VITRO SERVICES CORP., Fort Walton Beach, Fla., a subsidiary of Tracor Inc., received a subcontract from Nichols Research Corp., Huntsville, Ala., to provide the Office of the Secretary of Defense with joint test and evaluation, engineering, analysis and test support, Tracor announced. It said the subcontract will support development and operational testing and evaluation of various military systems used in joint force applications.
Hughes Aircraft Co., El Segundo, Calif., won a $111 million multi-year contract from the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command for second generation infrared imaging upgrade kits for Army combat vehicles, Hughes announced yesterday. Funding for the first year is $12.9 million. Hughes said it will deliver 242 Abrams thermal imaging systems, 130 B- kits and portions of an additional 376 B-kits during the four year contract, with options for additional units.
The U.S. Navy accepted delivery of the first Standard Missile (Block IIIA) produced by Standard Missile Co. (SMCo), McLean, Va., the company announced yesterday. Previously, the missiles were produced by either Raytheon or Hughes. "The event culminates the successful integration of the efforts of two companies to minimize cost and maximize capability for the government," Chauncey P. Dewey, president and CEO of SMCo, said in a prepared statement. "The Navy and allied fleets now have one-stop shopping for the proven Standard missile family of weapons."
The Pentagon's Defense Science Board says it has seen "dramatic" improvements in the availability of information in Bosnia in the last year, and made several recommendations for further enhancements.
The U.S. Navy is moving ahead with an effort that could put an Active Electronically Scanned Aperture (AESA) in some of its first F/A-18E/F strike fighters, giving them a radar that could have twice the range of the AN/APG-73 in today's Hornets, a Navy officer said yesterday.
The U.S. Navy's stated plan to buy 1,000 McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E/F strike fighters would include around 120 F/A-18Fs in a command and control warfare (C2W) configuration, according to Rear Adm. J.M. "Carlos" Johnson, requirements chief of the Navy's Air Warfare Div.
PEGGY C. WILHIDE, a former press secretary to Vice President Gore, has been named chief spokesperson at NASA. She took over Monday as associate administrator for public affairs, replacing Laurie Boeder, who will move to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Wilhide holds a journalism degree from Auburn University and has worked as a newspaper reporter and as press secretary to Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.).
INTEGRAL SYSTEMS INC. of Lanham, Md., has won a contract with EchoStar to supply two new ground control centers for EchoStar III, a Lockheed Martin A2100 set for launch in September. Integral Systems will install its EPOCH 2000 product at the Loral Skynet tracking station in Hawley, Pa., which controls EchoStar I and II, and at EchoStar's Cheyenne, Wyo., tracking station, which will serve as a backup. The two centers will be interoperable with the EPOCH 2000 decentralized system architecture.
EUTELSAT (the European Telecommunications Satellite Organization) has chosen Arianespace to launch its W3 satellite in 1999. Built by Aerospatiale, W3 will be the third in a series of next-generation satellites built to replace the W2 series. Weighing about 2,800 kilograms, the W3 platform will carry 24 transponders for telecommunications and television service to Europe, the Mediterranean and Central Asia. The deal by Eutelsat was the 168th signed by Arianespace since 1980, bringing to 40 the European launch consortium's satellite launch backlog.
The White House has informed Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R- Miss.) that it will send proposed amendments to alter the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to the Senate for approval, according to Senate sources. They said National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger, in a letter sent to Lott last week, will also seek two-thirds Senate approval for changes to the START II treaty.
Austrian Air Defense pilots recently visited Saab Military Aircraft's flight test center in Linkoping, Sweden, to test fly the JAS-39 Gripen. Two pilots and one flight engineer flew a total of nine missions in the two-seat variant of the Gripen, Saab said last week. Saab is teamed with British Aerospace to market the Gripen internationally and has been trying to interest several countries, including Chile, Hungary and other East-Central European countries in the fighter.
ECHOSTAR COMMUNICATIONS CORP. reported losses of $101 million in 1996, on total revenues of $211.4 million. Revenues were up from $163.9 million in 1995, primarily because of the company's growing DISH Network subscriber base, which reached about 350,000 by year's end. Losses in 1996 were also up - from $11.5 million in 1995 - primarily from increased depreciation of the EchoStar I and EchoStar II satellites, higher interest expenses, subscriber promotion subsidies and increases in programming and general expenses.
