Boeing North American's System Development Center here faces a busy year with a full plate of milestones in the missile defense arena, according to James P. Wright, director of program development. In a session for reporters, he listed them as follows: -- A sensor fit test of the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI)/Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is slated to take place at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific next month; an interceptor fit test will follow in February 1998.
Honeywell, Inc., Clearwater, Fla., is being awarded a $5,330,000 firm fixed price contract to provide for 82 Embedded Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System (EGI) units and associated warranties, in support of the OH-58D aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed May 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-93/C-0002, P00098).
Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corp. must pay Pratt&Whitney several million dollars for using patented P&W processes in jet engine parts, Pratt said yesterday. The United Technologies unit said a U.S. District Court judge in Delaware found that Chromalloy, a unit of Sequa Corp., violated an agreement with Pratt&Whitney by failing to pay license fees.
TRACOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS CO.'s Cordant Div. has won four indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts from the Pentagon's Virginia Contracting Activity with a potential value of $130 million. Under the terms of the contracts, each running from two to five years, Cordant will supply a variety of systems to the Defense Dept.'s Intelligence Information Systems office and other intelligence agencies. All the systems are to be compliant with DOD's Joint Technical Architecture, Tracor said yesterday.
The Pentagon's Joint Staff is taking a close look at its fleet of 125 EA-6B Prowler electronic combat aircraft to determine what adjustments may be needed to keep up with demand. The U.S. Navy is standing up the five joint EA-6B squadrons the Pentagon tasked it to create after the U.S. Air Force decided to retire its EF-111 jamming aircraft. The fifth and final squadron is to be established in October, but Navy EA-6B requirements officer Cdr. Kent Krech said yesterday that "there may be changes."
Lockheed Martin has won a competition to install three Air Sovereignty Operation Centers (ASOCs) in Central Europe. The centers, to be built in the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania, will help manage airspace and increase confidence about targets approaching airspace of the individual countries. Lockheed Martin's Tactical Defense Systems unit, St. Paul, Minn., was chosen for the work. Its contract, for $5.6 million, was announced May 23 by the Pentagon, and awarded by the U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Center.
NASA'S SPACE SHUTTLE Atlantis landed safely Saturday after five days docked to Russia's Mir orbital station. Touchdown on Runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., came at 9:28 a.m. EDT, ending a flight that lasted nine days and five hours. The STS-84 mission delivered some 7,000 pounds of supplies to Mir along with Astronaut Michael Foale, who replaced Astronaut Jerry Linenger on the aging Russian spacecraft.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS has narrowed to seven the number of sites under consideration for production of the common core booster for the Delta IV rocket, MDC's entry in the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. The locations are Huntington Beach, Calif., the current site of operations for MDC Space and Defense Systems; Huntsville and Decatur, Ala.; Yellow Creek and Bay St. Louis, Miss.; and Cocoa Beach and Titusville, Fla.
GKN's Westland and McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems are preparing for a critical design review of the U.K.'s WAH-64D Longbow Apache with representatives of Britain's Ministry of Defense. MDC's WAH-64 program manager Gary Bishop told The DAILY in an interview that he's confident that the CDR, scheduled for next month at MDHS' Mesa, Ariz., facility, will be a success. McDonnell Douglas' participation is somewhat unusual because it's a subcontractor to Westland, but Bishop said it's also the design authority for parts of the system.
Following is the text of several portions of an unclassified executive summary of a report to the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. The report, titled "Defining the Future of the NRO for the 21st Century," was prepared by a panel under Adm. David E. Jeremiah (USN-ret.). It was completed Aug. 26, 1996, and released late last month.
GENCORP AEROJET said that in a final series of tests of its Sense and Destroy Armor (SADARM) munition at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, six were fired simultaneously and six targets in a tactical array were hit. During the testing, the 155mm projectile has been fired from various ranges, from 4.4 km to 19.3 km, the company said.
