Science Applications International Corp., Torrance, Calif., is being awarded a $25,212,799 face value increase to a cost plus award fee contract to provide for engineering, analysis, design, and development support through 21 February 1999 for the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Defense Program Office. This effort will focus on national and theater missile defense, sensors, weapons, and battle management/command, control, communication systems. Contract is expected to be completed February 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Russia has hedged its own Byzantine funding procedures in the latest government decree on the International Space Station. The decree signed by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin Feb. 10 and published Feb. 20 directs the Finance Ministry "to provide regular allocation to the Russian Space Agency" of the funds needed to pay for the "first elements" of the Station, presumably meaning the delayed Service Module (DAILY, Feb. 20).
The House Appropriations Committee this week expects to get a list from the Office of Management and Budget killing 254 programs in the fiscal year 1998 budget request. The list, which covers all agencies, is expected to include some military aircraft related programs. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) asked OMB Director Frankin Raines for the list last week after hearing Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin say that it exists.
NASA'S SPACE SHUTTLE Discovery landed safely early Friday after an apparently successful 10-day mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Although it will be about three months before astronomers know if the new infrared camera and spectrograph installed on the first of five spacewalks will work as planned, mission managers pronounced themselves well-pleased with the STS-82 flight (DAILY, Feb. 19). Mission Commander Ken Bowersox, who was pilot on the first Hubble servicing mission, guided Discovery to a 3:32 a.m.
Funding limitations have forced the Pentagon to reduce its fiscal year 1997 list of 18 advanced concept technology demonstrations (ACTDs) to four. Congress slashed the Administration's ACTD request, even though Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminksi last year said he was hopeful the two sides would be able to come to an agreement (DAILY, July 26, 1996). The Pentagon asked for $98.5 million for ACTDs in the fiscal 1997 budget, but received only $58.5 million in the '97 defense appropriations act.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command is merging two of its offices to provide "cradle to grave management" of some of its aircraft, says Capt. Tom Yee, program manager for special mission and support aircraft, or PMA-200. The new organization, to be called PMA-207, will be established June 19. It combines Yee's PMA-200, in charge of acquisition management, and PMA-227, which oversees commercially supported aircraft. PMA-207 will be be responsible for acquisition and support.
Two Pentagon organizations are developing a theater air and missile defense master plan, the first draft of which will be published in late spring. It will be keyed to the budget and programming cycle, and enhance coordination between the requirements and acquisition communities, Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski says in a message to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Lockheed Martin Corp. says it has successfully tested the tri-service Common Missile Warning System on an F-15 fighter, but integration on all F- 15s is in doubt because the U.S. Air Force has zeroed outyear funding. Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit flew eight test sorties between mid- December and mid-January on F-15s to collect data on the system's performance against high-speed, high-performance aircraft, the company reported.
Six freshmen members of the House National Security Committee's procurement subcommittee and six on its research and development panel have military installations or defense contractor facilities, or both, in their congressional districts, and three freshmen on each subcommittee served in the military. Ten freshmen are among the 14 House members new to the 27-member procurement subcommittee. Eight are among the 12 new faces on the 25-member R&D subcommittee.
In addition to establishing a new management structure to integrate air and missile defense, Kaminski says, joint engineering efforts will be established to develop common hardware and software for advanced surveillance systems. Further, he says in the memo to SASC, the Defense Dept. has "increased efforts in advanced seeker research and development to ensure performance of ground-, space- and air-launched missiles against Defense Intelligence Agency projected threats."
The U.S. Air Force can satisfy its strategic airlift requirements by acquiring 100 C-17s instead of the planned 120, and save more than $7 billion in life-cycle costs, according to the General Accounting Office. The Dept. of Defense disagreed strongly, maintaining that 120 is the minimum requirement for a military that must be able to respond to two nearly simultaneous regional conflicts.
Weapons production in Russia fell about 40% in 1996 from the previous year and by 42% in the military aerospace sector, but Moscow is now challenging France for third place in international arms sales behind the U.S. and U.K., according to figures quoted by Britain's Minister for Defense Procurement, James Arbuthnot. In 1996, Russia exported $3.5 billion in military equipment, according to Rosvoorouzhenye, the state arms sales organization. France exported $3.67 billion.
