System Planning Corporation, Arlington, Va., is being awarded a $10,861,516 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with cost-plus-fixed-fee pricing for engineering and technical support for the Electronics Technology Office, Arlington, Va. The Electronics Technology Office focuses on electronic technology for information systems to perceive and control the battlefield. This contract contains options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value to $20,001,736.
Raytheon TI Systems said it has won two subcontracts worth a total of $34.6 million for work on the seeker of the Harpoon anti-ship missile. RTIS, McKinney, Tex., makes the seeker for Harpoon prime contractor Boeing Co. One contract, for $28.9 million, is for manufacture and delivery of 158 radar seekers, with the potential for another five seekers this fiscal year. The other contract, for $5.7 million, is for the first phase of the Seeker Life Extension Program (SLEP).
Boeing Co. will halt production of MD-80 and MD-90 twinjet airliners in mid-1999, but is committed to build at least 50 MD-95s for launch customer AirTran, the company said yesterday. Boeing, consolidating its acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, said it will continue to build MD-11 trijets. The MD-80/90 decision kills a production program dating back to December 1965, when the first DC-9 was delivered. It has been built as the MD-80 since September 1980. Douglas Aircraft delivered 976 DC-9s. As of Sept. 30, it had received orders for 1,165 MD-80s and 145 MD-90s.
The airport company Frankfurt Main Flughafen AG (FAG) is negotiating to buy Hahn airport, a former U.S. military base, from the German land of Rheinland Pfalz. FAG said its move is partially motivated by the "aggressive competition" of neighboring Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. It fears that Schiphol, which is already attracting German freight business, could take business away from Hahn, some 100 kilometers east of Frankfurt. Since 1995, the former U.S. base has been used for freight transport and some passenger holiday flights.
Orbital Sciences Corp. said sales increases in the space and ground infrastructure business helped it post another quarterly sales record. Orbital, of Dulles, Va., reported that sales climbed 38% to $164.7 million in its 1997 third quarter, up from 1996 sales of $119.6 million. Earnings also increased 38%, growing from $4.5 million to $6.1 million in the same period. The space and ground infrastructure business, which includes launch vehicles, satellites, electronics and sensors and ground systems, reported 45% higher sales of $149.4 million.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Bethpage, N.Y., is being awarded a $173,841,104 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-96-C-0195 to definitize the advance acquisition contract for the procurement of three FY 98 E-2C aircraft. Work will be performed in St. Augustine, Fla. (75%), Bethpage, N.Y. (24%), and Milledgeville, Ga. (1%), and is expected to be completed by October 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity. McDonnell Douglas Corp., St.
Controllers destroyed Brazil's Veiculo Lancador de Satelites (VLS) shortly after liftoff Sunday when the domestic smallsat launcher veered off course over the north-coast launch site at Alcantara. Destroyed with the VLS rocket was the SCD-2A data messaging satellite that would have been the first spacecraft launched by the South American nation on its own rocket. An earlier version of the Brazilian satellite, which relays environmental data, was launched by a Pegasus vehicle and remains in orbit.
Aerospatiale Chairman Yves Michot will take over from British Aerospace's Richard Evans as chairman of the European Association of Aerospace Manufacturers (AECMA) in 1998, the organization said yesterday in Brussels. AECMA, which represents 550 companies in nine European Union countries with an annual turnover of about 44 billion ecus, will serve as "the industry's liaison with the European Commission on issues such as research funding, technical development, transport policy and international trade," the organization said.
Maintenance provider Lufthansa Technik AG and jet engine parts maker Heico Aerospace of Hollywood, Fla., will form an alliance, with Lufthansa investing about $26 million and receiving a 20% ownership interest in Heico, the companies announced. The investment by Lufthansa Technik, a subsidiary of Lufthansa German Airlines AG based in Hamburg, Germany, will include $16 million over a three-year period for a research and development cooperation agreement to partially fund development of additional jet engine replacement parts.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command and Boeing have accepted delivery of a Hughes Training Inc. tactics trainer that will be used to train crews of the Royal Malaysian Air Force, which is slated to get eight F/A-18D aircraft. The dual-seat simulator for pilots and weapons systems officers will allow the practice of basic pilot skills, tactical formations, intercepts, maneuvering, gun employment, precision weapons delivery and a host of other flight tactics, according to Hughes.
