LOCKHEED MARTIN AND RAYTHEON TI SYSTEMS received a $165 million contract from the U.S. Army for multi-year procurement of the Javelin fire and forget, anti-armor weapon system. Raytheon TI Systems and Lockheed Martin build the Javelin in a joint venture. Work on the contract is expected to be completed by Oct. 31, 2001.
REIMS AVIATION and French Customs today will mark 40,000 hours of flying time by 11 F406 aircraft in Customs' service. Missions have included surveillance of France's maritime frontiers, environmental protection and European cooperation.
Bell-Boeing Joint Project Office, Patuxent River, Md., is being awarded a $34,238,834 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-96-C-0054 for the manufacture, installation, test and support of an MV-22 Full Flight Simulator. Work will be performed in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma (49%), Fort Worth, Texas (35%), and Ridley Park, Pa. (16%), and is expected to be completed in May 2002. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity.
-- Shift funds from upgrade of legacy systems to new systems focused on the challenges of 2010-2020. -- Place more emphasis on directed energy, electromagnetic energy and cyber-weapons. -- Enable greater speed and penetration capability for Special Operations Forces to preempt or resolve terrorist activity or threats from weapons of mass destruction. -- Provide more near-zero miss, long-range stealthy cruise missiles, brilliant munitions and submunitions in lieu of dumb weapons.
Final approval last week by Germany's parliament to buy 180 Eurofighters won't deter the opposition parties from continuing their campaign against the $13 billion program. The Social Democrats and the Green Party have objected to the expenditure - the most Germany has spent on a single military procurement program - at a time when the country is cutting back on spending for social services. But they couldn't gather enough votes in the Nov. 26 Bundestag session to kill the Eurofighter, and lost by a vote of 331 to 296.
Longbow Limited Liability Co., Orlando, Fla., is being awarded $107,630,000 as part of a $565,345,000 firm-fixed-price multi-year contract for the fabrication, test and delivery of 207 Fire Control Radars (FCRs) and associated contractor services over a five-year period. The Longbow Fire Control Radar significantly improves the adverse weather fighting abilities of the AH-64D helicopter, provides a true fire-and-forget capability and increases target acquisition efficiency and effectiveness, thus increasing battlefield effectiveness and survivability.
Germany has agreed to join the U.S. in upgrading the Rolling Airframe Missile to allow it to engage helicopter, aircraft and surface ships in addition to its traditional anti-ship missile targets. "In the last [RAM] steering committee we received a commitment from the German government to join us in that program," U.S. Navy Capt. Mickey Bourne said yesterday in an interview in his Arlington, Va., office. "That was a big step" for the RAM program, he said.
U.S. DEFENSE DEPT. in fiscal 1997 had an aviation accident rate of 1.5 per 100,000 flight hours, the same as the previous two fiscal years. The total number of major aviation accidents dropped to 68, the lowest since 1958, the Pentagon said yesterday. Last year, the figure was 71. The Pentagon also recorded an all-time low number of aircraft destroyed - 54 in FY '97 compared to 66 the year before. This number has been declining since the end of the Gulf War. The FY '97 level marks a drop of more than 50% from FY '92.
BMW Rolls-Royce shipped the first BR715 engine for the MD-95 to the Boeing's Douglas plant in Long Beach, Calif. The second is to be shipped to the facility before the end of the year. The MD-95 is scheduled to make its first flight in the second quarter of 1998; delivery to launch customer AirTran Airlines is planned for mid- 1999.
BRITISH MOLE: The search for life on Mars is complicated by the sterilizing effect of ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which probably would kill any bacteria living on or near the surface. Now a group of British planetary scientists wants to send a 90-kilogram lander to the Red Planet in 2003, complete with mechanical "mole" to dig under the surface for samples that might contain living microbes.
The U.S. Defense Dept. is planning a "Tunnel Defeat Demonstration" program as one of several steps to combat the increasing global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Defense Special Weapons Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency will cooperate on the effort, which is designed to "develop, assess and demonstrate end-to-end targeting capabilities," the Pentagon said in a new report entitled "Proliferation: Threat and Response."
SYSTEM RESOURCES CORP., Burlington, Mass., will conduct technical research and evaluation of future air transportation management for NASA's Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AATT) program. The work will be carried out under a contract with a potential value of $45 million over five years.
