Gulf Aircraft Maintenance Co. (GAMCO), Abu Dhabi, has won a competition to modify wing rear spars of five Lockheed L-1011 airliners of Saudi Arabian Airlines. The company said in a June 1 announcement that it expects to complete the work in about 30 days. GAMCO General Manager Ahmed Al Moosa said the win puts his company ahead of some European and American competitors.
Raytheon Electronic Systems, Portsmouth, R.I., is being awarded an $11,389,225 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for the development of the AN/BGS-1, formerly known as the Nuclear Tomahawk Land Attack Missile Portable Launch System (TLAM-N PLS), to be installed on SSN 688 and NSSN class submarines. Work will be performed in Portsmouth, R.I. (84%), and Manassas, Va. (16%), and is expected to be completed by December 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
A HUNTER UAV crashed Friday at Rugge-Hamilton Runway, Ft. Huachuca, Ariz. The instructor took control of the unmanned aerial vehicle to land it after a still undetermined noise was heard while it was being flown by a military student. The UAV went through a safety net, incurring damage estimated at less than $1 million.
The House Intelligence Committee recommends fencing 50% of the fiscal year 1998 funds available for a host of command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) programs and calls for creation of a new management structure to oversee those programs. The committee, in its FY '98 authorization bill, supports Defense Dept. efforts to provide an interoperable intelligence dissemination architecture and a virtual analytic environment with which analysts around the world could collaborate.
McDonnell Douglas' leadership decided in December to pursue its stock- swap merger with Boeing after concluding that, apart from diluting earnings, a deal with Texas Instruments would be too small and another deal with Hughes would be too complex, regulatory filings supporting the merger reveal. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday and made available yesterday mark the first detailed accounting of the thinking that led to the long-consolidating U.S. aerospace industry's most dramatic merger attempt yet.
Lockheed Martin Display Systems, Alpharetta, Ga., is being awarded an $8,770,597 modification to a previously awarded contract N00019-94-C-0059 to procure 16 Programmable Tactical Information Displays (PTIDs), integrated logistics support, repair parts, support equipment, data, and software for the F-14A/B Upgrade Program. Work will be performed in Atlanta , Ga., and is expected to be completed by November 1999. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured.
Cubic Defense Systems shipped the U.S. military's first "untethered" air combat training system to the U.S. Air Force at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. Kadena Interim Training System (KITS) is the first U.S. system to operate without extensive ground infrastructure, according to San Diego- based Cubic. The electronics are packed into 12-foot pods that can be flown by aircraft carrying AIM-9 series air-to-air missiles.
Primex Technologies Inc., St. Petersburg, Fla., is being awarded a modification as a definitization of a cost plus fixed fee letter contract with a not-to-exceed cumulative total of $6,302,794 (if all options are exercised), for program definitization and risk reduction for the 120mm M829E3 Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot-Tracer (APFSDS-T) cartridge. Work will be performed in Flinchbaugh, Penn. (75%); and St. Petersburg, Fla. (25%), and is expected to be completed by Dec. 23, 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Primex Technologies, Inc., Downey, Calif., is being awarded a $7,669,617 cost-plus-fixed-fee-supply contract for various assemblies and subassemblies of the Distributed Explosive Technology system. Work will be performed in Downey, Calif., and is expected to be completed by December 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured with 30 proposals solicited and three offers received.
Commercial Space Shuttle missions could be a possible first step toward privatizing parts of the space program, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said last week. Testifying before the Senate subcommittee on science, technology and space on June 18, Goldin said delays in construction of the International Space Station have NASA exploring three extra Shuttle missions to bridge the gap in scientific research (DAILY, June 19). Commercialization of those missions would give NASA some learning experience.
Following successful development testing, the U.S. Air Force is getting ready to field a software upgrade to the Advanced Medium Range Air- to-Air Missile that will improve its electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) capability. "All the flight tests that we conducted were successful," Lt. Col. Greg Lockhart, the Air Force's deputy program director for the Air-to-Air Joint Systems Program Office, said in an interview. Flight testing began in January. It included five live fire launches to prove out the software load.
"Typical development problems" have pushed back the first flight of the NASA/Lockheed Martin X-33 reusable launch vehicle prototype from March to July 1999, but the company hopes it can recover lost time once the suborbital testbed starts flying to avoid paying for overruns out of corporate accounts.
