MOSCOW - A secondary goal of the planned spacewalk Thursday to restore full power on Russia's Mir orbital station will be finding the hole that let the air out of the Spektr module in hopes it can be repaired at a later date. A spacesuited cosmonaut will peer into the darkened Spektr and, switching off his light, will try to find the hole by the sunlight that ground controllers hope will be penetrating through it from outside the module.
GOP appropriators will face a challenge from their fellow Republicans on the House Science Committee this week over funding for NASA, with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) ready for a floor fight over the issue of extra money to help the International Space Station program cope with Russian delays. Supported by Science Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.
Not everyone in the Defense Dept. thinks the lack of a competitor for U.S. military capability is just a short-term situation. Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, the Army's deputy chief of staff for doctrine, says, "we don't buy the fact that in 20 to 25 years a peer competitor will come up." At the same time, the service's "Army After Next" concept posits that when a "major competitor" does appear, it will try to match the U.S. on land, not in the air or at sea.
During the second quarter of 1997 a total of 21 space launches with 34 spacecraft were performed worldwide, of which one ended in failure. The United States made seven launches, orbiting 12 satellites (including one for Spain and for Norway). Russia performed nine launches, including one failure. It orbited 14 satellites, eight of them for U.S. customers, and lost one. Arianespace orbited five satellites in three launches (one each for Thailand, Japan, India, Intelsat and Inmarsat), and China had two launches.
Barco Display Systems, Kortrijk, Belgium, has been chosen by the French Army to supply head-down displays for integration into Dassault Electronique's EWR-99/Fruit radar warning receiver. Barco said the displays were chosen for their minimal weight, volume and power consumption, high brightness and capability to withstand harsh environmental conditions. It said the EWR-99 has been ordered by the French Army for its fleet of combat and transport helicopters.
Raytheon Co. on Friday completed its acquisition of the defense business of Texas Instruments. The $2.95 billion takeover received Justice Dept. approval July 2, provided Raytheon sells TI's monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) production capacity (DAILY, July 3). Raytheon now switches its focus to the $9.5 billion acquisition of the defense business of Hughes, a deal it hopes to complete this fall.
JOHN J. HAMRE, the Pentagon comptroller, was nominated Friday by the White House to replace John White as deputy defense secretary. Hamre is expected to be confirmed easily by the Senate Armed Services Committee despite recent criticism by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that he hasn't done enough to improve the Pentagon's accounting practices. Hamre, however, is in good standing with the SASC, where he once served as a professional staffer.
Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.) said he and his appropriators are relying on a restrictive rule and close contact with Rep. Floyd Spence (R- S.C.) to protect funding levels for Pentagon programs that, under action by Young's panel, exceed fiscal 1998 defense authorization limits set by the House. Young's Appropriations subcommittee, besides being at odds with Spence's National Security Committee on some big programs, also has some substantial differences with its Senate counterpart.
Sales of Coltec Industries, Charlotte, N.C., increased 10% to $322.2 million in the second quarter of 1997, as earnings from continuing operations grew from $16.2 million to $23.8 million. The company said operating income from continuing operations jumped to $36.1 million. It credited the increases to improved operating performance and lower interest expense of $12.7 million, down from $20.3 million in the same period a year ago.
Rohrabacher, who is chairman of the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, has other amendments ready designed to bring the Appropriations VA, HUD and independent agencies bill more in line with the authorization bill drafted by his panel. One would add $100 million for a second reusable launch vehicle like the "complementary follow-on to the X- 33" included in the authorization bill, and another would follow that bill in fencing $400.5 million of Station funds to protect Station science work from the needs of Station construction.
A spokesman for Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, says the latest round of defense mergers and acquisitions is "a concern" of Dewine's, and a hearing to ventilate the issue is "on the short list of important things he would like to accomplish by the end of the year." The aide says that the subcommittee plans "at least one hearing this year." The panel is the only one in Congress with direct antitrust jurisdiction.
