COMPUTER PRODUCTS OPERATION, Burlington, Vt., received an order for about $3.2 million from Lockheed Martin Federal Systems, Manassas, Va., for memory "Tall Stacks" for use in solid state data recorder programs. The 640 Mb memory cubes are built by stacking 16 Mb DRAM chips. Lockheed Martin ordered about $3.6 million worth of the cubes last year.
Russia's Space Forces have inaugurated their new Svobodny Cosmodrome by launching the Start-1 rocket from the facility despite safety objections from the Yakutia Republic, which lies under the launch site's flight path to polar orbit. The rocket was fired from a mobile launcher installed on the new cosmodrome's Site 5 at 5 a.m. Moscow Time Tuesday (9 p.m. Monday EST). All five stages of the modified SS-25 ICBM performed flawlessly and the payload
BOMBARDIER INC., Toronto, completed the first flight of the de Havilland Dash 8+Q Series 400 program with a Pratt&Whitney Canada PW 150A engine. The engine will power the new 70-seat turboprop airliner. The flight lasted more than two hours on P&WC's Boeing 720B flying test bed and was operated up to 5,300 shp. The Dash 8Q Series 400 is on schedule for rollout and first flight later this year. Flight tests at the Bombardier Flight Test Center, Wichita, will begin in early 1998, with initial deliveries scheduled for the first quarter of 1999.
Alliant Techsystems has filed two supplemental protests with the General Accounting Office in its bid to overturn a U.S. Air Force decision to award Lockheed Martin a $500 million production contract for the Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser program.
Hughes Missile Systems Co., Tucson, Ariz., will upgrade 35 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Block II configuration to Block III under an $8.7 million U.S. Navy contract. The award is a production option on HMSC's 1994-to-1998 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) production/depot contract. The enhancements include improved warhead, extended range, and time of arrival control. The missiles will be delivered in mid-1999.
An equipment failure aboard the Mir orbital station prevented redocking of the Progress M-33 automated cargo ferry yesterday, leaving the crew with no way to offload accumulated waste. Crew members manually controlling the redocking attempt aborted it when their display screen went blank with the vehicle only eight meters away from contact. Usually the docking is performed automatically, but yesterday the remote manual control was used to save precious fuel in the Progress tanks.
U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, presenting the service's $11.2 billion fiscal 1998 modernization request to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, hinted that he would "feel much better about it if it were $15 billion or $16 billion." But he found no one on the panel willing to push for that much of an increase. In fact, Reimer's remark, in response to a question from Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), set the stage for criticism from the next questioner, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).
The General Accounting Office has halted its review of the F-22 fighter program, but raised a number of concerns about Air Force plans for the effort. The GAO made the move in light of the AF decision to restructure the program, first to get rid of a $2 billion growth in engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) and then to avoid a potential cost increase of $13 billion or more in production. Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) has now asked the GAO to initiate a new F-22 review, looking specifically at the restructure plan (DAILY, March 3).
Alliant Techsystems, readying for first flight of its Outrider unmanned aerial vehicle, completed low-speed taxi tests of the UAV last week at its facility in Hondo, Tex. High winds over the weekend, however, prompted postponement of high-speed tests, according to a company spokesman. The program is in the midst 60-day show-cause period following problems that have delayed first flight since November. Fourteen months remain in the Outrider 24-month Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration.
The U.S. Navy wants to begin technology development to support the "Next Generation Naval Gun System," slated to go into service after 2003. The shipboard system - consisting of one or more 155mm guns with fire control, an automated or robotic-aided large capacity magazine, and advanced guided projectiles - is supposed to be "modular in construction, fully automated, and have greatly reduced life cycle costs over currently fielded naval gun weapon systems," according to a March 4 Commerce Business Daily notice.
ROCKWELL AVIONICS&COMMUNICATIONS and team members Stanford Telecommunications Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo., and CommQuest Technologies Inc., Encinitas, Calif., won a $180 million contract from the U.S. Army to produce satellite communications equipment as part of the Universal Modem System (UMS) Terminal Production Program, Rockwell announced. The initial contract is for the first article qualification testing and delivery of 18 terminals.
