LOCKHEED MARTIN Aeronautical Systems Co., Marietta, Ga., said Chester Wheeler has been named executive vice president - business operations, effective Oct. 1. He is now vice president of business management at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver. At Aeronautical Systems, he will be responsible for business operations.
Intelligence capabilities of U.S. Strategic Command may not be as com-prehensive as those of some other organizations, but they offer features that regional commanders-in-chief can't get anywhere else, according to the head of STRATCOM, Gen. Eugene Habiger. Stressing to reporters in Washington that STRATCOM's nuclear expertise and intelligence capabilities are available to the CINCs, Habiger says "We have the best capability to get...imagery in an audit trail.
The Naval Research Laboratory awarded Lucent Technologies a three-year, $12.9 million contract to develop technology to reduce helicopter rotor blade noise and cut noise and vibration levels in helicopter cabins. Under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-sponsored contract, Lucent's Bell Labs facility in Whippany, N.J., will work with Sikorsky Aircraft to select the most appropriate technologies.
Sweden has selected Wyle Laboratories of Los Angeles to develop a dynamic flight simulator for the Swedish armed forces. Saab Military Aircraft will work with Wyle on the project, which has an estimated value of more than $10 million.
Russian space industrial consortium Kompomash Corp. has won government backing for $1 billion in loans to support its efforts to develop and market launchers, communications satellites and other space systems domestically and abroad. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin has signed a decree approving Kompomash's request for government-backed financing "for support of high- tech production intended for deployment both in the Russian Federation and abroad."
Boeing's 747-500X would offer "unparalleled payload/range capability and the 747-600X would offer more range and significantly more capacity," according to Ron Woodard, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group. "Together they would provide significant commonality benefits with the 747-400 and the [twin engine] 777, in effect, a 'double derivative,'" he said in comments prepared for delivery at the Farnborough air show.
NASA and Orbital Sciences Corp. have negotiated a $50 million, 30- month contract for a downsized X-34 reusable launch vehicle (RLV) prototype that will make its first two flights from White Sands Missile Range, N.M., beginning in the fall of 1998. Slightly larger than Orbital's Pegasus XL vehicle at 58.3 feet in length and a wingspan of 27.7 feet, the X-34 will be drop-launched from the modified L-1011 airliner Orbital uses to launch the Pegasus and land autonomously at the White Sands runway, NASA said Friday.
As Congress returns from its August recess today, the chairmen and ranking Democrats of the House and Senate defense appropriations committees plan to discuss the schedule for wrapping up work on the fiscal year 1997 defense appropriations conference. The goal is to get a bill filed by the week of Sept. 9 and sent to the White House well before Sept. 30, says a Senate defense appropriations panel aide. Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), who chairs the House defense appropriations panel, had bypass surgery before the recess.
Four AGM-130 standoff weapons scored four direct hits during a U.S. Air Force exercise at the Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City, according to Rockwell International, the weapon's prime contractor. It said the weapon has been tested at the annual Weapon System Evaluation Program (WSEP) for the past three years and holds a perfect record. Seventeen AGM-130s have been launched since the weapon was added to the evaluation program, the company said.
The U.S. Army purchased its AN/PSS-12 portable mine detector because of its low cost, but the system can't sufficiently detect low-metallic content mines, the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported. The service in December 1991 selected the AN/PSS-12 developed by Schiebel GmbH of Austria over a competing detector developed by Foerster Instruments Inc. of Pittsburgh.
Don't look for any sexy new technology on a Mars sample return flight, particularly if curiosity over the possibility of life on the Red Planet spurs an accelerated program. Although there has been talk of advanced solid rockets for an ascent stage to bring Martian rocks and soil back to Earth (DAILY, Aug. 9), the hypergolic approach used when Apollo was designed 30 years ago is more likely.
The U.S. Air Force's Rome Laboratory is soliciting ideas to help the service in the area of information warfare in terms of "global reach-global power." "Concepts and capabilities are needed to support a wide variety of missions including worldwide joint missions," the lab said in an Aug. 30 Commerce Business Daily notice. "Priority will be given to those ideas which most significantly increase the confidentiality, availability and integrity of our information systems and which have the widest global applicability."
