The Pentagon opposes a $16.2 million cut that House authorizers are proposing for a signals intelligence package for the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle program, saying it is a "must do" project.
HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN James F. Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) has hired Ken Gorden as a professional staff member on the space and aeronautics subcommittee. Gorden comes from Aerospace Corp., which advises the Air Force on military space policy.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree to resolve financing questions about Russia's portion of the International Space Station, Itar- Tass reported Friday. The order allows the Russian Finance Ministry to appropriate $99.5 million for the Russian Space Agency through credits with foreign banks.
ARIANESPACE launched the PAS-6 satellite for PanAmSat Friday at 2:46 a.m. EDT from Kourou, French Guiana. It said an Ariane 44P carried the satellite. It was the 27th consecutive successful launch of an Ariane 4 rocket, and Arianespace's sixth successful launch in 1997. The company has 45 satellites on order to be launched, with Flight 99 scheduled for Sept. 2. An Ariane 44L will carry two European satellites, Eutelsat's Hot Bird 3 telecommunications satellite and Eumetsat's Meteosat 7 weather satellite.
Morgantown, W. Va., won a contract from the Dept. of Defense to develop a high frequency and a very high frequency Contrawound Toroidal Helical Antenna (CTHA). Emergent Technologies Corp., a subsidiary of Integral, will work with West Virginia University to complete a prototype developed by the university. The award comes from the Combatant Craft Dept., Special Projects division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center Detachment, Norfolk, Va.
The U.S. Navy is cautioning industry not to be too adventurous in its design proposals for the Common Support Aircraft. Capt. Gary Peterson, the CSA requirements officer, tells industry that the service wants a "middle of the [performance] envelope" aircraft. One of the CSA briefing charts said "an 'exotic' aircraft may be inconsistent with CSA mission, budget." That's one reason the Navy is expecting to field a conventional take-off and landing CSA.
The U.S. Air Force plans to use conventionally armed bombers on alert to attack an enemy in the earliest stages of a conflict until an Air Expeditionary Force of fighters and other assets can get to the theater. The service is promoting the alert bomber force, or armed bomber initiative, as being able to put weapons on target within a day to "give the AEF time to form up and start moving," an AF official said. The bombers would be used to stop an enemy's advance.
The cost of the U.S. Army's Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program increased $1.4 billion because of a program restructure triggered by the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon said Friday in its filing for June 30 of Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) programs.
The Navy isn't expecting CSA to meet all requirements it can conceive for the platform. "We won't be able to gold plate this," says Rear Adm. J.M. "Carlos" Johnson, the Navy's air warfare requirements chief. The program, therefore, is expected to leverage existing technology such as that found on U-2s, RC-135s or previously developed inverse synthetic aperture radars, he says.
Santa Clara, Calif., received approval from the U.S. Army to begin low rate production of Bradley M2A3. It said it will convert 35 older Bradleys to the A3 version. The potential $145 million contract has options for 38 more vehicles over the next two years, according to the company. First delivery is scheduled for October 1998.
HUGHES INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS, Richmond, B.C., released the third set of software in a series of five for the Canadian Automated Air Traffic System (CAATS), the company announced yesterday. The latest release provides air traffic control capabilities for enroute, terminal and tower airspace for both radar and non-radar environments. It also supports some air traffic control and operational maintenance support positions in an area control center.
A recent U.S. Navy exercise in which an aircraft carrier launched and recovered planes at an increased tempo showed no degradation in mission effectiveness, according to the Navy. The USS Nimitz completed a four-day surge off the U.S. West Coast in which it ran continuous air wing operations to assess the ability to operate at higher rates for prolonged periods. The Navy says it can surge for about five days.
Arianespace is slated to launch PAS6, a telecommunications satellite, today from Kourou, French Guiana, the company announced. The launch window falls between 1:46 a.m. and 2:46 a.m. EST. PAS6 was built by Space Systems Loral, Palo Alto, Calif., for PanAmSat, Greenwich, Conn., to offer direct to home television broadcast to South America, and particularly Brazil.
Legislation introduced in the days before Congress went on its month- long recess last week would cut or terminate major Pentagon programs to balance the budget, and place limitations on executive pay under government contracts. Both issues have been around for some time and have retained a core of support on Capitol Hill, but have never quite captured a majority of either house.
Two Russian cosmonauts arrived safely and boarded the Mir space station yesterday, despite difficulty in docking their Soyuz craft. The new crew, Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov, had to dock manually after automatic systems developed a fault 13 yards from Mir, Flight Director Vladimir Solovyov told reporters after the docking yesterday. "Soyuz retreated by 25 meters and then docked manually," he said. "It was a technical malfunction." While the situation was not considered critical, Solovyov said it would be looked into.
The SLS-2000 Satellite Landing System yesterday received Type Acceptance certification by the FAA, becoming the first differential Global Positioning System ground station to achieve the status, according to Honeywell Inc. and Pelorus Navigation Systems.
Thiokol Corp. tested a Stage One solid rocket motor at Promontory, Utah, Wednesday, an event that it said was a milestone for the U.S. Air Force modernization of Minuteman III motors. This was the first of 12 motors scheduled for static tests under a six-year, $84.2 million propulsion replacement contract from the Air Force. The motors are projected to prolong the life of the Minuteman beyond 2020.
The U.S. Air Force wants to demonstrate "dynamic retasking" of low observable aircraft in a program expected to begin later this year. The service's Wright Laboratory is planning a 30-month, $4 million effort to develop and test an in-flight mission planning capability for stealthy aircraft, such as the F-117 and B-2, it said in a Aug. 8 Commerce Business Daily notice. A contract is expected to be awarded around Nov. 15.
Russia plans to market its Yakhont ("Gem" in Russian) anti-ship missile on the world market, Itar-Tass reported yesterday. But it said Rosvooruzheniye, which makes the missile, wouldn't comment on possible buyers. The Yakhont has a range of up to 300 kilometers and features a dual- mode radar guidance system, according to Itar-Tass. In the active mode, the system can guide the missile to a target 80 kilometers away. In the passive mode, it guides the missile to the target's working radar.
The U.S. Navy and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency say the Arsenal Ship program, now called the Maritime Fire Support Demonstrator, needs at least $85 million in fiscal 1998, or it can't proceed. John Douglas, Navy acquisition chief, and Larry Lynn, director of DARPA, wrote Aug. 6 in a letter to Congress that "it is essential to emerge from the Committee Conferences with at least $85 million in FY 1998 in order to execute the demonstrator ship program."
The U.S. yesterday became the first of 10 countries to sign a memorandum of understanding governing the production of 4,199 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles. The work and share of costs will be determined by how many of the ship self-defense missiles are bought by each country. Rear Adm. Rodney Rempt, the U.S. Navy chief of theater air defense, signed the agreement for the U.S., the Navy said.
NICHOLS RESEARCH CORP., Huntsville, Ala., won a three-year, $103.9 million contract from the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command to provide services to the Missile Guidance Directorate of the Research, Development and Engineering Center.
Leakage in the Centaur stage of the Titan IV-B rocket slated to launch the Cassini mission to Saturn was observed during an Aug. 5 countdown demonstration test at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., by U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin engineers, NASA reported yesterday. The test, in which the Centaur is fully fueled, is conducted to identify problems which could affect the performance of the Titan IV, NASA said.
Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) said yesterday it will delay the launch of the Kakehashi, or COMETS (Communication and Broadcasting Engineering Satellite), from this summer to January or February 1998 to study the results of the investigation of the loss last month of the ADEOS (Advanced Earth Observing Satellite). COMETS will be launched by an H-II rocket.
