The U.S. Army wants industry to start gathering information on technologies that could eventually be used on its future intelligence gathering aircraft, the Aerial Common Sensor. The request for information seeks data on an aerial platform; signals, imagery and measurement, and signature intelligence; communications; ground platforms, and computing architectures, the Army's Communications and Electronics Command said in a June 8 Commerce Business Daily notice.
PLUGGING LEAKS: Lockheed Martin is carrying a "three-month hazard" on the linear aerospike engine it will need to power the X-33 testbed next summer, but Rocketdyne has developed workarounds and fixes to get the engine back on track, according to Lockheed Martin's top executive on the program, Jerry Rising. Meanwhile, leakage into the "canoe" structure of the subscale aerospike mounted atop NASA's SR-71 research plane has delayed the first hot-fire test of the engine "a few weeks," Rising says.
As part of its Advanced Air Vehicle (AAV) development program, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to flight test an unmanned helicopter capable of staying aloft for more than 40 hours. The vehicle could be used to meet future U.S. Navy and Marine Corps requirements.
The U.S. Air National Guard is facing a choice of extending the service life of some of its F-16 fighters or buying new aircraft as it faces the prospect of grounding the first of its older F-16s next year because of their age. "I am very concerned about the F-16 fleet overall," Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver, director of the ANG said last week. Service life issues are growing on all of the ANG's F-16As and some of the older F-16Cs, he added.
Boeing has installed a phased array antenna on an AWACS test aircraft in preparation for a major U.S. Air Force command and control experiment in September. It will also be installed on a C-135 testbed and a KC-135 tanker for EFX '98, intended to demonstrate technologies that can enhance command and control elements supporting deployment of an Air Expeditionary Force.
SPACE POWER: Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (D-Calif.) and Bud Cramer (D-Ala.) are trying to score an extra $20 million for NASA research into solar power satellite technology.
MAKING BASES MORE ROBUST: The AF wants to use about 5,000 positions that will be freed up from outsourcing to make its bases more robust, Hawley says. Personnel are now culled from various wings to sustain forward locations, leaving bases in the U.S. short of people and forcing many to work overtime. "We don't think we can sustain that indefinitely," Hawley says. People would be assigned to various bases to ensure that even when some are called overseas, enough would remain to allow stateside bases to function properly.
The Chief of Staff of the Royal Norwegian Air Force said last week that the Eurofighter EF 2000 and the Lockheed Martin F-16C/D are comparable. Gen. Per-Oscar Jacobsen indicated that a final choice between the two contenders, due late next year, was likely to prove difficult, since they were regarded as "pretty well even."
Using commercial practices and other improvements, Lockheed Martin has reduced the manufacturing time for an F-16 fighter to 24 months, down from the previous 36-42 months.
AND DELAYS: The remanufacture problems that have dogged Joint STARS for years have caused late deliveries. "I'm frustrated because we're not getting deliveries on time," Hawley says. The hope is that relaxed remanufacture requirements will get deliveries back on schedule.
APPROPRIATIONS ACTION: The Senate is supposed to act this week on the $250.3 billion fiscal 1999 defense appropriations bill that cleared the Senate last week. Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the full Appropriations Committee and the defense subcommittee, says the bill will be on the Senate floor Wednesday night or Thursday. It will be later in the month before the House acts, according to Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Appropriations national security subcommittee.
Now that last week's Airbus deal with the GE/P&W Engine Alliance has set the stage for competition to power the proposed new A3XX widebody, enginemakers are once again hoping to shift airline thinking away from simple purchase cost toward total life-cycle cost as the basis for the rival engines' head-to-head battle.
Korean Air Lines will place a $2 billion order for 27 Boeing 737-800s and -900s next week in a strategic move reflecting the airline's confidence that Southeast Asia economies will recover by the time deliveries begin, in 26 months. South Korea wants to be the nation of choice as it becomes more difficult for travelers to get to Southeast Asia through Japan because of traffic volume and airport congestion.
British Aerospace's Royal Ordnance Div. has completed the first sled test of a Conventionally-Armed Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) fitted with the Broach warhead. The test, at the U.K. Defense Ministry's Pendline Range in May, was part of a foreign comparative test program to determine the feasibility of using the warhead on the long-range cruise missile. After being accelerated to 1,000 feet per second, the warhead penetrated the concrete target, exiting at a residual speed of several hundred feet per second, BAe said.
NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery docked with Russia's Mir right on time yesterday, marking the last time a Shuttle will dock with the aging orbital station. Charles Precourt, STS-91 mission commander, announced the two spacecraft had mated at 12:58:31 p.m. EDT, exactly as planned. The hatches between the two vehicles later were opened and Shuttle crew members entered the Russian facility.
After building a single prototype of a completely digital Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS-CD), the U.S. Navy expects to make several operational before it fields the Shared Reconnaissance Pod (SHARP) in coming years for the F/A-18F and other aircraft.
The National Research Council of Canada and Orenda Engine parent Orenda Aerospace have just completed an intense three-year project to develop qualification methodologies and test nine novel component repairs for the General Electric F404 fighter engine. Aimed at extending the life of high-cost gas turbine engine components in Canadian military engine fleets, officials hope the work will save some C$4 million per year during the next 12 years.
The Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday unanimously approved the $250.3 billion fiscal 1999 Pentagon money bill that its defense subcommittee marked up on Tuesday. Senate Appropriations Chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who heads the defense subcommittee as well, said the bill could be on the Senate floor next Wednesday evening or Thursday.
The House Appropriations national security subcommittee yesterday cut the Theater High Altitude Area Defense request by $406 million, the largest reduction imposed by any congressional committee this year, but at the same time left the door to reconsidering the cut if the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization can make the case that THAAD can work after all its test failures.
The National Research Council of Canada recently commissioned two new national facilities - a physical vapor deposition (PVD) coater, for exploring novel coating design concepts based on multi-layering for better protection, and a turbine component spin rig to help engineers develop cost-effective life-cycle management technologies for critical rotating turbine components.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has eliminated the $180 million for 40 THAAD User Operational Evaluation System (UOES) missiles while adding back a similar amount for the demonstration and validation (dem/val) portion of the program. The committee also followed action in the Senate authorization and knocked out the entire $323 million for engineering and manufacturing development of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense program.
Enginemaker Rolls-Royce tells investors it expects to spend about 20 million pounds - US$32.8 million at current exchange rates - to fix Year 2000 date logic problems in its computers and computer-operated equipment, but is confident it will make the fixes with the plenty of time to spare. The so-called Millennium Bug stems from early computer programmers' shortcut of using just the last two digits to represent years, so that the year 2000 will appear simply as '00,' potentially disabling any affected computer or software program at the turn of the century.
The commander of the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command said the service should replace its long-range interdiction F-15E and F-117 aircraft on a one-for-one basis, assuming no significant force structure changes are made. "I would anticipate a one-for-one replacement as long as our current force structure requirements stay the same," Gen. Richard Hawley told defense reporters yesterday in Washington. That amounts to about three wings of aircraft since the AF flies two wings of F-15Es and a little less than one F-117 wing.
RAYTHEON SYSTEMS CO., Lexington, Mass., said it has won an initial increment of $800,000 to a $57.3 million U.S. Army contract for the development of the next-generation Firefinder weapon location radar, Firefinder Block II, designated AN/TPQ-47. The contract calls for Raytheon to deliver three engineering development model radar systems.
