U.S. ARMY Program Executive Office for Missile Defense has been renamed PEO, Air and Missile Defense, but will retain its SFAE-MD designation, the service said yesterday. Col. Daniel L. Montgomery, head of the PEO, said the "new name captures the full mission of the PEO by appropriately including air defense in the title." The name change was instituted last month.
Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, Bethesda, Md., has won a $12 million U.S. Navy contract for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Remote Mine-hunting System. Naval Sea Systems Command said contract options could increase the total value to $31 million. The work is expected to conclude in September 2001.
Surpassed by Russia as the world's top arms seller, the United States has slipped into second place with $8.2 billion worth of sales agreements, an amount that is still 28.6% of the total, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service. The report, using 1995 data, says Russia is the leader in arms transfers worldwide, with agreements valued at $9.1 billion, or 31.6% of the total.
Siemens Plessey Electronic Systems Pty. Ltd., of Canberra, Australia, has selected Denro Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., to supply the Tactical Air Defense Communication Switching (TADS) system for the Royal Australian Air Force's military airspace control communications system. The $40 million project is designed to replace existing Australian Defense Force ground-based radio systems at air traffic control facilities and provide the capability to communicate with current and future aircraft more effectively and securely.
Preliminary data indicate that Israel's Arrow 2 anti-tactical ballistic missile met objectives yesterday in its first intercept test, the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Army reported. "Initial data reviews indicate the missile performed as planned," said the U.S. Army, which is working with Israel's MOD on the project. "Preliminary indications are that the Arrow 2 sensors locked on the target, the warhead was activated and the target was hit."
DENMARK has appointed Gen. Christian Hvidt to be the new armed forces chief, a Danish military official said yesterday. Hvidt replaces Adm. Hans Joergen Garde, who died in a plane crash earlier this month. Army Lt. Gen. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg Hoff, the former chief of the Jutland division, replaced Hvidt as chief of the defense staff.
Machinists union President George J. Kourpias has asked President Clinton to launch a probe of potential safety issues surrounding aircraft and weapons assembled by replacement workers at McDonnell Douglas during the 11-week-old Machinists' strike in St. Louis, as well as move to prevent the company from charging strike-related costs against contracts.
Congressional Republicans never formally consulted the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization before establishing the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Navy Upper Tier deployment dates they are now suing the Administration for not adhering to, a senior BMDO official told the DAILY in an interview. BMDO Acting Deputy Director Douglas C. Klein said BMDO never agreed to the deployment Congress included in the fiscal year 1996 defense authorization and appropriations bills. Therefore, Klein said, the dates "were never real."
The U.S. Air Force has awarded two contracts worth a total of $23 million for development of interface hardware and software to test electronic equipment on the B-2 bomber. RJO Enterprises of Hunt Valley, Md., won $16.2 million for five lots of the depot-level test program sets. Comarco, Inc., of Petersburg, Va., won $6.9 million for four additional lots.
Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) was functioning normally after a Saturday launch aboard the fourth H-II booster, with antennas and arrays deploying and controllers settling down to a 90-day checkout period, the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) reported from Tokyo. The booster placed the satellite, the first in a series of new Japanese environmental platforms, into a circular polar orbit (98.6 degrees) with an apogee of 830.8 kilometers, a perigee of 800.5 km, and a period of 101.2 minutes.
Development problems and change orders have pushed NASA's International Space Station budget for fiscal years 1997 and 1998 some $500 million above target, triggering a search for savings to keep the project within its congressionally mandated $2.1 billion annual cap for the two years, sources told The DAILY.
Aerospace merchant bank The Carlyle Group agreed to buy Textron's Nashville, Tenn.-based wing and wing components-specialist, Textron Aerostructures, for $180 million in cash and a subordinated note in a deal that should close next month, Textron reported yesterday.
HUGHES SPACE and Communications International yesterday signed a contract with Telecomunicaciones de Mexico for a new high-power satellite that will provide service to Mexico as well as most of North and South America. Hughes will base the Morelos III platform on its HS 601HP bus, with gallium arsenide solar cells delivering almost 8 kilowatts of power to the C- and Ku-band payload. The Mexican customer will take delivery in 1998 and make its own arrangements for launching the satellite to 116.8 degrees West longitude.
The U.S. Air Force plan to shift its E-3 Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) aircraft to an open systems architecture could take up to 12 years, but should allow rapid integration of future upgrades, according to Air Force officials.
Eight more Russian companies producing weapons and defense- related technology have been authorized by the Russian government to trade their products in the global marketplace. Heading the list of firms granted the right of independent access to foreign markets were Moscow-based Bazalt company, which makes aviation bombs, and Zvezda Joint-Stock Company of Tomilino, renowned for its ejection seats and life-support equipment for pilots and cosmonauts.
A Chinese Long March space launch vehicle failed to place a Hughes- built satellite in the proper orbit, apparently because of a problem with the troubled rocket's third stage.
