The National Missile Defense Act, introduced in January with much fanfare by Senate Republicans, has been quietly dropped from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's priority list. Before Congress went on its spring recess, Lott put out a priority list of 14 measures that will be on the Senate agenda April 7, and NMD didn't make the cut. On Jan. 21 when Lott told a Capitol Hill news conference that the low bill number "S. 7" had been reserved for the NMD measure, which was introduced later that day (DAILY, Jan. 22).
Although Defense Secretary William Cohen has said Congress should act this month to deal with about $2 billion in cost of contingency operations in fiscal 1997, the Marines and Navy can wait a lot longer for any action because they account for less than 10% of that bill, according to service officials.
Scientist preparing to use a new instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope that has developed a focusing problem in one of its three cameras hope they can minimize the disruption by carefully managing observing time. Camera 3 on the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) can't focus because of unexpected heating in the solid nitrogen that keeps its detectors cold (DAILY, March 26), but the other two cameras are working fine and NICMOS astronomers believe they can use them to make most of the observations planned for Camera 3.
The F-14Ds deploying next month aboard the USS Constellation will be the first to fly with the full infrared sensor suite the Navy is buying for the aircraft. After having deployed F-14s with the Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared by Night (LANTIRN) system and, separately, with the chin-mounted Infrared Search and Track System, the Navy now will begin flying F-14Ds with both systems, says Dave Shrum, who work on the airborne IRST program for Lockheed Martin Electronics and Missiles.
Upcoming elections in France, Britain and Germany make this a bad time for European defense consolidation, according to Francois Auque, Aerospatiale's corporate vice president/finance and economic, who said last week politicians will be hesitant to push the issue and urged industry leaders need to move in their stead.
SMITHS INDUSTRIES AEROSPACE, Grand Rapids, Mich., won a $1.4 million contract from the Royal Australian Air Force to supply voice and data recorders and standard flight data recorders for 35 RF/F-111C/G aircraft. Deliveries will begin this spring.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems has won a $2.8 million contract from Naval Air Systems Command to develop an integrated approach to squadron- and depot-level scheduled maintenance of the S-3B/ES-3A fleet. "Right now, there are some maintenance activities based on the calendar, some based on flight hours, plus normal unscheduled maintenance, and that creates a high degree of redundancy," Ruben Callejas, Lockheed Martin S-3 Integrated Logistics Support Manager, said in a prepared statement.
Making the cut for Lott's priority list is debate on the 1993 chemical weapons treaty, which goes into effect on April 29. Also on the list are the fiscal 1997 supplemental appropriations legislation, most of which is for Bosnia operations, and the fiscal 1998 budget resolution.
Augustine tells the same conference it's a seller's market in the launch vehicle industry. His company's next open slot for a launch is in late 1999, and the company is averaging a almost launch a week with its large stable of U.S. and Russian-built vehicles. Although its constituent components have been in the business for decades, Lockheed Martin in its present form is fairly new in the market, and Augustine boasts it has never had a launch failure.
The Russian Navy has tested the combat readiness of the naval component of Russia's strategic nuclear triad and the reliability of its command system, according to a press account here. Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper reported on March 27 that in the test the Central Command Post of Russia's Navy transmitted a simulated order from the "supreme commander" for a retaliatory strike. The command post then sent a signal with unlock codes to one of the ballistic missile submarines on combat patrol.
The Navy will go out of business if it doesn't start buying more ships and aircraft soon, warns Vice Adm. Donald L. Pilling, deputy chief of naval operations for resources, warfare, requirements and assessments. "Look at the number of ships we are buying a year - we'll be out of business," he says at the annual Navy League symposium in Washington. "We need to buy eight to 10 ships a year to maintain a 300-plus ship Navy. We can't stay at five to six ships a year much longer. In aircraft procurement, 50 airplanes doesn't cut it. We need about 150."
Faced with an increasing bill for maintenance because of an aging aircraft fleet, the Navy has increased funding for depot maintenance and decided to keep the maintenance backlog at 172 aircraft. But the Navy plans to keep a close watch on the backlog number to make sure readiness doesn't suffer. The Navy's acting director for budget and financial management, Rear Adm. J. Cutler Dawson, says "we'll adjust that to the future" demands.