Amid congressional opposition to more base closings, Gen. Joseph Ralston yesterday warned of long-term repercussions if the Pentagon's plan doesn't go through, even though without the closings more money would be available in the near term. Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon has budgeted close to $1 billion annually in the next several years for the up-front costs of two more rounds of closings. If they don't proceed, the money could be used for other purposes.
Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Corp., Nashua, N.H., is being awarded an $11, 989,526 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the design, development, and production of three advanced common electronic modules. Work will be performed in Nashua, N.H., and is expected to be completed September 2001. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via a Broad Agency Announcement and 26 offers were received. The Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity (N00019-97-C-0042).
James S. McDonnell III will vote against the proposed $13 billion Boeing-McDonnell Douglas stock-swap merger because his family's name will be dropped from the name of the combined company. According to a proxy statement filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McDonnell, a director and former executive vice president, said he plans to cast "no" votes with his 7.65 million shares, 3.64% of the 212.4 million outstanding shares.
A hush-kitted Russian An-124 freighter complies with an international aircraft noise rule, according to the Antonov design bureau and Air Foyle, its general sales agent. Air Foyle, which recently flew the quieted aircraft from Houston to Karachi with 55 tons of drilling components, said it expects American "airports with already strict noise regulations [to] follow the FAA in recognizing...hush kits for AN-124s."
Defense Secretary William Cohen is weighing in on the debate in Congress on defense authorization, laying out his opposition to several legislative proposals in a series of letters to Hill leaders. Since returning from a trip to Europe and the Middle East last Wednesday, Cohen has sent letters to influence language being considered by the House and Senate. In addition to opposing more B-2 bombers (DAILY, June 23) and cuts in the F-22 program (DAILY, June 20), Cohen has urged:
B.V.R. TECHNOLOGIES LTD., Tel Aviv, won a $2.8 million contract from a NATO country, which wasn't identified, for the EHUD Rangeless ACMI System for F- 16 fighters. Options could add $400,000-$800,000 to the value of the contract. Delivery is expected before the end of 1997.
NASA managers have set a July 1 launch date for STS-94, the reflight of the Microgravity Science Laboratory on the Space Shuttle Columbia that was cut to only four days because of troublesome power spikes in one of the orbiter's fuel cells. Liftoff of Columbia with the same crew is scheduled for a window that opens at 2:37 p.m. EDT and extends for two and a half hours. If the mission achieves its full 16-day duration, it will return to Kennedy Space Center for a July 17 landing at 7:13 a.m. EDT.
Druck, Inc., New Fairfield, Conn., is being awarded an $8,271,827 firm- fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for 262 air data test sets and associated data for various Navy aircraft. Work will be performed in New Fairfield, Conn. (60%), and Groby, Leicester, Untied Kingdom (40%), and is expected to be completed by June 2001. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured with 94 proposals solicited and eight offers received.
The U.S. Air Force wants to run an experiment next year to see how well it can deploy forces with advanced command and control gear in order to develop tactics, training and procedures for future operations, according to Lt. Gen. John Jumper, the AF's deputy chief of staff for operations.
Gunver Manufacturing Co., Manchester, Conn., was awarded on June 13, a $14,190,000 firm fixed price contract to provide for 30,000 (best estimated quantity) Convergent Seal Assemblies applicable to the F100/200/220 engine on the F-15 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed July 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were two firms solicited and two proposals received. Solicitation began February 1997; negotiations were completed May 1997.
Lockheed Martin, Government Electronic Systems, Moorestown, N.J., is being awarded a $98,600,000 cost-plus-award-fee contract for AEGIS Combat Systems Engineering in support of the Spanish F-100 program under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program. Work will be performed in Moorestown, N.J. (90%), and Ferrol, Spain (10%), and is expected to be completed by February 2006. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured.
Logicon, Inc., Tactical Systems Div., San Diego, Calif., is being awarded a $13,840,835 cost-type contract for the NATO Improved Link Eleven (NILE) Design and Development Subphase 2. This is a collaborative project to design a system consisting of a computer to computer digital data link among Tactical Data Systems (TDS) equipped ships, submarines, aircraft and shore sites which meet the requirements of the NATO Staff Requirement.
F-22 FIRST FLIGHT is now slated for July. Preparations were interrupted earlier this month when one of the plane's two Pratt&Whitney engines sustained foreign object damage. Lockheed Martin plans to spend most of this week completing required engine testing, electro-magnetic interference tests and taxi tests, a company spokesman said yesterday. The flight was initially planned for May.
