Lockheed Martin Corp., Denver, Colo., is being awarded a $5,819,535 face value increase to a firm fixed price contract to provide for modifications required to integrate one Titan IV-B payload fairing onto one Titan-Centaur upper stage in support of the Titan launch vehicle program. The work will be performed at Lockheed Martin Corp., Denver Colo. (45%) and McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, Huntington Beach, Calif. (55%). Contract is expected to be completed May 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS on Friday night docked with Russia's Mir space station. The crews spent much of their time yesterday moving instruments from the Shuttle to Mir. Atlantis is slated to depart Mir on Wednesday.
THE ILYUSHIN Il-96T cargo aircraft completed its first flight Friday powered by Pratt&Whitney engines and equipped with Rockwell Collins avionics, according to a Pratt&Whitney spokesman. The cargo Il-96T and passenger-carrying Il-96M are both powered by PW2000 engines. The first IL-96M is expected to be delivered next year.
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., is being awarded a $7,420,258 face value increase to a cost plus award fee contract to provide for launch support activities associated with reconfiguration and launch acceleration of Titan IV Launch Vehicle 13. This includes extension of electronic support and chemical systems support by twelve months. The work will be performed at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., (40%), Vandenberg AFB, Calif. (40%) and various other locations. Contract is expected to be completed May 1997.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, Marietta, Ga., is being awarded a $5,924,673 firm-fixed-price delivery order to procure Phase IIIB non- recurring engineering design of the P-3C Communications Improvement Program (CIP) kits and logistics support for the Navy P-3C aircraft. Work will be performed in Marietta, Ga., and is expected to be completed by July 1999. Contract funds would not have expired at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured.
Raytheon, Hughes and TRW are still competing for the U.S. Air Force's CCPL program. Raytheon did not win the contract, as reported in Friday's DAILY, but a place in the competition.
The House Thursday night passed an $8.4 billion supplemental package that includes $2 billion to cover the unexpected fiscal year 1997 costs of extending U.S. troop involvement in Bosnia. The package, however, is dead on arrival when it reaches the White House. The House package, which passed 244-178, includes the same continuing resolution (CR) provision included in the Senate version of the bill passed last week (DAILY, May 12).
House Science Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) Friday chided NASA Administrator Dan Goldin for proposing to tap Space Shuttle and other accounts for $200 million for the International Space Station without looking elsewhere first.
Despite Labor's professed enthusiasm for closer European ties, the new defense and foreign relations team last week reiterated previous U.K. positions on Europe and the future of NATO during a regular meeting of the 10-nation Western European Union defense pact in Paris. Like Conservative Malcolm Rifkind before him, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook repeated the U.K.'s refusal to accept any European Union attempt to limit the national veto on defense and foreign policy areas.
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Although there's little doubt the Senate will confirm Pentagon Comptroller John Hamre's nomination as Deputy Defense Secretary, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is going to have some criticism of Hamre's record, a Grassley aide says. In addition to managing the Pentagon budget, Hamre is the Defense Dept.'s chief financial officer, and thus responsible for DOD financing and accounting - areas in which Grassley has criticized DOD performance, the aide notes.
Hoping to jump-start the stalled Future Large Aircraft program, the FLA industry consortium launched an intensive lobbying campaign across Europe to get requests for proposals from the governments involved in the project. France effectively suspended progress on the program to develop the military airlifter last year when it zeroed its contribution to the $30 billion development effort from its future defense spending plans (DAILY, Feb. 26, 1996). Remaining countries include Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The five-year federal budget agreement reached last week between the Clinton Administration and the Republican congressional leadership increases national security outlays by $7.4 billion in fiscal year 1998. Over the life of the agreement, between FY '98-02, defense spending is marginally higher than the Administration's plan in budget authority (BA) and slightly lower in outlays, congressional sources said Friday.
MATCHLESS PERFORMANCE: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) says the Defense Dept. has "a $50 billion problem or worse" in troubled disbursements. He tells the Senate that sections in three successive appropriations acts require DOD to match disbursements with obligations before making payment, but says evidence indicates DOD isn't 100% on board with the effort. The Defense Finance and Accounting Center in Columbus, Ohio, Grassley says, is using several random allocation procedures. This is guaranteed to create "more unmatched disbursements - big time," Grassley says.
GIVING IT ANOTHER SHOT: The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization intends to try again on May 31 to track a target with an exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) sensor - a key interceptor technology planned to be used for a national missile defense system. A flight test of the EKV failed earlier this year when the target booster launched too early. "Targets are expensive and limited," says Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Paul Kaminski.
Hughes, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW will receive the request for proposal to build the High Band Signals Intelligence Subsystem (HBSS) demonstration unit being developed as part of the Joint SIGINT Avionics Family (JSAF).
The U.S. Army is interested in accelerating development of the Block 2 Air-to-Air Stinger (ATAS) helicopter and wants to begin engineering and manufacturing development in fiscal 1999, but so far the service has been unable to fund the speedup.
NO AWACS AESA: Even though further upgrades in the AWACS radar are envisioned, Nagy says the E-3s are unlikely to ever get a more modern active electronically scanned radar. Such an upgrade would basically require designing a new airborne early warning system, he notes. But the AF's plan is to eventually move AEW to space, rather than to another airborne platform.
THINGS CHANGE: Even though the state of the Soviet Union's air force once dictated U.S. air requirements, David Ochmanek, a noted air power analyst for the Rand Corp., says that perspective doesn't apply for the Russian air force anymore. "The Russian air force is about the tenth thing I think about when I think about our aviation needs," he says. Instead, the proliferation of advanced surface-to-air missiles and advanced beyond-visual-range missiles similar to the U.S. Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) are of much greater concern.
Poland is putting together its modernization plan and could release the request for proposal for new fighters this year, according to deputy defense minister Andre Karkoszka. The fighter program is "well on track," Karkoszka said, with the requirements definition process underway. He told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon that the RFP could be released to industry as early as the end of this year. U.S. competitors include Lockheed Martin with its F-16 and McDonnell Douglas with the F/A-18.
GET TO THE POINT: Kaminski says there's too much debate about how much a national missile defense (NMD) should cost and when it should be deployed. "We need more discussion on what 'it' is," he says, because debaters are forgetting to address what the system which actually consist of and be able to defend against. Kaminski, who is departing his post at DOD, continues to warn that the NMD program now in place is "very high risk" and could grow more costly.
Cuts in the U.S. Navy's F/A-18E/F program being proposed in the Quadrennial Defense Review were limited to ensure the program stays alive and keeps pressure on the Joint Strike Fighter, Defense Secretary William Cohen said Friday. "What I am looking at in terms of F/A-18[E/F] is to reduce it to a level that continues the program but only as it phases in to the Joint Strike Fighter," Cohen told defense reporters. "What I didn't want to do is cancel a program and then give a free ride to the contractor who has the Joint Strike Fighter."
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: The U.S. Air Force has focused a lot of energy on improving the radar receive capability of its fleet of E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System, but AF Brig. Gen. Dave Nagy, whose duties include overseeing AWACS acquisition efforts, says there may be room for improvement in other parts of the radar system. "It's conceivable in the future we could have some additional [program improvements] to look at the transmit side," he tells The DAILY.
The Pentagon is expected today to propose cutting the U.S. Air Force Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) buy by 30% as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, according to Air Force officials. The AF was planning to buy 19 Northrop Grumman Joint STARS and has already bought all the used Boeing 707s needed to house the synthetic aperture radar and internal systems. But the Pentagon says the AF should cut that program to 13 aircraft.
