Alliant Techsystems reported completion of performance tests on three key Outrider Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) subsystems. The company said Friday that it has tested the C-band data link, the electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) payload control and a new engine which has been integrated into an air vehicle. "The successful completion of these tests moves the Outrider TUAV program on step closer to total system integration," Hugo Fruehauf, Alliant Techsystems Defense Systems vice president, said in a prepared statement.
Lockheed Martin Ocean, Radar&Sensor Systems (OR&SS), Syracuse, N.Y., won a subcontract from Raytheon Co. for six TBS-B34 tactical mobile radars for Brazil's System for the Vigilance of the Amazon (SIVAM). Lockheed Martin said this is the first program in South America for OR&SS, and that the contract includes future options.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) asked the Justice Dept. to examine the anti-trust implications of a proposed takeover of United Defense L.P. by General Dynamics Corp. He said the "implications of such an acquisition raise concerns and deserve close scrutiny" by Justice. He also noted reports that if the deal goes through, General Dynamics could shift an assembly line now in York, Pa., to an Ohio facility, a prospect he called "troubling."
The Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the lead system integrator (LSI) contract for the national missile defense (NMD) program. Several days before BMDO's action on Friday, Acting Pentagon Acquisition Chief R. Noel Longuemare signed off on the organization's acquisition strategy for development of an initial NMD system, and gave it authority to begin the process to select the LSI (DAILY, Aug. 13).
DEFENDING DARO: Acting Pentagon acquisition chief Noel Longuemare and Tony Valletta, the Pentagon's acting chief of C3I, will come to the defense of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office in a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Sept. 3, according to DARO Director Maj. Gen. Kenneth Israel. The House Intelligence Committee called for termination of DARO in its fiscal year 1998 authorization bill, but no such action is included in the Senate version.
EUROPEAN IR COOPERATION: GIFAS, the French aerospace industry association, says the first major defense program to benefit from a cooperation agreement between Thomson-CSF Missile Electronics and GEC-Marconi Sensors Ltd. to develop and produce infrared seekers for missiles will probably be the tactical air strike weapon to be made by Matra BAe Dynamics for the British and French armed forces.
SEA LAUNCH: World Bank guarantees for the Boeing-led Sea Launch venture should be signed, sealed and delivered by October, now that questions about the bank's charter prohibition on participation in military activities have been resolved. Under the arrangement the bank will back guarantees of $100 million each for Russia and Ukraine - where the Sea Launch Zenit booster is built - against political risk (DAILY, April 21).
IMAX AT STATION: NASA has signed a deal with the Imax Corp. that will allow the company to produce a commercial 3-D 70mm-format film of the International Space Station during assembly. Under the deal, similar to those that led to other Imax productions of NASA space activities, astronauts will film assembly sequences with Imax cameras and the U.S. space agency will retain copyright on the images they produce. Imax Corp. will get a limited license to produce a film from the footage and distribute it commercially.
Antonov's An-70 propfan-powered transport will participate in the Aug. 19- 24 MAKS 97 air show near Moscow, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. The four-engine aircraft, apparently a second prototype replacing the No. 1 aircraft that was lost in an in-flight collision, flew Aug. 15 from Gostomel near Kiev to Zhukovksky, the site of the air show, Itar-Tass reported. The aircraft, according to Itar-Tass, is designed to fly from runways 600 to 900 meters long.
TEXTRON MOVES: Industry analyst Paul Nisbet of JSA Research, Newport, R.I., sees Textron dumping the Marine and Land business of its Systems and Component segment. He says Textron will plan to grow through acquisitions in its Automotive and Industrial segments.
Hughes (UK) Ltd. has won an $8.2 million program definition and risk reduction study contract from the U.K. Ministry of Defense for the Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) program. The company said Friday that the contract will allow it "to reduce development risk to a level acceptable to the MoD." Hughes and its teammates are offering the Future Medium Range Air-to- air Missile (FMRAAM), an extended range derivative of AMRAAM, the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, to meet the BVRAAM requirement.
