The U.S. Air Force will buy F-16 weapon racks, each of which will be able to carry two 1,000-pound class munitions. The BRU-55 rack has been in development with the AF since 1997 and will undergo flight testing later this fiscal year. The service plans to buy at least 300, although it may buy as many as 500 if sufficient funds are available, Col. Bill Wise, the AF's program director for area attack weapons said at an armament industry day here.
CITY WAR: The U.S. Marine Corps is putting tactics and equipment for urban combat to the test in an April 22 - May 2 drill at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The exercise, being conducted by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, involves aviation and naval fire support, as well as indirect fire. For real time information, units receive FLIR video from a helicopter acting as an unmanned aerial vehicle.
The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command has submitted a plan to Army Training and Doctrine Command outlining ways to man a national missile defense (NMD) system, if a decision is made to deploy such a system. The Force Design Update is a major step in the process for documenting a new Army organization, SMDC Chief Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson, said in a statement. "There is a possibility that a decision to deploy the system will be made in the year 2000," Anderson said. "If it is, we must be ready to execute."
Responding to a junior member of the potent congressional Depot Caucus, the U.S. Navy has agreed to a ten-day delay in signing a contract with Rolls-Royce Allison Engine Co. for heavy maintenance of the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft's T406-AD-400 engine, congressional sources said Friday. A Navy spokeswoman could not immediately verify that the award had been postponed.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers are working on a basket of advanced technologies for NASA space science missions that spacecraft designers can use as they work to push deeper into space and to try increasingly difficult tasks once they get there.
BRITISH AEROSPACE Systems and Equipment has selected Northrop Grumman to supply inertial measurement systems for the Longbow missile system that will be on the British Army's WAH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter. The contract, valued at $16.7 million, includes manufacture of mechanical gyroscopes and accelerometers over a four-year period. The British Army has ordered 67 WAH-64 Apaches.
MAYBE NOT: The QF-4 may be the last of the AF's full scale aerial targets. "I'm not sure there will be a follow-on ... ," says John Manclark, the AF's director of test and evaluation says. The AF is planning an effort that so far is unfunded. But Manclark says advances in modeling and simulation may eliminate the need for such an effort. One of the likely candidates to replace the QF-4 is a QF-16.
'SERIOUS SITUATION': If Israeli press reports that Kazahkstan provided Iran with nuclear warheads are true, and if, as further reported, those warheads were maintained by Russian experts, U.S. cooperation with Moscow on the International Space Station could be seriously jeopardized, says Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). Pointing to problems that already exist in the Station program, Mikulski says she is prompted to ask additional questions about the Russians' commitment when she hears such reports.
The Pentagon announced potential foreign military sales to provide AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles to Saudi Arabia and AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles to Israel. In the $115 million deal with Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Dept. of Defense would upgrade 1,500 AIM-9Ls to the newer AIM-9M configuration, and also provide five sets of Pathfinder/Sharpshooter navigation and targeting pods. The proposed sale of 64 AMRAAMs to Israel is estimated at $28 million, including three test missiles, containers, spare parts and support.
WHITE SANDS WATCH: Both the House National Security Committee's research and development subcommittee and the Senate Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee, both of which have jurisdiction over Ballistic Missile Defense Organization programs, could well be marking up the $821.7 million Theater High Altitude Area Defense request at the time of THAAD's next intercept test at the White Sands Missile Range. The test - four earlier tries have failed - is set for early May. SASC will start its markup in a week.
C-130X FUNDING: The U.S. Air Force appears to have locked in funding for Air Mobility Command's C-130X effort in the fiscal 2000 through '06 program objective memorandum period, according to one AF official. The effort will standardize avionics for older C-130s even as new C-130Js are fielded. Along with the C-5M program, C-130X is one of AMC's top priorities.
'LIPSERVICE': NASA has given "lipservice" to Congress on funding and schedule of the Space Station, says Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA. In last year's conference report, he says, Congress told NASA and Station prime contractor Boeing to reexamine the program's funding profile, schedule, content and efficiency.
The U.S. Air Force later this year will settle significant aspects of the fuze supply question that arose last year when Motorola got out of the business.
The U.S. and U.K. will begin a cooperative development program next year that could eventually optimize performance of air-to-air missiles, according to Steve Korn, deputy director of the U.S. Air Force Research Lab's Munitions Directorate.
SAFETY PERSPECTIVE: The new U.S. Air Force initiative to accelerate installation of Traffic Alert Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) is seen as threatening to overshadow more important safety programs. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan says "we have larger loss of life and more accidents because of other things than TCAS." Those are mainly engine problems, and controlled flight into terrain which could be mitigated by ground proximity warning systems. The AF is planning to spend more than $400 million during the next six years on TCAS alone.
The space agencies of Europe and Russia agreed to establish a working group to study the feasibility of Russia's participation in a European mission to Mars scheduled for 2003. Yuriy Milov, deputy general director of the Russian Space Agency, said the agreement was reached during a meeting in Moscow of Yuriy Koptev, head of the RSA, and Antonio Rodotta, head of the European Space Agency.
Loral Space&Communications plans a series of transactions which will increase its ownership in Globalstar LP to 42% and establish a Globalstar service provider fund of $210 million for reinvestment in the project. Loral said Friday that it has offered to buy up to 8.4 million shares of Globalstar Telecommunications Ltd. common stock from its original service provider partners for $100 per partnership interest, representing 30% of each partner's holdings.
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told senators yesterday he does not yet accept conclusions of an independent report that the International Space Station will be delayed by up to three years and cost as much as $250 million more per year relative to the fiscal year 1999 budget submission.
Lufthansa ordered 10 Rolls-Royce Trent 500-powered Airbus A340-600s, becoming one of the launch customers for the aircraft, which has a range of 7,500 nautical miles. In Lufthansa configuration, the plane will carry 330 passengers in three classes on routes to Asia and the Americas when deliveries begin in early 2003. The German flag carrier operates 16 A340s and is Airbus's largest airline customer. Lufthansa also is Airbus's largest A340 operator, with 30 of the models on order.
Asia's sputtering economy may yet take a bite out of projected rises in aircraft build rates, but only for a short time because the fundamentals underpinning airline growth remain unchanged, suggests Merrill Lynch VP and aerospace analyst Byron Callan. And a lot of Callan's colleagues think that might not be so bad - Boeing's $1 billion stumble on the Next Generation 737 program shows that a little cooling off to get manufacturing process changes profitably in place might not be a bad thing.
The U.S. Air Force late this year plans to award a contract for a subscale aerial target to meet a projected shortfall in BQM- 34 targets, Lt. Col. Ken Hislop, the AF's program director for aerial targets said Wednesday at the AF's annual armaments industry day here. The winner of the competition would build between 50 and 100 targets at a cost of $18 million to $27 million. Hislop said all the money is in procurement accounts with no development funding, which means the target will have to be a non-developmental item.
Research into the physics of ice formation shows that getting it off wings or engine inlets may be as simple as passing a small electric voltage through the ice - a fact that could lead to dramatically more simple and lightweight in-flight de-icing equipment.
The U.S. Air Force is backing away from the idea of moving to a fleet of short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) combat jets, despite earlier indications of USAF leaders that they favor such planes. Last year, Gen. Ronald Fogleman, AF Chief of Staff at the time, suggested the service might buy some of its Joint Strike Fighters in the STOVL configuration set for the Marine Corps. But after further analysis, that appears to be less attractive.
