The U.S. Navy could get its first operational Texas Instruments Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) as early as this year if the system performs successfully in the on-going operational evaluation, TI's requirements manager Bob Pergler says. The Navy began operational testing in February at China Lake, Calif., and San Clemente Island, Calif., on the baseline JSOW that carries 145 BLU- 97B Combined Effect Bomblets. A total of 18 missiles were bought for the test that is slated to run through July.
Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski yesterday authorized the U.S. Navy and McDonnell Douglas to begin F/A-18E/F low-rate initial production and told the service to investigate potential multi-year procurement benefits.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense approved a change in its procurement strategy that will allow the MOD to negotiate with a joint venture of ITT Defense Ltd., Racal Radio and Siemens Plessey Systems to develop the Bowman Program, ITT announced Thursday. ITT had been competing with the Racal-Siemens team for the $3.2 billion communication system for the British armed forces, but the companies ended the competition by agreeing to form an alliance to work on the project (DAILY, Dec. 4, 5, 1996).
Airbus Industrie is considering a complaint to the European Commission about last week's deal in which Delta agreed to order only Boeing aircraft for 20 years. A senior EC official in Brussels said Tuesday Airbus lawyers had contacted the EC by telephone, but had "yet to tell us what angle they will choose" as the basis for a protest. One possibility would be to insert the Delta deal "as an illustration of Boeing's already dominant position" in the commission's file on the Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merger.
SPACE SYSTEMS/LORAL and China Telecommunications Broadcast Satellite Corp. have signed a contract under which the U.S. company will design, build and launch Chinasat 8, ending several weeks of negotiations. The new satellite will provide data, video and digital voice service across China in C- and Ku-band after its launch late next year. The deal was originally announced in January (DAILY, Jan. 23).
The price of an F/A-18E/F the Navy is buying could be cut between 8% and 10% if the program is allowed to enter multi-year procurement, program officials say. "If one were to make a multi-year buy of the aircraft, that in and of itself would probably save 8% to 10% of the cost of the airplanes over that time period," Gerald E. Daniels, McDonnell Douglas vice president in charge of the program, told The DAILY yesterday. If support elements are included the savings could run even deeper, he added.
The Air Force needs $51.5 million to equip active, guard and reserve F-16s with a new Digital Terrain System (DTS) designed to increase situational awareness and decrease terrain collision accidents, Brig. Gen. Lansford E. Trapp, Jr., director of the service's legislative liaison office, has told the congressional defense committees. The DTS for the F-16 aircraft remains a firm requirement for the U.S.. Air Force and is currently a funded program, Trapp says.
HI-SHEAR TECHNOLOGY CORP., Torrance, Calif., won a requirements contract for up to $20 million from the U.S. Air Force to supply analog recovery sequencers. The Air Force expects that 30% of the sequencers will be needed in the first year of the contract, with order quantities dependent on funding. Hi-Shear also won a $500,000 contract from the Government of Israel for sequencers. That contract carries a $500,000 option.
The U.S. Air Force has approved the Airborne Laser program to begin preliminary design work following a detailed review earlier this month. The Program Requirements Review process was completed after three days of meetings at Boeing's Development Center in Seattle, Boeing reported yesterday. The review included industry partners Boeing, TRW and Lockheed Martin, as well as the U.S. Air Force ABL System Program Office and its future user, the Air Combat Command.
ITT AVIONICS, McLean, Va., won a $10 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Ga., to produce the AN/ALQ- 172(V)3 self-protection system. The upgraded systems will be installed on AC-130H gunships. The addition to a previous production contract brings the total value of the program to $50 million.
DERCO AEROSPACE INC, Milwaukee, has been selected as a distributor of fuel gauging systems and related test equipment by BFGoodrich Aerospace Integrated Systems, Military Division, Vergennes, Vt. The equipment will be retrofitted into C-130s, P-3s, F-5s and T-38s.
Raytheon E-Systems won a $40.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to make ALE-50 Expendable Countermeasures Dispensing Systems, the company announced last week. E-Systems will build more than 1,000 decoys, 119 F-16 launcher controllers and 83 spare F-16 magazines at its Goleta, Calif., facility. The contract includes four multi-year options, which, if exercised, would bring the total contract value to $493 million.
NASA will begin scientific studies on the surface of Mars in 2001 designed to aid planning for human exploration of the Red Planet, the U.S. space agency said yesterday. With an eye to human exploration, the previously scheduled Mars lander mission for 2001 will include experiments designed to measure soil properties and the surface radiation environment, as well as hardware to demonstrate the production of rocket propellant from the Martian atmosphere.
Members of Congress and defense analysts outside the government are raising objections to Helsinki Summit language on the demarcation between theater and national missile defenses, arguing that the Helsinki language could hobble U.S. efforts to develop theater defenses.
LABARGE INC., St. Louis, won a $2.9 million contract from the Sensis Corp., DeWitt, N.Y., to produce printed circuit board assemblies. Twelve different types of assemblies will be provided to integrate into nine systems of the AN/TPS-59(V)3 Tactical Missile Defense radar system.
The Clinton Administration has raised its estimates of the cost of U.S. troop involvement in Bosnia to $6.5 billion, Sen. Russell Feingold (D- Wis.) said in a speech on the Senate floor last Thursday. "To put that in perspective, we were originally told that the Bosnia mission would cost the United States taxpayer some $2 billion," Feingold said. "Later, the estimate was revised to $3 billion. Now it has risen to a staggering $6.5 billion."
The Navy and Marine Corps are facing many interoperability problems as they integrate new commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies into existing weapons platforms and command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) systems, some senior service officials said yesterday at the annual Navy League Symposium in Washington.
France and the European Space Agency have delayed the first reflight of the new Ariane V booster again, pushing the next launch attempt back to mid-September to allow more time to modify the next-generation launch vehicle's electrical systems and software, ESA reported yesterday.
One of the two new instruments mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope in the recent servicing mission has developed a focusing problem, hampering the instrument's ability to produce high-resolution near-infrared images useful in the study of protostellar clouds, young star clusters and brown dwarf stars.
HUGHES MISSILE SYSTEMS CO., Tucson, Ariz., received a fiscal 1997 options order under its 1994-1998 Tomahawk production contract/depot contract with the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. The contract calls for full recertification of 250 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles and operational flight test preparation of seven Tomahawks. The contract modification is valued at $17.1 million. Work will be performed at facilities in Tucson and at Sycamore Canyon near Poway, Calif.
The U.S. Air Force has told industry it is interested in the development of an imaging system capable of taking high-quality pictures of orbiting geostationary satellites from the ground. The ground-based optical system is to deliver images "of sufficient quality to determine size, orientation, and identify the satellite," the Air Force Phillips Laboratory says in a March 26 Commerce Business Daily notice. The AF said Fourier telescopy is the front-running imaging technique, but other innovative approaches will be considered.
EVANS&SUTHERLAND COMPUTER CORP., won contracts from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to supply visual systems for training programs for the AH-1W, F-14, LCAC and T-45 simulators. The combined value is more than $8 million.
Boeing and Chinese officials signed a contract valued at $685 million for five 777-200s which are to be delivered to Air China in 1998 and 1999. The contract was signed during a ceremony in Beijing attended by Vice President Al Gore and Chinese Premier Li Peng, who was present when Beijing signed a contract for 30 Airbus aircraft valued at $1.5 billion in April 1995 that was seen as a rebuff to the U.S.
