An agreement linking former competitors in a joint bid for the U.K.'s $3.2 billion Bowman battlefield communications program could lead to business in other countries, spokesmen for the companies said yesterday. ITT Defense&Electronics of the U.S. joined Racal Radio and Siemens Plessey, both of the U.K., in an alliance to capture production of Bowman for the British armed forces (DAILY, Dec. 4). Previously, an ITT-led team had competed with Racal and Siemens Plessey.
Officials of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program are adding computer coding to fix an inertial measurement unit problem that recently set back the test program, sources told The DAILY.
Engineers at Russia's NPO Energomash have completed a series of tests on the first full-up RD-180 rocket engine, putting the powerful RD-170 variant through the entire flight profile of the Atlas IIAR launch vehicle it was developed to power. In a joint press conference originating in Moscow and Washington yesterday, officials of NPO-EM and its U.S. partner, Pratt&Whitney, said the program is ahead of schedule by a couple of weeks to power the first Atlas IIAR flight late in 1998.
Launch of the first three Iridium low-Earth orbit communications satellites is likely to come early next month, a little past the 1996 first-launch date Iridium has publicized in the past but still on schedule to support commercial service late in 1998, company officials said Tuesday.
CHINESE DEFENSE MINISTER Gen. Chi Haotian will arrive in the U.S. Dec. 5 for a two-week visit. Stops will include several military facilities, and conclude at U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii.
A Pentagon review of the president's airfleet has found "high degrees of safety when compared to civil fleets and other military fleets of aircraft." The review team, headed by retired Vice Adm. Donald D. Engen, focused on operations of U.S. Marine Corps and Air Force assets dedicated to supporting the president. When the executive airlift mission is given to the general support airlift forces, the team found "the degree of safety is not as high," although it wasn't characterized as unsafe.
ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL shareowners voted in favor of the company's reorganization and sale of its aerospace and defense businesses to Boeing for about $3.2 billion. The new company will be named Boeing North American. "This vote represents a major milestone for Rockwell and the continuing realization of a strategy formulated years ago to focus increasingly on commercial markets," said Donald R. Beall, Rockwell chairman and CEO. The transaction is expected to close officially on Friday.
NASA's Mars Pathfinder blasted off early yesterday for a direct flight to the first landing on the Red Planet since the Viking probes 21 years ago, and was on target after insertion into its planetary trajectory for a landing next July 4. Liftoff of the Delta II carrying the $196 million spacecraft and rover came at 1:58 a.m. EST Wednesday after delays the two previous days for weather and a computer glitch, respectively. The probe left orbit bound for Mars about an hour later.
RAYTHEON AND LOCKHEED MARTIN will compete for a $450 million U.S. Air Force contract for Reconnaissance/Intelligence Ground System (RIGS) products and services, the Pentagon said yesterday. The ground stations must comply with specifications for the Common Imagery Ground Surface System. The contract will run until December 2002, during which either Raytheon E-Systems or Lockheed Martin Tactical Systems Co. will design, prototype, test and field theater imagery ground systems and subsystems.
The General Accounting Office yesterday poured fuel on a fiery debate about the accuracy of an intelligence assessment that the U.S. won't face a ballistic missile threat until at least 2010. Joining a host of other critics, the GAO blasted the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that has come under attack in the past year for its conclusion that no country other than the major declared nuclear powers will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 U.S. states or Canada.
Northrop Grumman Corp. is in line to develop a variant of the Brilliant Anti-armor submunition that is able to conduct battle damage assessment. U.S. Army Missile Command said in a Dec. 5 Commerce Business Daily notice that the company will modify "a BAT submunition to incorporate a downlooking camera, a GPS unit integrated to the BAT CEU for Guidance&Control, and the video TM."
The Pentagon's Joint Staff should expand its role in certification of requirements documents and budget decisions, a Defense Dept. official said. In comments Tuesday at a conference in Washington on the Goldwater- Nichols Act of 1986, aimed at strengthening the Joint Staff, the official said changes in requirements documents of the military services that are recommended by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council are mostly marginal.
Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski cleared the AIM-9X short range air-to-air missile for engineering and manufacturing development, but eliminated British Aerospace's ASRAAM from the competition. Kaminski gave the Milestone II approval Tuesday after the convening Monday of a Defense Acquisition Board readiness meeting. A full DAB wasn't convened.
REP. ROBERT DORNAN (R-Calif.), certified a 984-vote loser to Rep.-elect Loretta Sanchez in their House race, on Monday asked the Orange County registrar for a recount, a Dornan aide said. The aide said "it's not so much that we expect the recount to change the results of the election," but that the recount request is needed to pursue Dornan's legal challenge to the election. Dornan has charged irregularities in distributing absentee ballots, voting by illegal immigrants, and cases in which the identification or addresses of voters could not be immediately verified.
Request for proposals for the Air Sovereignty Operations Center (ASOC), intended to help Central European countries update their civil and military air traffic control systems, will be released next week, a U.S. official said yesterday.
South Korea plans to buy 116 AGM-130 and 116 AGM-142 standoff missiles, a move that would mark the first international sale of the Rockwell International AGM-130 and the second international sale of the Lockheed Martin/Rafael AGM-142. Congress, which must approve the $250 million planned program, was notified of it by the Pentagon yesterday. Korea would modify 30 of its F-4E Phantom fighters to launch the missiles, which would be acquired under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program.
A consortium composed of Raytheon Co. and 12 Japanese firms is just another of the "Johnny-come-latelys" to propose an offshore base for the U.S. Marine Corps unit on Okinawa, said a spokesman for Brown&Root. He said the Houston-based firm began working on such a proposal four years ago. The idea of moving the U.S. presence on the Japanese island to an offshore base has been discussed for some time (DAILY, Sept. 23 and 27), and in recent days, the U.S. and Japan agreed to make use of such a base (DAILY, Dec. 3).
GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE said yesterday that it would make public today a report it released prematurely on its World Wide Web site concluding that a congressionally mandated four-sub prototype effort would add over $3 billion to the cost of the New Attack Submarine program. A news account of the prematurely released report said the operational prototype plan successfully pushed in the fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference by House National Security procurement subcommittee chairman Rep.
A unit of ITT Defense&Electronics of the U.S. and Racal Radio and Siemens Plessey Systems of the U.K. are teaming to compete for the British Ministry of Defense's $3.2 billion Bowman battlefield communications program. Louis J. Giuliano, president and CEO of ITT Defense&Electronics, said "Bowman is the largest tactical communications opportunity in the world, and those companies who participate on this program will be in the forefront of global tactical communications."
First flight of the Tier II Plus Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle won't take place this year as initially planned, and is now being eyed for late April as the program focuses on completion of systems integration.
BFGOODRICH Aircraft Wheels&Brakes, Troy, Ohio, said Air Berlin has chosen it as a supplier for its fleet of 737-800 airliners. The airline has placed six firm orders and four options with Boeing with 737-800s, with deliveries beginning in 1998.
HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO.'s Radar Systems unit, Los Angeles, Calif., received a $9.3 million contract from the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command on Nov. 25 for "field engineering support, systems engineering support to analyze, correct, test, and track software and hardware integration problems, engineering analyses to eliminate parts obsolescence and to increase producibility and affordability, and cost schedule and technical metrics in support of the AN/ALR-67 program," according to the Dept. of Defense.
Boeing and McDonnell Douglas agreed to a "strategic collaboration" for future wide-body commercial airplane programs, the companies confirmed yesterday, in a move driven at least in part by the need to counter what U.S. aerospace executives have long considered subsidized European competition from Airbus Industrie.
