NATO has released a request for proposals for the Medium Extended Air Defense (MEADS) program even though its funding prospects remain uncertain in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 1997. A spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) said Friday that the RFP went out Thursday at a bidders' conference in Huntsville, Ala.
BOEING has completed a series of drop tests at NASA's Stennis Space Center as part of its effort to build an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) that can operate at lower cost by reusing engines and other expensive hardware. In the Stennis tests, a prototype of the recoverable propulsion module Boeing is developing to carry flight controllers, hydraulics and turbomachinery as well as engines was repeatedly dropped into an inland waterway from a tall construction crane. The module survived, and instruments it carried will help Boeing engineers refine their design.
The Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response, in development by the U.S. Navy, and the British Conventionally Armed Standoff Missile (CASOM) are backups in case the Joint Air-to-Surface Missile (JASSM) program falters, says Harry Schulte, the U.S. Air Force's program executive officer for conventional strike. But he doesn't expect that to happen and Air Force and Navy officials overseeing JASSM point out that SLAM-ER, at least, doesn't meet the JASSM requirement.
TRW HAS BEEN AWARDED an additional $105.4 million for work on the National Missile Defense Program, the Pentagon said Friday. The contract is a result of the decision last year to shift NMD from a technology readiness to a deployment readiness effort. TRW's work is part of NMD systems engineering and integration and the Battle Management/Command, Control and Communications (BM/C3) program.
The U.S. Navy has deployed a pair of small satellites in Earth orbit, linked by a non-conductive braided cable two-and-a-half miles long, that are designed to study the dynamics and endurance of a tethered system in space. The Naval Research Laboratory's Naval Center for Space Technology said Thursday it had deployed the "Tether Physics and Survivability" (TiPS) experiment from an undisclosed "host vehicle," which was apparently launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., May 12 (DAILY, May 14).
LOCKHEED MARTIN solar array attached to Russia's Mir space station has been switched on, at least partially, and so far it's working nominally. The U.S.-built array was delivered to Mir bolted to the side of the pressurized docking module orbited by the Space Shuttle Atlantis (DAILY, Nov. 16, 1995), and later installed by spacewalking cosmonauts (DAILY, May 22). Russia's RSC-Energia integrated 84 solar panels built by Lockheed Martin into Russian-built hinged frames at its Kaliningrad plant, and half of those have subsequently been switched on with good results.
The General Accounting Office is questioning whether the U.S. Navy will have sufficiently tested the Hughes ALR-67(V)3 radar warning receiver before the low-rate initial production decision is made in early fiscal year 1997. "Notwithstanding the unresolved deficiencies in the ALR-67(V)3's effectiveness, the unknown nature of its suitability, and the Navy's experiences with earlier versions of the ALR-67, the Navy plans to commit to the ALR-67(V)3 low-rate initial production before completing the second phase of operational testing...," GAO said.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Tactical Aircraft Systems, Fort Worth, Tex., will carry out initial engineering and manufacturing data activities for a contract change proposal affecting the F-16 Block 40's Common Missile Warning System. The F-16 System Program Office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, awarded the $16.4 million contract on June 17.
After many questions about where the Joint Program Office for cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles will be located, the U.S. Navy has decided to move it from its current site in Arlington, Va., to NAS Patuxent River, Md., along with Naval Air Systems Command, by the end of next summer.
The USAF's decision to judge JASSM competitors' past contract performance as equal in rank to their technical proposals changed the outcome of the competition that was ultimately won by Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas. AF acquisition chief Arthur Money says "past performance was definitely a discriminator."
The General Accounting Office is raising questions about how the Navy employs the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). The GAO points out in a critical report on the F/A-18E/F (DAILY, June 20) that the Navy doesn't wait for enemy air defense radars to begin emitting, and instead fires the missiles at known sites so they arrive concurrently with Navy strike aircraft. "The Navy's intent is that the HARM will attack the radar if it is emitting, or force (Cont. p.
Russia's Soyuz-U suffered a second straight failure last week when one of the space launchers shut down about 50 seconds after liftoff and fell back to Earth, destroying its classified military payload. The three-stage launcher, manufactured by the TsSKB-Progress State Space Center of Samara, was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome with a classified payload supplied by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The lost payload is believed to be a close-look photore-connaissance satellite similar to Cosmos 2331, orbited March 14 (DAILY, March 19).