The White House is appealing decisions by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to provide unrequested funds to the National Reconnaissance Office and to eliminate the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office. The decisions are included in the committee's fiscal 1998 intelligence authorization bill.
The Senate on Friday passed a $268.2 billion fiscal year 1998 defense authorization bill - $2.6 billion more than President Clinton requested - that includes a provision capping production of the Air Force's F-22 fighter at $43 billion. An amendment by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) directing the Defense Dept. to recommend termination one of the three new fighter programs - F- 22, F/A-18E/F and Joint Strike Fighter - was rejected by a vote of 79-9.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says Lockheed Martin's proposed acquisition of Northrop Grumman "ought to be looked at very carefully because of the anti-competitive possibilities. We don't know that it's anti-competitive, but we're afraid it could be, so we want to look at it."
U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command in fiscal year 2001 plans to flight test a laser radar that would allow better target discrimination of endo- or exo-atmospheric targets. The program builds on earlier technology development efforts and calls for flight testing of a brassboard system, SSDC said in response to questions. The command plans to award a sole-source contract to Boeing North American for the Angle-Angle-Range LADAR, according to a July 8 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Sixteen months after its acquisition by Northrop Grumman Corp., the former Westinghouse defense and electronics group is meeting projections and realizing savings of about $40 million a year, according to James Roche, general manager. He tells McGraw-Hill Aviation Week Group editors that as "the world of the modern high-tech airplane is starting to converge in the software area," the Electronic Sensors and Systems Div., based in Baltimore, is doing about 50% of the contracts and research development of the entire company.
THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT has scuttled plans to sell Thomson-CSF to a private company in favor of forming a large French defense company, according to reports from Europe Friday. In a statement from the office of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, the government said the privatization process "does not protect in good condition the interests of the state, the company and its employees." The government instead wants to make Thomson the "French center of electronics and defense with the state in a determining role."
Cosmonauts and their ground controllers are fairly confident they can reconnect solar arrays on the Spektr module to the rest of the crippled Mir orbital station this week (DAILY, July 11), but they aren't sure the arrays will track the sun even when power is restored to their gimballing mechanism. The controller driving Spektr's solar arrays to the optimum angle against sunlight is not designed to operate in vacuum, which is where it is now that Spektr is depressurized.
The House Appropriations national security subcommittee yesterday completed work on its $248.3 billion defense appropriations bill and wound up endorsing most, but not all, of the House defense authorization add-ons. The subcommittee cut $56 million from the request of $556 million for the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program. The House authorization increased the request by $45 million.
UNITED INDUSTRIAL CORP., New York, won a $35 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to upgrade Maintenance Training Devices (MTDs) for C-17s. Work will be performed by the AAI Engineering Support Inc. and Defense Systems business units.
The Medium Altitude Electro-Optical (MAEO) camera is a suitable second sensor for the U.S. Air Force's Theater Airborne Reconnaissance System (TARS), according to Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Israel, director of the Pentagon's Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office. Defense authorizers in their fiscal year 1996 conference report directed the Pentagon to consider a fly-off of industry equipment for a second sensor for TARS, which provides under-the-weather, daytime imagery in medium to high threat environments.
The General Accounting Office has criticized the Pentagon's plan to consolidate electronic combat test facilities, saying it eliminates capability and fails to address potential inter-service opportunities.
Illustration: Diagram: MIR COSMONAUTS Russian space officials have tentatively scheduled the internal spacewalk they hope will rescue the battered Mir orbital station for 8 p.m. EDT next Thursday, although that target could slip if the crew or ground controllers are not ready for the complicated operation by then.
ITT AVIONICS AND LOCKHEED MARTIN'S SANDERS DIV. will deliver 10 engineering and manufacturing development electronic countermeasure systems for the B- 1B bomber under a $41.4 million subcontract from Boeing North American that is part of the overall B-1 Conventional Munitions Upgrade Program. Delivery of systems that integrate the Lockheed Martin Fairchild ALR-56M radar warning receiver with the ITT/Sanders Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) radio frequency subsystem is slated to begin in March 1999.