The schedule for the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system could slip substantially if the next intercept attempt, slated for Friday, isn't successful, Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski warns. Pentagon plans calls for the anti-missile system to achieve full unit equipped status by 2004, but "If we are not successful in that intercept on February 28, I do not believe we can make the schedule," Kaminski told The DAILY in an interview. "I think we will have to restructure the program."
Fiscal 1998 defense budget hearings on Capitol Hill get into the detailed presentations this week. The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold Air Force posture hearings Tuesday and Navy posture hearings Wednesday. The House National Security procurement and R&D subcommittees will hold joint hearings Tuesday (a closed-door intelligence assessment) and Wednesday (Navy shipbilding).
BOEING CO. this week formally asked the European Commission in Brussels to approve its planned acquisition of McDonnell Douglas. The EU now has 30 days to decide whether to investigate the planned merger. Reports from Europe say the European Association of Aerospace Industries requested the EU to conduct an investigation.
House Appropriations Committee sources see strong opposition on the national security subcommittee from both Democrats and Republicans to the Administration's request for rescission of $2.8 billion from the fiscal 1997 defense funding to pay for domestic programs the Administration wants to fund in FY '98. The Administration hasn't identified any of the programs it would rescind, sources say.
Officials of the Tactical Control System (TCS) for unmanned aerial vehicles are getting worried that a requested $12.1 million in reprogramming of FY '97 funds may not come through in a timely fashion. Navy Capt. Allen Rutherford, the TCS program manager, says that if the reprogramming doesn't materialize by the end of March, all activity will have to grind to a halt.
Alliant Techsystems has protested the U.S. Air Force's Jan. 27 decision to award Lockheed Martin Corp. a contract to build 40,000 Wind Corrected Munitions Dispensers in a $500 million program. Alliant, which competed with Lockheed Martin for the production contract, protested to the General Accounting Office on Feb. 6, and filed a supplemental protest on Feb. 13. In response, the Air Force has issued a stop-work order to Lockheed Martin, halting all work on the program until the GAO decides how the effort should proceed.
The Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office has ruled out the idea of leasing Predator unmanned aerial vehicles unless future studies show it would be best to do otherwise. DARO Director Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Israel said in a report to the congressional defense committees that a study by the UAV Joint Program Office (JPO) comparing lease and buy options indicates leasing would cost $1.4 billion more than buying.
U.S. ARMY marked equippage of the first Joint Tactical Ground Station (JTAGS) unit on Feb. 19, with Brig. Gen. Daniel Montgomery, program executive officer for air and missile defense, presenting the Stuttgart, Germany, organization to Col. Ottis Ferguson, commander of Army Space Command (Forward). JTAGS receives missile launch warning data from Defense Support Program satellites. The Stuttgart system is the first of five. All will be delivered this year.
Space ministers from European Space Agency member nations will meet March 4 in Paris to consider the best way to divide the contractor work that flows from ESA space programs, as well as to calculate how much members should contribute to ESA's "mandatory activities." The Paris gathering will be the first time ESA ministers have met since Oct. 20, 1995, when they directed the agency secretariat to modify ESA industrial policy.
AMROM H. KATZ, who applied his expertise in airborne reconnaissance to spy satellites as a Rand Corp. senior scientist in the 1950s and 1960s, died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Feb. 10 from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 81. Katz worked as a civilian physicist at Wright Field's aerial reconnaissance laboratory during World War II, and joined Rand in 1954. While there, he was on a study team that advocated the use of satellite- mounted cameras and film recovery capsules to monitor strategic developments inside the Soviet Union.
Hughes Electronics will moves its head office in Australia from Sydney to Canberra, the national capital, a Hughes spokesman confirmed Friday. Hughes also hired former Royal Australian Air Force logistics expert Noel Wainwright to head the company's Australian business efforts.
Although the state of California and a special House panel continue to scrutinize allegations of voter fraud in the race in which Bob Dornan lost to Loretta Sanchez, Dornan doesn't sound optimistic that he will be found the winner. He told the Orange County, Calif., Register that he is definitely running for the House again in 1998. Sanchez won Dornan's seat, and also his committee assignment, winding up on the House National Security Committee.