COMMERCIAL SPACE: Initial reports that Cosmonaut Anatoli Solovyev took control of his Soyuz capsule during his Aug. 7 docking with Mir because the tried-and-true Kurs automatic docking system failed are wrong, but the official line as to what really happened stretches credulity too. That version holds that the Kurs was targeting Mir so accurately that Solovyev lost his docking crosshairs in the approaching docking target and pulled away to make sure they were there.
Russian and U.S. space officials will confer today on a final review of Wednesday's planned spacewalk inside a depressurized portion of the Mir orbital station to reconnect critical power cables unplugged as crew members sealed off the leaking Spektr module following its June 25 collision with a runaway Progress resupply ship.
HELOS FOR TAIWAN: The Taiwanese army plans to buy a new fleet of transport helicopters worth about $1.1 billion, according to reports from Taipei. The army is looking for 12 heavy and 100 medium-sized helicopters to replace its Bell UH-1Hs.
BOEING PRODUCTIVITY: Boeing Co.'s commercial aircraft business is experiencing a "near-term decline in productivity" as a result of its rapid production rate buildup, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The buildup resulted in a substantial increase in employment, material and fabrication demand, and "overtime in engineering and production areas continues at high levels." Production, now at about 30 aircraft a month, is scheduled to go to 43 a month by the second quarter of next year.
The U.S. Air Force's Phillips Laboratory intends to award CSA Engineering Inc., El Cajon, Calif., a contract to evaluate options for future use of low cost space and sub-orbital launch systems. The lab's Space Technology Div. said in an Aug. 14 Commerce Business Daily notice that wants to use excess Minuteman boosters to place small satellites into low Earth orbits, and that the effort is aimed at coming up with a family of low-cost, passive launch isolation systems to reduce dynamic loads transmitted to satellite payloads during launch.
Despite declaring in April that its first few B-2 bombers have reached initial operating capability (IOC), the U.S. Air Force has decided that the stealth bomber's low-observable features make it too delicate to deploy to forward operating bases for the time being, the General Accounting Office reported. Moreover, even if some of the maintainability problems are solved, GAO suggested that the aircraft may never be able to forward-deploy without some sort of shelter.
Airbus Industrie remains committed to knocking Boeing Co. out of first place in the international airliner market, even after the merger of the Seattle-based manufacturer and McDonnell Douglas. "If we can be assured that they will not abuse their dominant position, then we will be okay," said John Leahy, vice president-commercial of the European consortium. "On a level playing field, I am convinced that we will have at least 50% of the market."
LOOK AHEAD: DARO is completing an architecture study that Gen. Israel says will provide a plan for manned and unmanned reconnaissance to the year 2010. The architecture will try to link DARO with Joint Vision 2010, formulated by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili. It will include a long-term investment strategy, as well as force mix options for manned versus unmanned systems. Commercial and military satellite reconnaissance systems will be factored into the force mix analysis. This analysis may keep the document classified, Israel says.
A new gamma ray detector built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center crams 100 times more pixels into a given area than has previously been done, offering applications in medicine and industrial processes as well as better chances for pinpointing the celestial sources of transient gamma ray bursts.
FOCUS ON PRIVATIZATION: Israel in the next fiscal year intends to become more aggressive in privatizing its arms industry, says Eliahu Ben-Elissar, the country's ambassador to the U.S. A new military attache will soon be appointed at the embassy in Washington, he says, adding that this official might play a bigger role in encouraging American companies to participate in joint ventures with Israeli companies.
Responding to stings from annoyed airlines complaining about shortages of parts for its early JT8D turbofan models, Pratt&Whitney says it has "put on extra vendors" and is "doing everything we can to meet demand." Several carriers have had to ground aircraft for lack of parts. P&W says it has "seen a big increase in demand for a handful of parts. We are working the problem very hard."
NASA's new Fastrac rocket engine, which will power the X-34 prototype reusable launch vehicle beginning next year, has passed a component test that demonstrated its thrust chamber assembly at high pressures "almost identical to flight conditions," the U.S. space agency reported yesterday.
Cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexander Lazutkin returned safely to Earth in Kazakhstan yesterday after a six-month tour on the Mir orbital station that ranks among the most difficult missions in the history of space flight.
