CUBIC DEFENSE SYSTEMS, San Diego, won an $11.3 million contract to provide depot maintenance and repair services for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) data link. Contract options could raise the value of the award to $22.3 million over the next five years, according to the company. The contract is for maintenance and repair of the surveillance control and data link system that Cubic has provided for Joint STARS.
LORAL SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS has announced plans to offer a Global Positioning System augmentation service that it believes will offer higher accuracy than the 20-meter range expected to be possible with GPS alone. The "Loral Integrated Navigation and Communications Satellite Services (LINCCS)" will use the company's planned Globalstar low-Earth orbit telecommunications service in an open architecture that will permit its use by all types of GPS receivers.
TEXTRON closed on the sale of its Nashville, Tenn.-based wing and wing components-specialist, Textron Aerostructures, to aerospace merchant bank The Carlyle Group for $180 million in cash and a subordinated note, Textron said Monday. As expected, the Textron Aerospace Products unit of Aerostructures will remain with Textron and be reassigned to Textron's Cessna Aircraft Co. subsidiary (DAILY, Aug. 20).
ALLIEDSIGNAL AEROSPACE has won an $8.2 million contract to provide a number of systems for Orbital Sciences Corp.'s X-34 suborbital reusable launch vehicle prototype. They include the electrical and hydraulic power system; hydraulic actuation for flight control surfaces; propellant management fluid controls, and propellant dump system. The company's Aerospace Equipment Systems unit will do the work on the NASA-backed contract, which has been descoped to remove a requirement that the vehicle be able to conduct commercial launches to orbit (DAILY, Sept. 3).
Competitors for the U.K.'s airborne battlefield surveillance stand-off radar (ASTOR) program must submit their proposals to the Ministry of Defense on Sept. 13. A single contractor will be chosen in late 1997 or early 1998. Five ASTOR aircraft, to be used jointly by the British Army and Royal Air Force, will be required to enter service by 2003, and must have a service life of at least 30 years.
The Pentagon plans to continue a program to evaluate a German- developed infrared flare for C-17 aircraft as one of 37 Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) projects for fiscal year 1997. The Pentagon has informed Congress it intends to start 22 new FCT projects and continue 15 that are already underway (DAILY, Sept. 10).
A NASA sounding rocket launch that startled the pilot of a commercial jetliner last month was nominal and apparently met all air traffic safety constraints, a spokesman for the agency's Wallops Flight Facility said yesterday. The pilot of an American Airlines Boeing 757 on a route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Boston on Aug. 29 reported seeing what he termed a "missile" rising off his right wing to the National Transportation Safety Board.
A McDonnell Douglas Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response (SLAM ER) test vehicle has passed the first in a series of six unpowered separation tests, the company said. In the test, from an F/A-18 at NAS Patuxent River, Md., on Aug. 22, the vehicle separated cleanly at 5,000 feet and one G, MDC reported. It was recovered from the Chesapeake Bay in one piece, the company said.
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chief Senate conferee on the fiscal 1997 defense appropriations bill, said yesterday after the opening bargaining session that he thought President Clinton would accept an increase in Pentagon spending of "between nine and 10" billion dollars over his $234.6 billion request. Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), who heads the House conferees, said he thought "$9 billion would be acceptable" to the White House. This would include funding for Bosnia operations through Dec. 20, he said.
President Clinton yesterday ordered the FAA to impose stricter security measures at 450 U.S. commercial airports, and asked Congress to come up with $429.4 million this session to pay for the program. The move, in response to recommendations by a commission under Vice President Al Gore that was established after the July 17 loss of TWA Flight 800, calls for a number of measures that would ultimately cost $1.1 billion.
The Pentagon intends to evaluate a Russian-developed advanced fabrication technology for fighter aircraft structures as one of 37 Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) programs slated for fiscal year 1997. Under the project, a center fuselage section developed by the All Russian Institute of Aviation will be used to determine the structural integrity, affordability and supportability of advanced metallic technologies, according to a list of proposed FCT programs sent last week to the congressional defense committees by the Pentagon.
Rolls-Royce has begun full-scale design of its 80,000- lbst. Trent 900 engine for 450- to 650-seat widebody long-haul aircraft on the drawing boards at Boeing and Airbus Industrie, and expects to start tests on an engine core early in 1998. A full engine run is planned by the third quarter of 1998, in time to support flying testbeds in mid-1999 and engine certification by December 1999 aimed at the Boeing 747-600X's first flight in mid-2000.
The U.S. Air Force's Oklahoma Air Logistics Center here is awaiting the fate of work at two other depots slated for shutdown under the base closure process, and staying ready to absorb the work if necessary.
Raytheon E-Systems won a $193 million contact from the Defense Information Systems Agency to provide maintenance and technical support for the Global Command and Control System (GCCS). The one-year contract, which includes four one-year options, calls for support of the GCCS and three legacy Worldwide Military Command and Control Systems (WWMCCS) mainframes that comprise the Top Secret System (TS3) system.
September 3, 1996 McDonnell Douglas Corporation McDonnell Douglas Corporation, St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $120,000,000 face value increase to a firm fixed price contract to provide for various support equipment for the F-15S aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed January 2000. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-93/C-2054, P00006).
ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS will upgrade the AN/AAR-47 missile warning system to increase processing speed and reduce false alarm rate, the company said. Naval Air Systems Command awarded Alliant a $2.8 million contract to improve the system, used by helicopters, low- and slow-flying aircraft, and C-5, C-17 and C-141 airlifters. During the 18-month period of the contract, Alliant Defense Electronics Systems will design, develop and build 60 sets of backplane and microprocessor circuit card assemblies that are subsets of the system's computer unit.
The Royal Australian Air Force dropped McDonnell Douglas' F124-powered version of the T-45 Goshawk from the Lead-in Fighter, or LIF, competition, in part because the MDC entry didn't have enough Australian content, sources said yesterday.
The Pentagon revised Lockheed Martin's incentive contract for development work on the Tier III Minus DarkStar unmanned aerial vehicle to keep the company interested in meeting as many performance goals as possible, even if it can't meet them all, Harry A. Berman, the program's top manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, told The DAILY.
ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL said it has received a $38 million U.S. Air Force award to develop a design to modify existing Miniature Receive Terminals (MRTs) and communications security devices. The MRTs will be for the E-4B and E-6B aircraft.
The U.S. Army expects the use of modelling and simulation to yield cost savings in its acquisition programs, and will therefore continue to support the technology, Gilbert Decker, the Army's acquisition chief, said Friday. "We are going to keep our investment stable, if not increase it," Decker told the Army Aviation Association of America in Arlington, Va.
Lockheed Martin has launched the first A2100 communications satellite built by its Astro Space Commercial unit, placing the advanced telecommunications platform in its geostationary transfer orbit for GE American Communications Inc. on Sunday. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., atop an Atlas IIA booster supplied by Lockheed Martin Astronautics came at 5:29 p.m. Sunday. The satellite will provide television and other communications services to the U.S. and the Caribbean from a position at 103 degrees West longitude.
