BMDO and the U.S. Navy next month will propose to the Pentagon's Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) a plan to field an initial Block I version of the Navy Theater Wide, or Upper Tier, theater missile defense system, Lyles says. BMDO and the Navy would follow soon after with a "more capable" Block II upgrade, he says. The DAB is slated to review the acquisition plan in mid-April.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a member of the House National Security research and development subcommittee, is pushing for $24 million to bring a second Comanche helicopter prototype into the test program in fiscal 1999, ahead of the current plan for fiscal 2000. When he asked about the idea at an HNSC hearing last week, Army Acting Secretary Robert M. Walker was ready for the question and said that there is a second prototype, but that the $24 million would be needed for "facilitizing it for testing" in FY '99.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN said it expects a request for proposals from the U.S. Air Force for the Joint STARS radar technology insertion program (RTIP) soon, and a contract award could come in November. RTIP is a $1.3 billion preplanned product improvement (P3I) program in which the company will design, develop, install, test and integrate advanced radar systems in Joint STARS. The current schedule calls for a six-year development phase. Depending on funding, production retrofits could begin in 2006.
The first B-2 is about to enter phased depot maintenance, meaning it will have logged 600 hours of flight time. Although the B-2 has been labeled as having maintenance woes, Goslin points out that 600 hours between phased depot maintenance sessions is the longest time of any USAF combat plane.
The U.S. government won't commit full funding to buying 40 Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) user operational evaluation systems (UOES) until two more flight tests, in addition to one slated for May, are conducted, according to Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Director Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles.
The U.S. Air Force has no plans to delay the schedule for production of the F-22 fighter, but could consider increasing the rate of flight testing leading up to that time, Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon told reporters yesterday.
American Eagle Airlines chose Pratt&Whitney Canada as fleet engine repair center for its PW100 turboprops, and the Canadian company is sending a full-time Power Plant Engineer to Dallas as part of the deal. The contract includes overhaul, repair, hot section inspection, component repair development, accessory repair, spare engines and Quick Engine Change (QEC) support. American Eagle flies 200 aircraft on 1,200 flights every day to 125 cities.
ORBCOMM has opened its European Gateway in Italy that will provide the Orbital Sciences Corp. subsidiary's satellite-based alphanumeric messaging service to 42 European nations. Located at Telespazio Matera Space Center in Southern Italy and at Telespazio Lario Space Center in Northern Italy, the Earth station and Gateway Control Center, respectively, will relay messages between Orbcomm's growing constellation of small low Earth orbit satellites and the Internet or dedicated telephone lines.
The Senate on Tuesday added $151 million, $51 million more than the Clinton Administration requested, to counter a theater missile threat that is expected from Iran within the year. Introduced by Senate Appropriations Chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R- Alaska) on behalf of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the amendment was approved without objection and added to the defense-disaster fiscal 1998 supplemental. It would add the following requested amounts:
The Chilean Air Force plans to buy a Sikorsky S-70A Black Hawk helicopter, Sikorsky announced at the FIDEA Air Show in Santiago yesterday. It quoted air force spokesmen as saying the sale kicks off a major aircraft replacement program. Sikorsky said the program will replace the current fleet of UH-1 Hueys with Black Hawks on a 3-to-1 ratio, with additional S-70 buys planned for the next several years.
FRANCE'S SPOT 4 Earth resources satellite has passed its initial checkout following its launch Monday night (DAILY, March 25), and will be handed over to SPOT Image in Toulouse by the French space agency CNES once the platform is configured for operations. In addition to two High Resolution Visible and Infrared (HRVIR) imagers that will provide 10-meter resolution in black and white and 20-meter multispectral resolution, SPOT 4 carries the Vegetation sensor built by Aerospatiale.
