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.
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.
Airbus Industrie's latest Global Market Forecast predicts a demand for more than 16,700 jetliners of more than 70 seats each between now and 2017 to satisfy an average traffic growth of 5% per year and to replace about 8,500 aging aircraft. Airbus said yesterday that the need will be filled primarily by about 13,600 new aircraft valued at $1.2 trillion, representing an average yearly business of $60 billion. The remaining 3,100 aircraft would be either secondhand or come from operating leases.
Lockheed Martin began testing the flight control software for its X-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) concept demonstrator aircraft in flights with the Variable Stability In-Flight Simulator Test Aircraft (NF-16D) or VISTA/F-16. The crew completed all planned test points in the first flight, including commands in pitch, roll and yaw, at Buffalo, N.Y., on March 29, Lockheed Martin said.
The CFE738 business jet engine, built by the CFE Co. joint venture of GE Aircraft Engines and AlliedSignal Engines, notched 100,000 hours of operation, the venture says. More than 100 CFE738s, producing more than 5,940 lbst. each, are in service on delivered Dassault Falcon 2000 bizjets worldwide, and the fleet is racking up hours at the rate of about 4,000 per month.
Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific this week put the first Trent 700-based version of Rolls-Royce RB211-524 turbofan into service, Rolls reports, on a revenue flight of a Boeing 747-400 from Hong Kong to Bangkok on April 20. "During the first flight our cockpit readings indicated that it was delivering a large improvement in fuel flow and was running much cooler than the standard engine," says Cathay's Derek Cridland, the airline's engineering director.
Engineers, managers and mechanics at the huge C- 17 manufacturing plant here are struggling to wring every penny of cost they can out of the Globemaster III, driven by the belief that unless the cost comes down the plane has no long-term market beyond the 120 the U.S. Air Force is committed to buy.
