Russia will cut its Air Force and Air-Defense Force by about 120,000 servicemen, including 40 generals, Itar-Tass reported yesterday. More than 300 military settlements will be cleared during the process, it said. According to an Air Force spokesman, 87% of the savings to be realized from the cuts and sale of military property will be transferred to the Defense Ministry.
The total cost of the Pentagon's main weapons systems dropped by $60 billion between last September and December largely because of program adjustments made as a result of the Quadrennial Defense Review.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Vought Systems Division, Grand Prairie, Texas, is being awarded a $20,936,220 modification to a firm-fixed-price contract, to exercise a firm-fixed-price, not-to-exceed option for 30 Army Tactical Missile Systems Block 1 (foreign military sales), Variant Guided Missile and Launching Assemblies for Greece. Work will be performed in Dallas, Texas, and is expected to be completed by July 31, 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 28, 1994.
Mir's Russian crew managed to strengthen a solar array dangerously weakened in last year's collision with a runaway Progress resupply capsule, attaching a splint to the dangling array yesterday to prevent it from breaking loose and inflicting more damage on the orbital station. U.S. Astronaut Andrew Thomas waited inside while Cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Nikolai Budarin clambered outside to attach the five-foot metal splint to the solar array on the depressurized Spektr module. It was their third attempt to shore up the damaged solar array.
Raytheon Systems Company, Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $8,018,431 face value increase to a firm-fixed-price contract to provide for design of an upgrade to modernize the processing functions on the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). This effort will seek to incorporate a Commercial Off-the Shelf processor or processors into the missile and will also include associated hardware and software modifications. Aeronautical Systems Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., is the contracting activity (F08626-97-C-0001, P00015).
The House National Security Committee will mark up its version of the fiscal 1999 defense authorization the last week in April, even though it won't have the House Budget Committee's national security ceiling numbers by then, says HNSC research and development subcommittee chairman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). He says the subcommittee will have a sense of the approximate numbers in budget authority and outlays the budget panel is shooting for. House Budget Chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio) and ranking Democrat John Spratt (S.C.) are also members of HNSC.
Defense Secretary William Cohen, after being briefed on the U.S. Navy's solution to a wing-drop problem on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, cleared the way for the service to award a $2 billion low rate initial production contract to Boeing Co. for 20 of the jets, the Pentagon said Friday. The award will be made in the very near future, a Navy official said.
The U.S. Army may boost the range of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, although not in the near future. Under consideration is the addition of conformal fuel tanks that would allow the low-observable armed scout to fly 500 km missions. Another option may be an fuel tank in the weapons bay.
Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources placed a firm order with Bombardier Aerospace for nine Canadair 415 firefighting amphibious aircraft, the company said. Total value of the contract, including training, spares and support, is about $C225 million. Deliveries are set to begin immediately and run through December 1998. As part of the package, Bombardier will buy back the nine CL-215s currently operated by the agency over a three-year period. The company will then resell or lease them on the world market.
Faced with an Apache pilot retention problem, the Army is looking to offer a flight bonus to some of its warrant officers to avoid a shortage in the near future. It would be a first for the Army. The bonus will be available to warrant officers who have served between 6 and 14 years.
The working capital fund used by the U.S. Army to buy spares from manufacturers may be more than $100 million short later this year. The fund buys the spares and sells them to military units, but some of those units are using money for things other than spares, and this is causing a net decrease in the fund. The result could be a spares shortage in about six months, says Maj. Gen. Emmitt Gibson, commander of the Army's Aviation and Missile Command.
A storm at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan postponed launch of a Proton rocket carrying seven Iridium satellites to April 7. The launch had been set for April 2, but on March 30, wind damaged the roof of one of the new annexes for the Proton Assembly and Checkout Facility. Rain apparently soaked electrical circuitry in an underground launch support bunker, readouts from which showed abnormally low resistance (DAILY, April 3). The rocket was temporarily returned to the Assembly and Checkout Facility and the launch was rescheduled.
Retirement dates for aircraft are always in flux, but Maj. Gen. James Snider, the U.S. Army program executive officer for aviation, says the current schedule calls for AH-64D Apache Longbows to retire in 2028, RAH-66 Comanches in 2045, CH-47 ICHs in 2035, and UH-60 Black Hawks in 2033. But Snider acknowledges those dates are likely to shift to the right, particularly for Apache.
