ROEMER'S RUSSIAN AXE: Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) gets a little help from the Russian government this year for his annual effort to kill the International Space Station.
The House Appropriations Committee trimmed $170 million from NASA's fiscal 1999 spending request for the International Space Station, citing poor "management control" by both the U.S. space agency and Station prime contractor Boeing. The action late Thursday, which followed the recommendation set by the subcommittee on VA, HUD and independent agencies, would leave NASA with $2.1 billion to spend on Station, matching the annual spending cap for the project set by the White House before the program ran into cost problems.
PROLIFERATION: Military forces of 49 nations use GPS, according to Mike Shaw of the Defense Dept.'s Office of GPS Navigation and Positioning. He says at a conference that 25 countries have access to the GPS Precise Positioning Service, and that GPS antennas have been seen on export models of the MiG-29.
The U.S. Navy is willing to give up the lead on the Joint Emitter Targeting System (JETS) following another budget cut. JETS was supposed to start this year, but was delayed until 2000. In the latest budget deliberations, the Navy initially pushed it out to 2001, but then had to eliminate funding altogether.
NO FLIR: U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B aviators won't get any help soon in the area of more accurate bomb delivery. The service wanted to buy about 80 podded FLIR systems that would have included a laser spot tracker to allow more precise bombing in all weather, day or night. But, a Marine Corps official says, the funding didn't come through in the program objective memorandum.
The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to call U.S. Air Force Secretary-designate Daryl L. Jones to testify in an executive session before deciding on his nomination, a committee spokesman said Friday. This would be the second executive session on the nomination, indicating the difficulty the committee is having deciding whether Jones is fit to be AF Secretary despite the charges made against him. No date has been set for the session, the spokesman added. The Senate is in recess now and will not return until July 7.
The U.S. Air Force has begun a study to look at the uses of airborne laser weapons in tactical aircraft. The study, "Directed Energy Applications for Tactical Airborne Combat," is headed by former AF Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, the AF Research Lab said Friday. "I believe that directed energy weapons will be fundamental to the way the Air Force fights future wars," Fogleman said in the AFRL announcement.
CHARLES GABELER JR., 76, former executive of Air America, died of pneumonia June 16 in McLean, Va. It was an open secret that Air America was owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. It operated in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Senate has approved a $273 billion fiscal 1999 defense authorization, adding an amendment to double the Pentagon's $5 million request for the Scorpius Low Cost Launch Development Program. Offered by Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the amendment was accepted without opposition. Scorpius is being developed at the Air Force Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland AFB, N.M. The goal of the program is to make U.S. space launches less expensive.
B-2 DEPLOYMENT: One of two major B-2 bomber deployments still to take place this year is expected to be in the continental U.S. The likely location is MacDill AFB, Fla., an AF official says. The deployment will be in September. Where the stealth bomber will go on its next overseas deployment hasn't been finalized. The first, earlier this year, was to Guam.
The U.S. Army is looking to closely inspect its 474 AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters to determine if they should be grounded for safety reasons. A safety - of - flight message, which had been expected (DAILY, June 15), was issued this week to determine if the AH-1s are at risk of an N2 spur gear failure that prompted the Army to ground its UH-1 helicopters in March. Since 1992, there have been failures in the N2 spur gear of the T53- L-703 engines of four Cobras, the Army said Wednesday.
TITAN CORP., San Diego, won a $23.7 million, five-year contract from the U.S. Navy's Naval Undersea Warfare Center Div. Titan's subsidiary, Unidyne Corp., will provide engineering and technical services on submarine fire control and sonar systems, submarine undersea warfare systems, outboard cables and surface ship ASW systems. Services will be provided worldwide, including to designated foreign countries with Foreign Military Sales agreements.
Representatives of the two major U.S. makers of solid-fuel rockets charged yesterday the defense industrial base is threatened by the policy that allows China to launch U.S. satellites, because China is undercutting the U.S. commercial space launch industry that sustains large solid-fuel rocket production in the post-Cold War environment.