The Italian Air Force last week signed a contract to buy 18 C-130J airlifters from Lockheed Martin, becoming the fourth nation to buy the aircraft. The U.K.'s Royal Air Force was the first C-130J customer in 1995, ordering 25 - 10 C-130Js and 15 C-130J-30s. The Royal Australian Air Force has ordered 12, and the U.S. Air Force has agreed to buy 14. In addition to the firm orders, Lockheed Martin said it has contract options for 72 additional aircraft.
Seven KC-135R aircraft modified to carry sophisticated communications equipment will replace seven other planes now used to support the U.S. military's unified commanders-in-chief. The KC-135Rs will replace an EC-135Y, an EC-135 and a CT-43A at MacDill AFB, Fla.; a KC-135E at Offutt, AFB, Neb.; a C-135K and a C-135E at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, and a C-141 at Kadena AB, Japan.
A spacewalk planned for Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov and NASA astronaut David Wolf, initially scheduled for Dec. 5, will be put off until Jan. 9, according to Victor Blagov of Russia's Mission Control Center in Korolev. The delay will make it possible "to evenly distribute the work load on the crew and ground personnel, giving the program a more logical schedule," Blagov said in a statement.
LEARNING CURVE: The final chapter on President Clinton's line-item veto of military construction appropriations projects won't come until early next year when Senate and House appropriators try for an override. After line- item vetoes in seven appropriations bills, it appears that milcon and defense appropriations measures fared the worst by being among the first to be ready for Clinton's signature following the Supreme Court's dismissal of a congressional challenge to the law in June.
C-130 UPGRADES: The U.S. Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Command plan to use several of the upgrades being implemented for their fleet of F- 16s on C-130s as well. Lt. Col. Chris Mears, chief of requirements and integration for AFRES, says the Situational Awareness Datalink (SADL) and the electronic warfare management system are prime candidates for the airlifter (DAILY, Nov. 26).
Hannover Finance Group, in cooperation with another capital development company and TBG of Bonn, Germany, have acquired a minority share in Wankel Rotary GmbH, Stuttgart, for $4.6 million, Wankel announced. Wankel will use the cash to develop prototypes and production releases. Most of Wankel's shares still will be held by Juergen Bax, president of the company.
United Air Lines has been chosen by Boeing Co. to maintain 757 airliners used by the U.S. Air Force to transport the vice president, cabinet members, members of Congress and foreign dignitaries. The Air Force is to receive the first two of four new 757s, designated C-32As, early next year. They will replace aging 707s (VC-137s) based at Andrews AFB, Md.
Arianespace and the European Space Agency signed an agreement marking the official transfer to Arianespace of responsibility for launch pad 3 (ELA 3) at Kourou, French Guiana. Arianespace said its Operations Directorate is now responsible for the management, maintenance and operation of both ELA 2, which it has run since 1986, and ELA 3. Together, the pads make up the ground facilities for Ariane 4 and Ariane 5.
WHERE THERE'S HOPE ... : Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) sees hope for restoration of funds for the Pentagon's Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office. In a floor debate just before Congress adjourned, Dicks, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee and a senior member of the House Appropriations national security subcommittee, said that when the House considered the fiscal 1998 defense appropriations act, national security subcommittee chairman C.W.
Raytheon Co. signed an agreement to sell Raytheon Semiconductor to Fairchild Semiconductor Corp., South Portland, Maine, for about $120 million in cash, Raytheon announced. Raytheon Semiconductors, with locations in Mountain View and San Diego, Calif., reported sales of about $70 million in 1996. Completion of the sale, expected by the end of the year, is subject to U.S. government approval.
Allison Engine Co., Indianapolis, said orders this year for Lockheed Martin's C-130J airlifter will bring it about $250 million. Allison, a member of Rolls-Royce plc, said it will supply AE 2100D3 engines for 32 C-130Js ordered in 1997. The U.S. Dept. of Defense will buy 14 of the aircraft, and 18 will go to the Italian Air Force. Deliveries to Italy will begin in 1999 (see story on page 326).
The remotely piloted NASA/Boeing X-36 tailless fighter research plane has completed its flight program, showing that future air-to-air combat jets without traditional tails could be more agile than today's best fighters, NASA reported. During the final flight phase, the X-36 team examined agility at low speed/high angles of attack and high speed/low angles of attack, NASA said. "We also achieved the final flight's goal to expand the X-36's speed envelope up to 206 knots," Mark Sumich, NASA's X-36 project manager, said in a statement.