Loral Space&Communications Ltd., New York, ended its 1996 fiscal year after nine months, earning $8.9 million on pro forma sales of $950 million. The company will report on a 12-month calender year effective Jan. 1, 1997. Sales at Space Systems/Loral, which recently became a wholly-owned subsidiary (DAILY, Feb. 25), grew 32% to $1 billion, and earnings climbed from $9.5 million to $31 million.
ENCORE COMPUTER CO., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., received an order for about $100 million from Boeing Co. for real-time products and services to support simulation and development of AWACS aircraft.
The U.S. Special Operations Command sees future investments in leading-edge and emerging technologies across a broad spectrum. "Specialized state-of-the-art equipment" is one of three cornerstones of a recently formulated "vision" for the Special Operations Forces (SOF) released by the command. The other two are quality personnel and "versatile and responsive units."
KAMAN DIVERSIFIED TECHNOLOGIES CORP., Bloomfield, Conn., sold AirKaman of Jacksonville Inc., the last of the corporation's three fixed-base operations to be sold, Kaman said yesterday. Kaman Acquisition Corp., a privately held company headed by C. William Kaman II, bought AirKaman, a fixed-base operation for general and commercial aviation serving Jacksonville International Airport. C. William Kaman II has had management responsibility for AirKaman for several years. Malcolm L. Rich will continue as president. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
ROGER RAMSEIER, president of Aerojet, will retire after 37 years with the company, Gencorp announced yesterday. He will remain until a new president is selected and in place. Ramseier joined Aerojet in 1959 after graduation from University of California, Berkeley. He was appointed president in 1989.
The Defense Dept. would welcome international partners to the U.S. Navy Theater Wide missile defense program, according to Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski. The Theater Wide, or Upper Tier, program is an attractive candidate for international cooperation because it isn't as far along as some of the other U.S. theater missile defense systems, Kaminski told The DAILY in a recent interview. "There is room for an interested ally to join in that development program," he said.
Environmental protests from the neighboring Yakutia Republic have cast a pall over Russian Space Forces' planned first launch from the new Svobodny Cosmodrome, although the launch apparently will go off as planned. The Government of Yakutia demanded that Russia cancel the launch, expressing doubts over the ecological and technical safety of the project. Spent booster from rockets launched into polar orbit from the converted ICBM base will fall on the territory of Yakutia.
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin is sending retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford to Russia with a team of financial experts later this month to scrutinize Russia's spending on the International Space Station as part of an effort to plot a course for the project in the face of Russia's seeming inability to pay a partner's share of it.
Bombardier opened a 98,000-square-foot expansion at its Learjet Inc. facility, Wichita, Kan., on Feb. 22, Bombardier announced. The $10 million structure includes a 45,000-square-foot experimental flight test hangar that more than doubles the existing capacity and is designed to hold up to three aircraft simultaneously. The expansion also has a 53,000-square-foot office and workshop area.
Hughes Missile Systems Co., Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $5,086,470 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-94-C-0257 to exercise an option for 89 Tomahawk Cruise Missile recertification of surface ship, torpedo tube launch and capsule launch system missiles. Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to be completed by September 1999. Contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity.
GEC-Marconi Electronic Systems Corporation, Wayne, New Jersey, is being awarded a $5,452,200 firm fixed price contract for a second production buy for the Precision Landing Systems Receiver. The contractor will assemble and test 78 PLSR B Kits for installation in the C-17 fleet. Contract is expected to be completed in approximately 10 months. Contract funds will not expire at the end of current fiscal year. The negotiations were completed in June 1997.
A RUSSIAN SOYUZ returned two Russian cosmonauts and a German researcher safely to Earth Sunday after a $60 million joint mission to the Mir orbital station. Germany's Reinhold Ewald and Russians Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri landed safely in a snow-covered field in Kazakhstan, and later returned to Moscow. Ewald spent almost three weeks on Mir conducting experiments for German research institutes, while Korzun and Kaleri had been on the aging platform for more than six months. They left behind a normal replacement crew of two cosmonauts plus U.S.
Litton Industries completed its acquisition of the Racal Marine Group from Racal Electronics PLC for about $49 million, Litton said yesterday. The deal was announced late last year (DAILY, Dec. 13, 1996). The Marine Group, headquartered in the U.K., has annual sales of about $100 million. "This acquisition positions Litton as the world's largest producer of marine electronic navigation and guidance systems for commercial and military customers," John M. Leonis, chairman and CEO, said in a prepared statement.
