ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP., Dulles, Va., won a $31 million contract for four firm and six optional rocket launches to support the U.S. Army's Theater Missile Defense Critical Measurements Program (TCMP). The program, which supports the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's (BMDO) Consolidated Targets Program, is designed to collect signature data from targets. The data are used to develop improved interceptor sensors. For TCMP Campaigns III and IV, Orbital plans to launch Castor IV single stage rockets from Wake Island.
U.S. VICE PRESIDENT GORE and Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin will announce that four U.S. aircraft that have been operating for three Russian airlines on a temporary waiver of the 50% tariff will have their waivers made permanent. Included are two DC-10-30s operated by Krasair, a 737 operated by Sakhalin Air, and a 757 operated by Baikal Airlines.
Animal rights activists are expected to protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tomorrow against the upcoming Bion 11 and 12 space missions, joint U.S./Russian efforts to study how rhesus monkeys adapt to microgravity. The protest, featuring demonstrators in monkey suits, will duplicate similar actions at Johnson Space Center and NASA headquarters.
Recent fighting in Chechnya is likely to overshadow the long- awaited Space Station memorandum of understanding between NASA and the Russian Space Agency when Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin meet in Moscow today and tomorrow. Gore is on a mission to protest new civilian casualties in the breakaway region, and agenda items like the Station agreement may take a back seat. The Station MOU probably will be initialed during the session, although as of Friday NASA was saying it still wasn't finished.
Representatives of all countries using the AWACS aircraft met last week for the first time to discuss potential upgrades, but came to no specific agreements. Brig. Gen. Jeff Reiter, program executive officer for command, control, and communications for the U.S. Air Force, said the meeting, at Boeing facilities in Seattle, was an opportunity to discuss issues "of mutual concern or mutual interest."
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), chairman of the House National Security research and development subcommittee, said he has asked the General Accounting Office to explain how two U.S. government bodies - the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Institute for Defense Analyses - could come to "grossly different" conclusions about the international arms market.
Northrop Grumman will make reliability and maintainability improvements to the U.S. Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) APY-1 and APY-2 radar under a recently awarded contract. The contract to Northrop Grumman's Electronic Sensors and Systems Div. is part of a program that could be valued at $97 million over the next five years, the company said Friday. Initial FY '96 funding is set for $4.6 million.
The U.S. Air Force says stopping work on the JASSM program during the Hughes bid protest could cost $20 million to $30 million. USAF lawyers therefore asked Judge Albert V. Bryan, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District in Alexandria, Va., to order Hughes to post a $3 billion bond for the 10-day stay he granted last week (DAILY, July 11). But Bryan said the risk of Hughes being harmed outweighed the government's financial concerns, and set bond at $100,000.
Before approving the $29.5 billion fiscal 1997 appropriations bill for the departments of Commerce, Justice and State, the House Appropriations Committee wrote into the bill a prohibition on funding for negotiations revising the ABM Treaty unless President Clinton certifies he will submit substantive changes to the Senate. Introduced by Appropriations Chairman Rep. Robert L. Livingston (R-La.) and approved by the Republican majority, the amendment was the subject of a shouting match between Livingston and ranking Democrat Rep.
The U.S. Navy plans to hold an industry day later this year to bring industry up to speed on its plansfor the Common Support Aircraft, says Capt. Wally Massenburg, head of Naval Air Systems Command's anti-ship weapon system program office. The Navy is studying how to replace the E-2 early warning aircraft, the C-2 logistics plane, the S-3 anti-submarine warfare and surface surveillance aircraft, and its electronic and signals intelligence derivative, the ES-3 with one aircraft.
The Senate leadership plans a "missile defense day," but it won't be until at least September, according to Capitol Hill sources. The Senate leadership has agreed to take up the Defend America Act and substitutes for that national missile defense plan after the August recess. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has been telling proponents of the Defend America Act in the House that he would prefer the Senate to work on the act first.
SHUTTLE IMAGING RADAR will be used to generate data for the Pentagon's Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) under an agreement signed last Monday. Rear Adm. Joseph J. Dantone, director of DMA, told a luncheon meeting of the National Aviation Club in Arlington, Va., that the spaceborne synthetic aperture radar used on previous Shuttle missions will provide terrain data for military mapping purposes. The DMA mission is on the NASA spaceflight manifest for the year 2000.