NASA is exercising a contract option, valued at $147 million, to extend for another year EG&G Florida Inc.'s base operations contract at Kennedy Space Center. EG&G Florida has been KSC's base operations contractor since 1983, providing management, operation, maintenance and engineering support and fire, security and technical services. The contract, due to expire Oct. 31, 1997, now will extend through Oct. 1, 1998.
Lockheed Martin Information Systems, Denver, Colo., was awarded on October 21, a $7,425,000 face value increase to a fixed-price-incentive contract to extend by two months (February and March 1998) launch operations support for the Titan II and IV launch systems. Contract is expected to be completed March 1998. At this time, $6,500,000 of the contract funds have been obligated. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles AFB, Calif., is the contracting activity (F04701-96/C-0001, P00081).
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works engineers on NASA's X-33 prototype reusable launch vehicle program will start working on the preliminary design of the all-private VentureStar commercial RLV, now that the X-33 has passed critical design review, company officials said yesterday. Jerry Rising, vice president and program director of X-33 and RLV programs, told reporters the X-33 design team will begin working on an orbital RLV based on the suborbital X-33's lifting body/linear aerospike design, with a target first launch date in 2004.
Lockheed Martin and General Electric agreed yesterday to a $2.8 billion stock-swap-plus cash deal which will net each company millions of dollars while paring down Lockheed Martin's acquisition-fattened portfolio with units that fit nicely in conglomerate GE's range of businesses. Lockheed Martin expects to record a gain topping $300 million. For its part, GE should wind up more than $1 billion richer.
OPEN WINDOW: Even if Congress immediately passes legislation to accelerate a number of theater missile defense (TMD) programs, it may not be fast enough, says Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), sponsor of the legislation. He says the programs can only be moved so fast, and that there will still be a "window of vulnerability" in which Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East won't be adequately protected from an Iranian threat that is projected to materialize within a year.
TIMELINESS NEEDED: The U.S. Defense Dept. must improve its ability to deliver targeting information to shooters to keep targets from moving before they can be attacked, says R.T. Gooden of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "Accuracy is meaningless without timeliness," he tells the Association of Old Crows convention in Washington. Gooden points out that in the Marine Corps' recently concluded Hunter Warrior exercise, it took about 10 minutes to relay target coordinates to the shooters and by then, the targets had moved.
IC EFFICIENCY: The Intelligence Community over the past year has developed a more efficient process for making program and budget decisions, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet informs lawmakers. The new process allows the DCI and deputy secretary of defense to better determine whether their funding decisions will satisfy mission requirements, according to the 1997 Report on Intelligence Activities, submitted recently to Congress.
The U.S. Army wants concrete results from its upcoming division-level Advanced Warfighting Experiment (AWE) by next February, in large part to make decisions on how to reconfigure its heavy divisions and how to equip them. The service will make "important decisions in the near future," following the Nov. 5 - 13 command-level exercise, Maj. Gen. Robert Clark told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon. He said the Army wants to complete its division redesign effort, expected to cut 3,000 troops from each heavy division, by February.
U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command awarded BDM International a $28 million contract for night vision and electronic sensor technology. The contract, which contains four one-year options, is worth a potential $140 million. "The night vision and electronic sensors technology developed and applied under this contract will assist U.S.
The Senate on Thursday overrode President Clinton's line-item veto of 38 military construction appropriations projects by a vote of 69-30, or three more than the necessary two thirds vote, but the override attempt now faces an uncertain future in the House. House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who is engaged in negotiations with the Administration on the substantial Labor- Health and Human Services appropriations bill, has no plans to take up a veto override in the House, a Livingston spokeswoman said.
EarthWatch Inc., Longmont, Colo., and Intermap Technologies Ltd. of Canada have agreed to jointly market products created by combining EarthWatch's high-resolution satellite images with digital elevation models (DEMs) produced by Intermap. With the addition of Intermap's DEMs, the EarthWatch images may be draped over the terrain data and are thereby transformed from 2D to 3D, which is suitable for imagery "fly throughs" and other visualization techniques, the companies said.
The Senate on Friday overwhelmingly voted for debate-limiting cloture, clearing the way for a vote on final congressional passage of the $268.2 billion fiscal 1998 defense authorization. The vote was 93-2, well over the 60 votes needed to impose cloture. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) announced after the vote that by agreement, the Senate would resume consideration of the Dept. of Defense conference report on Thursday, and presumably vote on it that day. White Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin D.
