential value of up to $2.1 billion, the company said. The contracts, awarded June 30 for advanced procurement and program support for two F-22 production representative test vehicles (PRTV), are worth a total of $70.7 million. They include options for the two PRTVs and six initial production F-22s.
A key committee of Russia's Federation Council, which is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Senate, still believes it will be necessary to promote private investment in space activities if Russia is to continue having a domestic space research program. But the Council's Committee on Economic Policy has rejected a draft bill designed to regulate Russian commercial space on grounds its provision are "questionable and devoid of implementation mechanisms," according to the Itar-Tass news agency.
Russia used a Zenit rocket early Friday to launch the Resurs 01 Earth remote sensing satellite and six smaller piggyback satellites provided by foreign researchers. Liftoff of the delayed mission from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan came at 10:30 a.m. Moscow time (3:30 a.m. EDT), putting the Resurs platform in a sun synchronous polar orbit at an altitude of about 850 kilometers (527 miles).
Australia plans to continue its use of U.S. space-based early warning missile launch data through the likely acquisition of a ground station to receive information from the projected Space-based Infrared Systems (SBIRS). Australia has relied on missile warning data from the U.S., currently being provided by the Defense Support Program. As the U.S. transitions to SBIRS in coming years, Australia plans to follow under a program called JP 2057.