The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to confirm the nomination of Adm. Jay L. Johnson to be chief of naval operations is being delayed because the committee is giving priority to the defense authorization conference, and still waiting for all necessary documents to be supplied, SASC sources say. President Clinton nominated Johnson for the post on June 5. He would replace Adm. Mike Boorda, who took his own life May 16.
NASA managers decided late Friday to replace the solid rocket boosters slated to lift the Space Shuttle Atlantis to Russia's Mir space station, a safety-based move that will leave U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid stranded in orbit six weeks longer than originally planned. Although some booster engineers believed the hot gas paths found in field joints on the depleted boosters recovered after the last Shuttle launch did not pose a danger, managers decided to err on the side of caution and delay the planned July 31 launch until Sept. 15 at the earliest.
Neither the major differences in the House and Senate defense authorization bills nor the policy issues that could trigger a veto by President Clinton have been resolved so far, congressional sources said Friday.
The Pentagon will oppose any fiscal 1997 intelligence community reform legislation that doesn't call for creation of a National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), Deputy Defense Secretary John White told members of the House National Security Committee. Some HNSC members expressed concern about the legislation and said they are somewhat reluctant to sign off on IC reforms without a more thorough review of all the issues and their implications for DOD.
The FAA proposed a $314.6 million program, affecting nearly 6,000 existing airliners, to upgrade flight data recorders. It said recorders on older aircraft should capture 17 parameters instead of the current 11. Recorders on aircraft yet to be certified, it said, should cover 88 parameters. FAA Administrator David Hinson said the final rule will require retrofit within four years. This is how it would work: -- 1,929 727s, 737s, L-1011s, DC-8s, DC-9s and F-28s which currently have 11 parameters would need 17 or 18.
The U.S. Air Force plans to award a contract to Rockwell International for additional AGM-130 standoff missiles to boost its own inventory by 500 and to meet any requests for the weapon from other countries. The USAF said in a July 11 Commerce Business Daily notice that Rockwell's Autonetics and Missile Systems unit, Duluth, Ga., is in line for a sole source award for follow-on production of AGM-130s between fiscal 1997 and 2001. The buy is contingent upon availability of funds.
There is "strong possibility" that when the House National Security Committee marks up the FY '97 defense intelligence authorization bill on Wednesday it will do away with a provision to create a National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), an HNSC aide says. Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary John White, have told HNSC that not moving ahead with NIMA will be a mistake (see story on page 69).
Top military commanders want the projected National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to give them more timely information, according to Rear Adm. Joseph J. Dantone, who heads the NIMA implementation team. In a speech last Thursday to the National Aviation Club in Arlington, Va., he quoted the CINCs as saying, "we need information that's current." He said they want imagery and maps that are no older than "about 30 days."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who held up floor action for several weeks on the FY '97 defense authorization bill, will be getting some paybacks over the next few weeks. Several senators, bitter about the delay, now want to review Specter's intelligence bill to slow its trip to the floor, an aide says.
Time is up at the end of today for the Pentagon to restructure its theater missile defense programs to meet deployment dates called for in the FY '96 defense appropriations bill, or face a lawsuit. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) says if the Administration doesn't respond today, he and a few other GOP lawmakers will file a suit against President Clinton and Defense Secretary Perry for not adhering to the FY '96 law. Several Hill aides say they expect the court to throw out the case because it's a political dispute.
Gen. James A. Abrahamson (USAF, Ret.), has joined the company's team as a board member, investor and leader of its systems integration and launch safety programs.
Lori Garver, executive director of the National Space Society, will take a one-year leave-of-absence to join NASA as a special assistant for communications in the Office of the Administrator at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Bob Rutkowski has been named aviation regional sales manager. Prior to joining the company, Rutkowski worked for Tropic Aero&Loran, one of the nation's leading re-sellers of GPS equipment. Ralph Fisch was named national sales manager for aviation products. Prior to joining Megallan, he worked for Garmin International Inc., where he served as a regional aviation manager and later as international sales manager.