DRS TECHNOLOGIES INC., Parsippany, N.J., won a $3.8 million contract from the U.S. Navy to provide additional Combat Display Emulator consoles. The award is an option from a contract awarded in February 1994. The value of the contract to date is $30.4 million. Work will be done by the company's DRS Electronic Systems Inc., Gaithersburg, Md.
The House approved a $250.7 billion fiscal 1999 defense appropriations bill by a vote of 358-61 late Wednesday. Before passage, members gave voice-vote approval to an amendment that would prohibit the Defense Dept. from using any funding in the bill to enter into or renew contracts with a company owned or partially owned by the People's Republic of China or the People's Liberation Army of the PRC.
The once beleaguered AN/ALR-67(V)3 radar warning receiver for the F/A-18 entered operational evaluation this week after receiving the top grade in operational assessment, the first step toward opeval. In operational assessment, the system got a rating of "potentially effective and potentially suitable," according to Capt. Doug Henry, Naval Air Systems Command's program manager for tactical electronic warfare programs. "That's been a success story," he said in an interview here.
The U.K.'s General Electric Co. plc completed the merger of Tracor Inc. with its U.S. subsidiary, GEC announced yesterday. Tracor will be managed by the North America operations of GEC-Marconi, which will be renamed Marconi North America Inc. GEC paid $1.4 billion for Tracor, consisting of $40 per share of common stock and assumed debt. More than 90% of the stock was tendered. The untendered shares have been converted into the right to receive $40 per share, subject to rights of appraisal.
Raytheon Systems Co. won a $9.9 million contract from the U.S. Navy for factory restoration of AN/SLQ-32 shipboard electronic warfare systems. The systems had been removed from decomissioned ships and stored at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Crane, Ind., Raytheon said. The contract covers seven of a projected 30 systems that will be restored during the next several years at Raytheon facilities in Goleta, Calif. The restoration work is shared between Raytheon and NSWC, with final assembly, alignment and test performed at Goleta.
The Supreme Court declared the line-item veto unconstitutional in a 6- 3 ruling yesterday, opening the possibility for many of the items struck down by President Clinton to win court challenges. The president struck down 13 items involving budget authority of $144 million in the fiscal 1998 defense appropriations bill. Among the cancellations were the Anti-Satellite (ASAT) system and the Clementine research and development project (DAILY, Oct. 15, 1997).
TRACOR INC., Mojave, Calif., won an $80 million follow-on production contract, with options, from the U.S. Air Force for the continued conversion of obsolete F-4 aircraft to QF-4 full-scale aerial targets. Tracor will convert at least 72, and as many as 192, aircraft over the next seven years. Conversion of the first 12 is valued at $8.3 million, with five one-year options for 12-36 drones each ranging from $72 million to $102 million. The first 12 are scheduled for delivery at a rate of one per month to Tyndall AFB, Fla., beginning in June 1999.
Northrop Grumman has completed the first live fire test of the AN/AAQ- 24(V) Directed Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) system, intended to foil missiles and being developed mainly for U.K. helicopters and U.S. Special Operations Command C-130s. The test took place June 8 at the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Northrop Grumman said Wednesday. The type of missile fired against DIRCM was not released.
The newly formed House select committee to investigate whether national security was compromised by developments arising from Chinese launches of U.S. satellites will concentrate initially on launches involving Space Systems/Loral and Hughes Electronics, but other companies may come under scrutiny as well, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), the panel chair, said yesterday.
BOEING won an $8.1 million contract to design prototype satellite communications phased array antennas for the next generation of U.S. Navy surface ships. Under the three-year contract, Boeing will deliver an antenna with a phased array architecture that exhibits low radar cross section and infrared signature. The program, managed by Boeing Phantom Works, will have three stages - design, fabrication and testing of a 44-GHz active transmit array, a 20-GHz active receive array, and transmit and receive Ku-band arrays.