The Pentagon is considering use of new modeling and simulation systems to teach soldiers how to protect information networks critical to national security, service officials have told lawmakers.
AMC Aviation, a charter operator based in Cairo, purchased two MD-90- 30 Extended Range jetliners for about $100 million, McDonnell Douglas announced. The jets are scheduled for delivery in August this year and October 1998, and will be based in Luxor and Hurgada, Egypt. They will be equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks and increased maximum takeoff weight capability of 168,000 pounds - 12,000 pounds more than standard MD-90s and 2,000 pounds more than previously delivered MD-90- 30ERs.
The first Russian cryogenic rocket engine for the upper stage of the Indian GSLV rocket has been test fired at the Science and Research Institute of Chemical Machine-building (NII Khimmash), according to NII Khimmash Director Alexandr Makarov. The KVD-1 engine, fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, was designed by the A.M. Isayev Design Bureau of Chemical Machine-building (KB Khimmash) in the 1960s and was originally intended for the upper stage of the N-1 superheavy rocket.
The fourth of Textron's Mobile Microwave Landing Systems has been accepted by the U.S. Air Force for use at Little Rock AFB, Ark., the company said yesterday. The MMLS system provides glide path and azimuth coverage, and was certified by the FAA in January. A second system is at Little Rock for service on a short, unmarked runway. It is expected to be flight checked by next February.
Japan's National Space Development Agency plans to launch both the seventh Engineering Test Satellite (ETS-7) and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) platform on Nov. 1, under a new agreement with Tanegashima Island fishermen that allows NASDA to fire its H-II boosters during a 140-day annual window instead of the old 90-day window. With the extra time, purchased from fishermen's unions by the Science and Technology Agency (STA) at a cost of 700 million yen (about $5.7 million), Japan will be able to launch as many as five H-IIs a year.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. will install Global Positioning System receivers on about 80 snowplows in Northern Virginia under a contract with the Virginia Dept. of Transportation. The Dulles, Va.-based company will fit the road machinery with its "OrbTrac-100" hardware, which uses mobile data communications gear and custom software to relay the position of each plow to VDOT's operations center as often as twice a minute, with an accuracy of 15 meters.
LOCKHEED MARTIN TELECOMMUNICATIONS, Sunnyvale, Calif., signed a contract with PT Telkomunikasi, Indonesia, to provide an A2100 commercial communications satellite for voice and data transmission. TELKOM-1 will replace the existing Palapa B2R satellite, which will be retired in 1999.
"Information technology" currently tops the list of buzzwords in the defense industry but the market it still trying to define itself, according to James Skaggs, chairman and president of Tracor Inc.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS continues work on its new Delta III launch vehicle, most recently completing an acoustic test of the graphite composite interstage developed for the rocket. With the first Delta III flight scheduled next year to launch the Galaxy X satellite for Hughes Communications Inc., the test at Boeing North American's acoustic facility in Seal Beach, Calif., validated models of the dynamic environments first- and second-stage hardware protected by the lightweight interstage will face, the company said.
Space Systems/Loral believes the modular spacecraft bus it has developed for the Globalstar low Earth orbit telecommunications satellite constellation can serve other applications as well, and is directing its marketing activities accordingly. SS/L is under contract to build 64 of the trapezoidal LEO spacecraft for the Globalstar unit of Loral Space&Communications. If production continues at sufficiently high rates after the Globalstar run is complete late next year, company officials believe they can offer the buses for as little as $15 million each.
Korean Air's Aerospace Div. delivered the nose structure for the second McDonnell Douglas MD-95 test aircraft during a ceremony in Pusan, Korea, on March 28, McDonnell Douglas reported. The nose is scheduled to arrive at Douglas Aircraft Co., Long Beach, Calif., in early May, where additional systems will be installed before it's joined to the fuselage of the aircraft. Final assembly is scheduled to begin in the second quarter, with rollout in early 1998.
HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO., Mahwah, N.J., won an $11.2 million contract from the Danish Army Technical Service for 178 portable third generation infrared systems, called Lightweight Thermal Observation Equipment, for artillery fire direction teams, and for forward observation and reconnaissance applications. The contract contains options for follow-on procurement and represents the order for production of the system.
