The U.S. Army is slated to make several changes to its utility helicopter fleet plans in the near future, and some will be presented as part of the new Aviation Modernization Plan to be submitted to Congress in coming weeks. "We will be doing some things with the utility fleet" relating to the UH-60 Black Hawks, UH-1 Hueys and Light Utility Helicopters, Col. Roger McCauley, the head of Army aviation program for the Army deputy chief of staff for operations and plans, told the American Helicopter Society last week in Arlington Va.
No aerospace companies made a list of the top 20 companies considered to make good use of business or competitive intelligence, according to a recent survey. Microsoft and Motorola switched positions from 1996 but remained the top two companies in "Ostriches&Eagles III: Competitive Intelligence Capabilities in U.S. Companies," a survey of senior executives at 101 American corporations conducted by The Futures Group of Glastonbury, Conn. In 1996, Hughes Electronics was the highest ranking aerospace company at No. 14.
Britain and Sweden have given South Africa a six-month deadline to make a decision on arms procurement. It has until July 31 to make a decision or risk losing more than $4 billion in trade over the next 10 years, the Chinese press agency reported from Johannesburg. A British Aerospace representative in South Africa said a delay in the decision would harm the local defense industry and lead to export losses, according to the Xinhua report.
SIGNAL TECHNOLOGY CORP., Sunnyvale, Calif., said its board of directors authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $2 million through July 1, 1998.
Textron Lycoming was not involved in final assembly of the Slingsby T-3A trainer, nor in integration of the engine into the airframe. A sentence in a Jan. 8 DAILY story (page 28) can be interpreted as implying otherwise.
The U.S. Navy is looking for ideas to improve the propulsion of insensitive munitions, and hopes to demonstrate the concepts in the near future for potential application to existing and development weapons.
'GOOD INTENTIONS': Former base closing chairman and House National Security Committee member Jim Courter says OMB Circular A-76, the principle government document on outsourcing functions, is "an example of good intentions gone awry." He says A-76 has presented "numerous obstacles and regulatory impediments to greater reliance on the marketplace." Managers are allowed to keep functions in-house if there's no satisfactory commercial source, if unacceptable delays would occur if in-house performance is required for national defense, and if outsource savings would be less
GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE CORP., Savannah, Ga., established a program to buy back up to $200 million of its common stock, funding the program with cash on hand. The purchases will be made from time to time in the open market or through negotiated transactions.
BROADBAND MARKET: Newly available high frequency spectrum will feed a $76 billion market for broadband satellite systems, according to Pioneer Consulting of Cambridge, Mass. Growing from a cumulative investment of about $660 million this year, satellite systems that provide Internet-type access to large volumes of data will jump by $2 billion in 1999 and continue growing rapidly through 2010. The Cambridge group counted satellites, launch vehicles, insurance and ground equipment costs in arriving at its estimate.
SAVI TECHNOLOGY INC., Mountain View, Calif., said that Motorola's protest of Savi's $111.7 million contract to supply Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) equipment to the U.S. Dept. of Defense was denied by the Office of the Comptroller General. Savi will make hardware and software, and provide service supporting the deployment of RFID systems in all U.S. armed services.
NASA's Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), a Delta-class satellite observatory designed to provide researchers with astrometry of unprecedented accuracy, will also wring out new technology that will be needed to build a "planet finder" at the orbit of Jupiter sensitive enough to find and analyze Earth-sized planets around nearby stars.
Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said yesterday that they supported keeping U.S. combat troops in a follow-on force in Bosnia "for a reasonable period," which Levin considered to be "several years." President Clinton announced last month that U.S. forces would stay in Bosnia beyond the June 30, 1998, deadline that he originally imposed. The issue will come to a head this year because Congress has funded the Bosnia operation only through June 30.
Boeing Co. signed a contract valued at more than $300 million with Australia's Dept. of Defense for the Australian Defense Force High Frequency Modernization Project (HFMOD). Boeing North American won the contract in May, beating Australian competitor Telstra Applied Technologies (DAILY, May 28, 1997). In a prepared statement, David Gray, managing director of Boeing Australia Ltd., said the project "will revolutionize communications within Australia's defense forces."
U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will serve a second term in that position, the Pentagon announced yesterday. Ralston was named vice chairman about two years ago and would serve another two years. He was in line to become JCS chairman, succeeding Gen. John Shalikashvili, but was forced to remove his name from consideration after revelation last June of an adulterous affair he had 13 years ago. His duties as vice chairman include heading the Joint Requirements Oversight Council.
The U.S. Navy this week opened a center for command, control, computer, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) that it said will play a key role in realizing the concept of "network-centric warfare" in which as many information gathering systems as possible are linked to support the fleet. The $29 million Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston, S.C., which opened Tuesday, has been set up to assess and help build that larger system, the Navy said.
The Pentagon will keep management of the Airborne Laser (ABL) program under the Air Force and provide adequate funding for the effort through the future years defense plan (FYDP), Pentagon Comptroller John Hamre has told Congress. There had been some talk on Capitol Hill about shifting ABL management back to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The fiscal year 1998 House Appropriations Conference Report directed the Office of Secretary of Defense to determine whether ABL is being properly managed by the Air Force.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-95 is now called the Boeing 717 and is the company's entry into the short-haul regional jet market, Boeing officials said yesterday.
The terminated Topaz II Space Nuclear Power Program involving the U.S. and Russia was unable to achieve either its original goal of technology transfer or a later goal of defense conversion, a General Accounting Office investigation has concluded. Several investigations for violation of law are underway.
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, embarking on a two-week trip to Asia on Saturday, intends to stress that the U.S. wants to maintain a strong presence there as the region undergoes financial turmoil, a senior Pentagon official said yesterday. Part of Cohen's message includes promoting use of U.S. military equipment and technologies, said the official, who requested anonymity while briefing reporters.
Goddard Space Flight Center Director Joseph H. Rothenberg has been named the new associate NASA administrator for space flight, effective Monday, the U.S. space agency announced yesterday. Rothenberg's deputy at GSFC, Alphonse V. Diaz, will take over as director there, NASA said.
The Pentagon's Inspector General is expected to side with the U.S. Navy in its investigation of the Tactical Tomahawk program, a development that would clear the way for the service to request a reprogramming of funds to launch the effort.
Orbcomm, the "Little LEO" company jointly owned by Orbital Sciences Corp., Canada's Teleglobe and TRI Inc. of Malaysia, is already seeing an upswing in its marketing activity since the successful launch last month of eight of its alphanumeric messaging satellites, according to Orbcomm President Alan Parker.
The U.S. Army this year plans to make changes to its modernization program to sort out several different paths the service has been pursuing over the past year, Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer said yesterday.
The U.S. and Germany have extended an agreement to continue cooperation in air defense, which includes continued use of the Patriot and Roland missile systems by German armed forces. The U.S. and Germany in 1983 signed an agreement on cooperative measures to enhance air defense in Central Europe. While that agreement was extended in 1984, it was due to expire on Jan. 1, 1998.