The Army has dropped plans to commit funds for producing 40 early prototype Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors because of the failure of the THAAD system to achieve an intercept in four tries, a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization spokeswoman acknowledged Friday.
The Marine Corps is planning to conduct an Urban Warrior Experiment that will test new information warfare and other emerging command, control, communications, computers and intelligence technologies in an urban scenario, says Marine Corps Systems Command's Maj. Gen. Michael J. Williams. The Marines are particularly interested in command and control technologies that can be used within buildings and sensor technologies to facilitate battleground communications where buildings could interfere with signals.
The impending merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas secures the No. 2 position in the commercial airplane market for Airbus, according to Francois Auque, Aerospatiale corporate vice president/finance&economic. "It's difficult to think this business can run in a pure monopoly situation," says Auque. Airbus will get no competition from Lockheed Martin, according to Norman Augustine, chairman and CEO. "We feel there is probably room for two large primes in the commercial aircraft business, and we don't intend to be one of them," Augustine says.
Lockheed Martin has networked together six of its divisions involved in maritime patrol aircraft to improve its competitiveness in supporting and modifying existing systems and building new ones. The "virtual company" for maritime patrol aircraft ties together the Aeronautical Systems, Marietta, Ga.; Tactical Defense Systems, Eagan, Minn. ; Skunk Works, Palmdale, Calif.; Federal Systems, Owego, N.Y.; Federal Systems, Manassas, Va., and Aircraft&Logistics Centers, Greenville, S.C., Lockheed Martin said in a statement Tuesday.
The Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program is Lockheed Martin's "greatest disappointment so far" in terms of mission success, Augustine says. With the THAAD interceptor yet to hit a target, the Army is casting about for another company to help with the program (DAILY, March 12, 27). "The good thing is that they're not major failures," Augustine says. "They're glitches we feel we can fix soon."
Russian space and finance officials told a top-level NASA delegation last week that funds are on the way to permit completion of the Russian Service Module in time for its launch to the International Space Station by the end of 1998, but a key congressional committee chairman said Friday he remained skeptical and may push a "fundamental change" in Russia's Station role.
Companies that want the Pentagon to fund merger-related restructuring costs must do a better job explaining the policy to the American public, according to John B. Goodman, deputy under secretary of defense for industrial affairs and installations. The policy brings a track record of demonstrated savings, Goodman said. The Pentagon estimates that costs of about $900 million will bring savings of about $4 billion over the next five years, he said, but taxpayers are confused about what gets funded at taxpayer expense.
Lockheed Martin has established a panel consisting of representatives from several of its divisions to help fix the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program and to avoid having the U.S. Army or Ballistic Missile Defense Organization bring an outside company into the program to solve its problems. THAAD prime contractor Lockheed Martin Missiles&Space, Sunnyvale, Calif., has come under fire recently for its program management following four successive failures of the system to intercept a target (DAILY, March 7; March 13).
NASA believes Russia's Mir space station is good for another year and a half or so, long enough for the last U.S. astronaut scheduled to work there to be collected by the Space Shuttle on STS-91 late in May 1998. The Shuttle Atlantis will carry a new 250-pound oxygen generator to Mir this May, now that the U.S. space agency has determined it will fit in the Spacehab logistics module.
Sandia National Laboratories is developing a new chemical and biological material detection sensor that it intends to test on a satellite within the next three to five years.
General Electric awarded Macomb, Mich.-based ACR Industries multi-year contracts worth more than $13 million to build accessory and power take-off gearboxes for GE's F414 and F110 fighter engines. "This contract brings our backlog to record levels," says ACR chief Ken Hollidge. "We've come a long way since we started business producing gears in the early 1970s." ACR makes aircraft turbine engine gearboxes, helicopter transmissions and fixed-wing aircraft actuator assemblies.
The U.S. Air Force is extending its 15-year program to re-engine military 707 airframes for the first time to the reconnaissance fleet, awarding Boeing a contract this week to make re-engine kits for both KC-135 tankers and RC-135 recon aircraft. Boeing will supply new engine struts and nacelles, structural fittings, wiring harnesses and the hardware necessary to replace each of four elderly Pratt&Whitney JT3D turbojets with four CFM International CFM56 medium turbofans under the $81 million deal.