Congressional sources expect Senate Armed Services action on the Air Force F-22 production plan to be the biggest factor in deciding how the issue is ultimately resolved. The Air Force wants to award the production contract for Lot I - two aircraft - and long lead for Lot II - six aircraft - in December. The GAO recommends an October 1999 start. The amount of development testing is a concern on the SASC airland subcommittee. House National Security research and development chairman Weldon concedes a SASC advantage.
LOCKHEED MARTIN has won a $6.2 million contract increase from the U.S. Navy to further pursue its work on the Joint Strike Fighter Air Vehicle Prognostics and Health Management initiative. The work is designed to help detect component degradation or impending failure so maintainers can counter problems before they occur. Total funding has reached $12.6 million. Lockheed Martin's effort is part of a risk reduction initiative in its JSF proposal.
The U.S. Army is determining how many training systems for the AH-64D helicopter it will need to delay to pay bills this fiscal year. With the Apache program in the midst of a multi-year program, the Army had limited flexibility - 14% of its entire budget - to offset across- the-board budget cuts imposed on the FY '98 budget. To avoid having to break that multi-year, it has opted to delay buying some training systems, Col. Steven Kee, the Army's Apache program manager said here Thursday.
There have been "challenges" in the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Low program, says Brig. Gen. James K. Beale, head of Air Force acquisition for space and nuclear deterrence, referring to delays that resulted from funding cuts over the past year. But, he says, the 2004 first launch date is likely to stay on track. "If we have to slip, it will be modest ... ," he says. "At the moment, we're holding our launch schedule."
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is discussing with Boeing a possible role in development of a new rocket engine for the Delta IV family of launch vehicles the company is building for the Pentagon as its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle as well as for the commercial market. MHI has no plans or market for a new rocket after it finishes work on the LE-7A and LE-5B engines for the H-2A launch vehicle, and wants to keep its hand in the Boeing project.
Reverberations of the March 3 tragedy in Italy in which all aboard a cable car were killed when its wire was struck by a U.S. Marine Corps EA-6B have been felt as far away as Japan. The Social Democrats and other major opposition parties there have criticized the government of Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro over an exemption in Japan's Aviation Law that allows U.S. military aircraft to conduct low-level flights. Civilian activists counted more than 1,000 ultra-low-level flights by U.S.
Moody's Investors Service doesn't expect to have to cut any corporate ratings any time soon as a result of the Asian financial crisis, but a prolonged downturn could change that, the corporate debt-watcher said. There are - and will be - some "noticeable" effects, Moody's said last Thursday in a prepared statement summarizing a series of reports on the crisis, "but the Asian troubles, as they stand now, should not be a significant enough factor to provoke a round of rating downgrades."
Two Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 engines completed their first ground run in an Apache helicopter at Boeing's Mesa, Ariz., facility, Turbomeca announced Thursday. The aircraft is scheduled to begin its flight test program later this year prior to the first flight of the WAH-64 variant, which has been ordered by the British Army Air Corps.
Germany's Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Sweden's Celsius have won a contract from Germany's Federal Office for Defense Technology and Procurement to jointly develop the Taurus missile, a standoff weapon for the Tornado fighter that may also be fitted to the Eurofighter. A company called Taurus GmbH is being created for the project. DASA's LFK unit will own 67% and Celsius' Bofors Missile division will have a 33% stake. Partners from Italy or Spain may also take shares in the project, LFK said.
International users of the AH-64 Apache helicopter have begun showing interest in internal fuel tanks that the U.S. Army may buy for its Apaches. Robertson Aviation is developing a 150-gallon tank for AH-64A and a 130-gallon version for AH-64D. The "D"-model Apaches have a different configuration in the ammunition bay, so they must use a smaller tank.
The Senate approved, by a vote of 57-41, the $1.73 trillion fiscal '99 federal budget resolution after accepting amendments urging the Clinton Administration to purchase three Black Hawk helicopters for drug-fighting in Colombia, and calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office to settle their differences on national security outlay estimates by April 22.
Bell Helicopter Textron's H-1 Program, an effort to remanufacture the U.S. Marine Corps' fleet of AH-1W Super Cobra and UH-1N utility helicopters, is 40% complete, and four major milestones are scheduled within the next six months, company officials said. Under the program, 180 AH-1Ws and 100 UH-1Ns will be remanufactured, giving the Marines 280 new helicopters to operate beyond 2020.