Kelly Space&Technology Inc., San Bernardino, Calif., said it has won a U.S. patent for its Eclipse tow-launch technique. In the concept, a Boeing 747 would tow the Eclipse space launch vehicle from a conventional runway to the launch altitude of about 45,000 feet. The Eclipse rocket engine would then ignite, the tow line would be released, and the rocket would climb to payload separation altitude of about 400,000 feet.
The U.S. Army and Boeing Co. will continue to run vibration reduction tests on a CH-47 helicopter to determine the baseline configuration for the Improved Cargo Helicopter, or CH-47ICH. The first phase of the program at Ft. Rucker, Ala., was completed a few weeks ago, but Assistant ICH Program Manager Bob Burgess told The DAILY in an interview that "we didn't feel that we were at a definitive solution."
TOW 2A MISSILES have been requested by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S., the Pentagon reported yesterday. A purchase of 1,786 missiles, 114 TOW launchers, 100 HUMVEEs, spares, and related equipment are included. The estimated cost is $80 million. Hughes Aircraft is the prime contractor.
Russia's Proton launcher successfully orbited Loral Skynet's Telstar V communications satellite Saturday, ending a six-month hiatus in launches by Russia's most powerful operational rocket.
Research on the effects of lasers on U.S. Air Force air crews and systems will be continued under a $35 million contract from the service by the TASC subsidiary of Primark Corp., Waltham, Mass.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS' MD 600N single-turbine helicopter has been certified bythe FAA, the company said. The first of up to 30 deliveries slated for 1997 is expected to take place in June to AirStar Helicopters, a tour flight specialist serving the Grand Canyon.
Jean-Marie Luton, outgoing head of the European Space Agency, won nomination to be the next chairman of Europe's Arianespace launch services consortium at a meeting of the consortium's board of directors near Paris last Friday. Luton, who enjoyed the support of French interests that own 55.54% of Arianespace, edged Arianespace President Francis Avanzi for the top job, after last month winning appointment as chairman of Arianespace's previously toothless holding company, Arianespace Participation (DAILY, April 7, 21).
The U.S. Air Force has picked Raytheon Co. for its 36-month Advanced Airbreathing Dual-Range Missile program, but is continuing to talk to losing competitor Hughes Missile Systems Co. about technology exploration for some aspects of the program.
Boeing North American's win last week of a competition to upgrade Australia's military short wave radio system could give it boost as it pursues similar contracts there, a company executive said. Boeing beat Telstra Applied Technologies (TAT), a subsidiary of Australia's national telephone company, Telstra, for the HF Mod contract, which could be worth $200 million to $350 million.
Lockheed Martin has shipped the second Intelsat VII (802) commercial communications satellite to Kourou, French Guiana, in preparation for launch in June aboard an Ariane-4 rocket. The company said the satellite is the second of six being designed and build for the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization. The series consists of four Intelsat VII satellites (801-804) for the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian ocean regions, and two Intelsat VII-As (805 and 806), which will provide landmass coverage.
PROTON ROCKET carrying Loral Skynet's Telstar 5 communications satellite is being readied for launch May 24 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to International Launch Services Co., San Diego. The launch will be the first of six planned ILS commercial launches of the Proton this year. Telstar 5 will provide video and data transmission services throughout the continental U.S., Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and into Canada and Latin America. ILS is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Lockheed Khrunichev Energia.
Unmanned aerial vehicles are among advanced concepts being considered for use in landmine detection and removal, according to a Pentagon report on implementation of U.S. policy on anti-personnel landmines.
AND FRUSTRATION: HNSC Chairman Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) implied that dollars, not strategy, drove the study. "Had the QDR truly been a strategy-driven review," he said, "many believe that the result would have been the same strategy but with a significantly higher price tag. My frustration is that in a strategy-driven review, budget reality should not be inserted into the decision-making process until after the strategy options have been defined and costed.