While President Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole have accused each other of taking the wrong road on national missile defense, neither has been completely upfront. Dole, at the Republican National Convention, accused the White House of ignoring the need for such a system. DOD has been evaluating the idea, although probably not to the extent that Dole would like. Clinton, at the Democratic National Convention, accused Dole of wanting to spend $60 billion on a "Star Wars" program by 2000.
McDonnell Douglas reported success in the initial flight tests of a system for the F-15 fighter that would be used in air defense suppression missions. The precision direction finding (PDF) system, developed jointly by MDC, Litton Amecom and TRW, "performed exceptionally well on the first two flights...," said Mike Marks, vice president and general manager of F-15 programs. "These flights are demonstrating that it is feasible to install an extremely sensitive and accurate RF targeting system on a fighter aircraft."
Airbus Industrie will have a military aircraft division in the not-too-distant future, responsible for fighter as well as transport aircraft, Daimler-Benz Aerospace Chairman Manfred Bischoff said at the pre-Farnborough Financial Times conference. Airbus already has been chosen to develop a new C-130-size European military transport if governments fund it.
The Pentagon on Oct. 1 will establish the Joint C4ISR Decision Support Center in Arlington, Va., and the Joint C4ISR Battle Center in Suffolk, Va., according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for C4I Barry Horton. He says the two centers will allow for an extension of the annual Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID), the 1996 version of which wrapped up last week.
Sometime rivals General Electric Aircraft Engines and Pratt&Whitney were expected Monday to unveil their new joint engine for Boeing's large derivatives of the 747 - the GP7176, a 76,000 lbst. turbofan that is the first engine in the proposed GP7000 turbofan family and the first product of the newly formed GE-P&W Engine Alliance.
Brazil is preparing for the first flight of its long- awaited Satellite Launcher Vehicle (VLS) "in the next few months." President Fernando Henrique Cardoso Friday unveiled his 10-year space program, and predicted advances in the field for Brazil beginning with the first VLS launch from Alcantara in the northeastern part of the country. Powered by four S-43 solid-fuel first-staged motors strapped around a second-stage core, the 63-foot tall, three-foot diameter rocket was designed to lift a 440-pound payload to an equatorial orbit at an altitude of 465 miles.
The defense appropriations conference is expected to move swiftly, but there will be some sticking points, aides say, noting a few differences with the authorization bill passed last month. While the authorizers set policy, the appropriators control the purse strings. The authorization bill, awaiting final approval by President Clinton, contains higher levels of funding for weapons modernization accounts. Appropriators put more funding into operations and maintenance accounts, contingency operations and healthcare accounts than the authorizers.
TRACOR APPLIED SCIENCES INC., Austin, Tex., has received a follow-on U.S. Navy contract to analyze airborne platforms and systems. The Tracor Inc. subisidary said the new five-year contract is from the Naval Air Warfare Center - Aircraft Div., Patuxent River, Md., and that it has a potential value of $5 million. The company said it represents an expansion of capabilities by Tracor's Naval Air Systems Operation, formed two years ago to target additional naval aviation business.
U.S. Air Force AWACS users are eagerly eyeing greater access to battlefield intelligence data that could augment existing system capabilities. Lt. Col. Terry Maher, director of requirements for the 522nd Air Control Wing here, told The DAILY yesterday that AWACS "needs some more information" to adapt to the modern battlefield.
ECC INTERNATIONAL CORP., Wayne, Pa., said its board of directors has adopted a stockholder rights plan in which preferred stock purchase rights will be distributed on Sept. 17, as a dividend at the rate of one right for each share of ECC common stock outstanding at of the close of business that day. The company said the new rights plan is designed to deter coercive or unfair takeover tactics.
Rolls-Royce said it received an order from the Kato Group of Egypt for RB211-535 engines to power as many as 30 Tupolev Tu-204 airliners. The order - worth up to $450 million and covering 13 firm and 17 option aircraft - represents the production launch of the Rolls-powered version of the Russian-built airliner.
The U.S. military services are testing a Theater Deployable Multimedia Communications System (TDMCS) to link commanders with military and commercial communications networks for better battlefield awareness.
The fifth F/A-18E/F Super Hornet completed its first test flight on Tuesday at McDonnell Douglas' St. Louis facility The aircraft, designated E5, flew for two hours. It is the first of the test program's two avionics and weapon system test aircraft, McDonnell Douglas said.
