COMPUTER SCIENCES CORP., El Segundo, Calif., has received three U.S. Navy contracts totaling $65.8 million. The first, worth $36 million, calls for CSC to support the Navy's Advanced Combat Direction System (ACDS) in San Diego. In the second, valued at $8.8 million, CSC will support the F-14A upgrade program at Point Mugu, Calif. CSC is teamed Litton Guidance&Control Systems and GBL Systems Corp.
Boeing engineers plan to repressurize the first U.S. element scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station today in an effort to better understand why strain gauge readings reached unexpected levels in earlier attempts, forcing a halt in testing.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE has fired three top officers as a result of the April crash of a CT-43 in Croatia that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and all others onboard. The commander, vice commander, and operations group commander of the 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein AB, Germany, were relieved, the AF said yesterday. They are, respectively, Brig. Gen. William E. Stevens, Col. Roger W. Hansen, and Col. John E. Mazurowski. The move "does not infer any judgment" about the officers' responsibility for the crash, a Pentagon spokesman said.
GOVERNMENT OF THAILAND yesterday signed an agreement with the U.S. Navy to buy F/A-18 Hornet fighters and Harpoon missiles for about $390 million, according to McDonnell Douglas, prime contractor for both systems.
U.S. NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER Weapons Div., Point Mugu, Calif., plans to procure 20 expendable threat emitter antennas. It gave no other details in a May 28 Commerce Business Daily notice, saying only that "Complete specifications will be provided in the RFQ."
The U.S. Air Force has temporarily ceased flying one of its B-2 bombers after it was damaged by lightning during a training mission. The lightning strike, discovered only during a post-flight inspection, is the first known incident of its kind for the B-2, the AF said in a prepared statement from Whiteman AFB, Mo., where the Northrop Grumman bombers are based. There was damage to the surface of the bomber's wing, but the repair cost hasn't been established.
Kaman's growing working capital needs for new projects, such as the K- MAX helicopter, led debt-watcher Standard&Poor's this week to change its outlook on the company from Stable to Negative. S&P cited the K-MAX program, as well as opportunities to sell SH-2G Seasprite helicopters outside the U.S., as activities which, while they "enhance growth prospects, they are being financed partly with bank borrowings, which put pressure on cash flow protection measures.
Engineers at the U.S. Air Force's Phillips Laboratory want information on hand-held commercial satellite mobile communications systems for possible use by the military, suggesting a large potential marketplace for the so- called "Big LEO" low Earth orbit satellite communications systems coming on line.
JERRY R. JUNKINS, chairman, president and CEO of Texas Instruments, died suddenly yesterday of cardiac arrest during a business trip in Europe, the company said. Junkins was 58. The company said Bill Mitchell and Pat Weber, who have served since December 1993 as vice chairmen with Junkins in the office of the chief executive, will oversee day-to-day operations in the near term. Junkins joined TI in 1959, became president and CEO in 1985, and chairman in 1988.
Congressional insistence that the Pentagon buy American products only and ignore foreign suppliers is making it increasing difficult for Britain to resist pressures to buy only European-made hardware, a senior British defense official said yesterday.
Japan's military and at least one of the three political parties in Japan's coalition government want to develop a domestic reconnaissance satellite to reduce reliance on U.S. imagery, but until the political and technical hurdles to a Japanese spysat are overcome the military may be willing to buy images from U.S. commercial remote sensing data providers.
Noting that downsizing of the U.S. defense industry is "costing thousands of American defense-related jobs," the House Appropriations Committee yesterday directed the Defense Dept. to give "priority consideration" to U.S. defense firms in awarding contracts for upgrades and other major improvements for F-16 fighters being delivered to Jordan.
A McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems MD 600 single turbine helicopters was destroyed by fire Tuesday near Thermal, Calif., a McDonnell Douglas spokesman said yesterday.
NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour returned safely to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., yesterday after a 10-day science mission that saw deployment of two spacecraft engineering research satellites and a host of life and materials science experiments in the Spacehab middeck augmentation module.
Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch and Deputy Defense Secretary John White yesterday expressed concerns about proposed intelligence community reforms, but generally agreed that some improvements must take place.
Faced with years of under investment, the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation community is studying the level it needs to allow it to continue testing U.S. weapon systems, a senior DOD official said. Philip E. Coyle, the Pentagon's director for operational test and evaluation, told The DAILY in an interview that after years of being underfunded, "we are studying what the right level of new investment ought to be today." He said he will make his recommendation within the next two years.
Pratt&Whitney Aircraft will develop propulsion and noise reduction technologies for advanced subsonic commercial jet engines under a $27 million contract announced by NASA yesterday. Under the five-year, cost-reimbursement-without-fee contract, the East Hartford, Conn., United Technologies unit will try to reduce nitrogen dioxide emissions by 70% and cut expected engine noise levels as well. The company will also study ways to improve fuel efficiency by 8% and direct operating costs by 3%, NASA said.
GRC INTERNATIONAL, Vienna, Va., has won a five-year contract with a potential value of $30 million to execute delivery orders to support the National Guard Bureau, Army National Guard and Air National Guard throughout the U.S., the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. It said the delivery orders will be for business and information processing support services.
JAPAN HAS PICKED a 31-year-old aeronautics engineer for training at Johnson Space Center as a mission specialist astronaut for its International Space Station module. The National Space Development Agency (NASDA) said Soichi Noguchi, a research engineer with Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI), was picked from 572 applicants to train for duty on the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), scheduled for launch to the International Station early in the coming century.
Lockheed Martin Space&Range Systems, Sunnyvale, Calif., won a $135 million Air Force contract to reduce operations and maintenance costs and provide increased operational capability to the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN). Under the five-year contract, Lockheed Martin will upgrade hardware and software for the range and communications segments of the AFSCN and will conduct systems engineering to address new requirements and design future upgrades.
U.S. and Russian negotiators are continuing meetings in Houston this week in an effort to hammer out the agreements that will govern Russia's participation in the International Space Station program, but more meetings are scheduled in Moscow next month and agreement is unlikely before Russia's June 16 presidential election.
NASA's Theseus long-duration remotely piloted aircraft beat its June deadline for a first flight, but a propeller problem on the lightweight vehicle cut the planned hour-long flight short after only 61 seconds. The twin-engine RPV lifted off from Rogers Dry Lake at Dryden Flight Research Center, Calif., on Friday at 9:28 a.m., EDT, for what was to have been a one-hour shakedown flight near the runway. But the pilot brought the vehicle back 61 seconds later after it developed a propeller system problem.
The U.S. armed forces have plenty of interdiction power, but because the Pentagon doesn't assess that power on an aggregate basis it may be preparing to buy even more redundant interdiction capability, the General Accounting Office concluded in a recent report. Using the two-war strategy as a guideline, the services "have designated at least 10 ways to hit nearly 65% of the total expected ground targets," evaluators told lawmakers, "and some targets could be hit by 25 or more combinations of aircraft, missiles, bombs or precision-guided munitions."
REAR ADM. RICHARD D. WEST has been named interim director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, replacing Lt. Gen. Malcolm O'Neill who is retiring this week, the Pentagon announced yesterday. West, who has been assistant director of BMDO, will be acting director until a permanent replacement is named and confirmed. Acting deputy director will be Douglas Kline, previously BMDO's architecture integrator.
Rockwell International Corporation, Autonetics Electronics System Division, Anaheim, California, is being awarded a $12,183,647 modification to previously awarded contract N00024-95-C-5209 to exercise an option for the AN/USQ-82(V) Fiber Optic Data Multiplex System for DDG 83 and DDG 84. Work will be performed in Anaheim, California (40%), and El Paso, Texas (60%), and is expected to be completed by August 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity.