Boeing engineers in Mesa, Ariz., and Philadelphia are studying the feasibility of several concepts that integrate so-called smart materials into helicopter rotor blades under a program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Smart materials change shape when stimulated with thermal, electrical or magnetic energy and return to their original shape when the stimulus is removed. Boeing's Roger Hunthausen, technology development manager in Mesa, says smart materials could improve rotor aerodynamics and reduce vibration and noise.
The U.S. Air Force's decision to award the F-22 production contract for the first two planes in Lot I with only 4% of the development test program completed, a point of contention in a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, was raised yesterday at a House National Security Committee hearing. It may become an issue in the committee's markup of the fiscal 1999 defense authorization next month.
General Electric and Pratt&Whitney, deep in a marketing battle in the United Arab Emirates (AP, Dec. 5, 1997), won't have their answer until the end of this year, say UAE military officials. UAE's official news agency, WAM, quoted Col. Obaid Salem al-Kutbi as saying that officials are still considering best-and-final offers for Lockheed Martin F-16s, Dassault's Rafale and the Eurofighter 2000. SNECMA powers the Rafale, while the Eurojet EJ200 is the Eurofighter's power plant. GE F110s and P&W F100s power F-16s.
Researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla are getting ready to test fiber-reinforced composite materials at jet engine operating conditions under NASA's Advanced Subsonic Technology (AST) program. Boosted by $448,671 in funding from enginemaker Pratt&Whitney, two senior academics at the school will run tests on panels of materials under various conditions in the laboratory at UMR's Graduate Center for Materials Research, and then use data from these short-term tests to extrapolate long-term performance.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been cleared to begin design and development work on the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), an orbiting instrument to probe the Universe in infrared wavelengths that will round out the U.S. space agency's series of four planned "Great Observatories."
Europe's national space agencies will merge their astronaut programs with the multi-national program managed by the European Space Agency to create a single, 16-member astronaut corps by mid-2000, ESA announced.
LORAL SPACE&COMMUNICATIONS has completed its acquisition of Orion Network Systems Inc. in a stock swap valued at about $479 million. Orion shareholders received 0.71553 shares of Loral common stock in exchange for each Orion share, for a total of about 18.3 million newly issued Loral shares. Based in Rockville, Md., Orion has one satellite in orbit and two more under construction for high speed Internet connections and multimedia network communications services for businesses (DAILY, Oct. 16, 1997; March 6).
General Electric Aircraft Engines' first-ever CF34-8C1 turbofan exceeded its specification thrust rating during initial development testing at GE's Lynn, Mass., facilities, GE reports. Fired up for the first time on Feb. 20, after only 10 hours of initial performance calibration and facility checkout runs, engine power was advanced to 14,500 lbst. - 5% more than its 13,790 lbst. certification level.
GE Engine Services and LOT Polish Airlines agreed to form an aircraft maintenance and repair joint venture at the Warsaw airport, and hope to work out a final deal later this year. GE says the new venture will work on LOT's own CFM56 medium turbofans, later branching out to service the engines of other airline customers in the region and worldwide. "The record of CFM56 operations with LOT is outstanding," notes GE Engine Services President Bill Vareschi.
ECHOSTAR COMMUNICATIONS CORP. reported revenues up more than 240% during the fourth quarter of 1997 as the subscriber base for its DISH Network grew and business picked up at its Technology and Satellite Services business units. But the cost of marketing drove up the Littleton, Colo.-based satellite services concern's loses for the quarter as well. Fourth quarter revenues were $170 million, compared to $52 million for the fourth quarter of 1996. EchoStar's net loss for the quarter, which ended Dec.
AF and Pratt&Whitney program managers have settled on an unusual high-frequency vibration as the cause of the ingestion incident on an F119 development engine earlier this month that temporarily halted engineering/manufacturing development testing on all F-22 engines. Moreover, says P&W's Tom Farmer, who heads the company's F119 effort for the F-22, the trouble was unique to the engine - No. 621 - which failed, so the four engines already delivered in the field to support flight testing shouldn't face any problems.