NASA will brief industry Friday on the status of its HYPER-X flying testbed, a Mach 5-10 hydrogen-fueled lifting body that could lead to a new generation of high-speed missiles and aircraft. The U.S. space and aeronautics agency is looking for manufacturers able to build the 12-foot hypersonic testbed, and will conduct a classified briefing on just what that will entail at Langley Research Center, Va., according to an announcement in today's Commerce Business Daily.
SPACEHAB INC. has slipped the end of its fiscal year from Sept. 30 to June 30, a move it said "beneficially separates the company's annual business planning and fiscal year-end reporting process from impacts associated with potential delays in the timely completion of the government's annual budget process." With most of its business based on NASA contracts for its pressurized Space Shuttle middeck augmentation and logistics modules, the company said it wants to be able to complete its annual year-end audit before the federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
EER SYSTEMS CORP., Seabrook, Md., has won a Naval Air Systems Command contract for fabrication, integration and installation of a Navigation/Communication System (NCS) for MH-53E helicopters.
U.S. ARMY AND MARINE CORPS troops on Wednesday successfully completed the firing of six Javelin missiles at Ft. Hunter Liggett, Calif., as part of a limited user test, an Army spokesman said yesterday. The firings follow problems encountered earlier in the testing when three of the Lockheed Martin/Texas Instruments systems misfired (DAILY, May 1). The spokesman said the successful firings indicate the fixes were successful. He added that the Army plans to equip the first combat unit, the 75th Rangers, Ft.
COMPUTING DEVICES INTERNATIONAL has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the second phase of the Battlefield Awareness and Data Dissemination (BADD) advanced concept technology demonstration, the Pentagon said yesterday. Contract negotiations between DARPA and the Bloomington, Minn.-based company are in the final stages, but CDI could receive up to $30 million for the program. BADD is intended to tell, in near real-time, the location of friendly, neutral and hostile forces.
The U.S. Air Force plans to evaluate the Swedish BOL chaff dispenser as a potential solution to a shortfall in electronic warfare self- protection for its F-15 fighters. Tracor's ALE-45 dispenser, now carried by the Eagle, has had "a significant problem for a number of years in payload capacity" in that it is internally mounted and can't be made bigger, and some of its parts are obsolescent, said Lt. Col. Kevin Sheehan, chief of electronic combat in the F-15 System Program Office at the AF's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
The Integrated Program Office in charge of developing the military/civilian National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) has revised its program acquisition strategy and is looking for approval from the three responsible agencies next month.
LOCKHEED MARTIN, Fort Worth, Tex., will provide 305 Color Multi-Functional Display System installation kits for the F-16 aircraft under an $89.5 million increase to an earlier contract from the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. The Dept. of Defense announced the contract on June 12. It said the effort supports foreign military sales to Belgium, Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands.
The Senate has passed an amendment accelerating by three years the current plan for development of the next-generation nuclear attack submarine. The amendment, by Sen. Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho), requires the Navy to modify its current plan in order to produce a less expensive submarine earlier. The amendment was approved Wednesday evening by voice vote as the Senate considered the fiscal year 1997 defense authorization bill.
An airship may be chosen for range clearance and telemetry relay at the Navy's Patuxent River, Md., facility. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Div. at Patuxent said in a June 20 Commerce Business Daily notice that it needs an aircraft for such duties, and that the long endurance and low fuel consumption of airships may suit them for the job.
McDonnell Douglas test pilot Jeffrey James Crutchfield, 44, was killed Wednesday when his F/A-18C fighter crashed in a residential area of Bethalto, Ill., about 20 miles north of St. Louis. He was practicing aerial demonstration maneuvers in preparation for an air show in the Czech Republic next week. An investigation is underway, and McDonnell Douglas is assessing its liability for the loss of the plane, which was leased from the Navy.
E-SYSTEMS, Goleta, Calif., received a $5.9 million contract from the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center for management, engineering, administrative, hardware development, logistics and test support for Air Force requirements associated with the Navy-led AN/ALE-50 Countermeasures Dispensing System engineering and manufacturing development program. The Dept. of Defense announced the contract June 17, but said it was awarded May 14.
The U.S. Navy, in a move to offset the negative effects of satellite communications antennas on the stability and signature of ships, plans to develop antennas that could be integrated into low observable superstructures. The Naval Command, Control, and Ocean Surveillance Center, San Diego, said in a June 20 Commerce Business Daily notice that it anticipates spending about $9 million on a program to develop a multi-beam, multi-band aperture that would work with UHF and EHF, Inmarsat satellites, and the Global Broadcast System.
