The FAA yesterday chose Hughes Aircraft Co. to take over Wilcox Electric's work on the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) program. On Friday, FAA canceled its $475 million WAAS contract with Wilcox, to which Hughes had been a subcontractor, saying Wilcox had failed to meet cost and schedule targets. FAA said Hughes will do the work on a sole source basis following the termination, which was for "convenience of the government."
ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS' Aerospace Group has received a follow-on $98 million contract from Lockheed Martin Astronautics operations and technical launch support services for the U.S. Air Force's Titan IVB space launch vehicle. It said work on the contract will begin in 1996 and continue through 2003. Alliant said the contract calls for it to define engineering requirements and procedures and assist in the assembly of the Solid Rocket Motor Upgrade (SRMU) strap-on propulsion systems and their integration into the Titan IV launch vehicle.
While FAA legally could have terminated the Wilcox contract for the WAAS under its old procurement rules, "I will tell you we probably would not have done it for cultural reasons," George Donohue, associate administrator for research and acquisition, said yesterday.
Boeing Machinists' 10-week walkout in the fourth quarter continues to ripple through the balance sheet, taking a $62 million bite out of net first-quarter profits posted yesterday as the company struggled to restore revenue-producing deliveries. Net earnings were off more than a third to $119 million on 14.7% lower revenues of $4.2 billion, largely because Boeing shipped only 40 jetliners during the first quarter - 19 fewer than in the year-earlier period. The company also paid more in taxes as its effective tax rate nearly doubled.
CACI INTERNATIONAL, Arlington, Va., won a $25 million contract for support of the Gun Weapon Systems and Ship Self-Defense directorates of the Navy Gun Center of Excellence at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Div., Louisville, Ky. CACI said yesterday that the award, the result of a recompetition of an existing contract, continues six years of support. The company said the work will be performed at CACI offices in Louisville and Crystal City, Va.
GE Aircraft Engines' F110-GE-129 successfully completed the final round of flight tests needed to qualify on McDonnell Douglas' twin-engine F-15 fighter, performing well enough to beat original test requirement predictions by six flights and 16 hours, GE reported. The F110-powered F-15 completed all testing in just 19 flights and 44 flight hours in a test series begun in mid-February. The series complements 21 flights completed in 1989 when efforts began to qualify GE as a second source on the F-15, efforts which were later abandoned.
Further work on the idea of launching missiles from unmanned aerial vehicles to defeat attacking theater ballistic missiles in their boost phase will be carried out by an Israeli firm for the U.S. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization said in an April 26 Commerce Business Daily notice that it plans to negotiate with Israel's Wales Ltd., for a "risk mitigation effort" on the Israeli Boost-phase Intercept System (IBIS).
The Pentagon may have to dip into today's funds to pay money it owes McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics for their A-12 work, after a court ruled the government incorrectly terminated the program. The money "will come out of current funds," says Ronald Garant, director for investment in the Pentagon comptroller's office. Funds in the program when it was canceled are about to expire, and special legislation would be needed to tap them.
HUYGENS critical design review has cleared European contractors to begin assembling the flight article of the probe that will ride NASA's Cassini spacecraft to a soft landing on Saturn's moon Titan. The review, conducted at Aerospatiale facilities in Cannes, France, marked the end of a series of successful tests of mechanical, thermal and pyrotechnical Huygens prototypes.
A Lockheed Martin Titan IV lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Station April 24 with a classified U.S. Air Force payload aboard, following a two- week delay forced when cracks were found in some solder joints. The booster lifted off from Launch Complex 41 at 7:37 p.m. EDT, Lockheed Martin Astronautics reported. The delay while repairs were made also forced a classified Titan IV launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., to be slipped from today until May 4 (DAILY, April 16).
Congress wants to take a look at NASA's plans for downsizing its headquarters staff, and it's put it in writing. The compromise fiscal 1996 budget bill that was enacted last week includes language drafted by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) directing NASA to delay any downsizing until the issue is fully considered as part of the FY '97 budget process. Mikulski led a stiff counterattack after the proposed downsizing was announced (DAILY, April 18), and Administrator Daniel S. Goldin apparently got the message.
With the House National Security readiness subcommittee unable to come to agreement on the hotly contested depot issue last week, subcommittee chairman Herbert Bateman (R-Va.) has put it off for full committee consideration on Wednesday, when he hopes to work out a compromise. Rather than siding with the Defense Dept., which hopes to repeal the law that requires 60% of repair and maintenance work go to government depots, or pro-depot members who oppose any change, Bateman proposes a middle ground.
SPACE SYSTEMS/LORAL will build two more communications satellites for PanAmSat Corp. that will provide C- and Ku-band service to the Indian Ocean and Pacific regions. Designated PAS-7 and PAS-8, the satellites will be launched in late 1997 and early 1998 aboard an Ariane and a Proton booster, respectively. Space Systems/Loral will also build spacecraft components that could quickly be assembled into a replacement satellite in the event of a launch failure.
While the House National Security Committee is preparing to add $13 billion to the Administration's $254 billion fiscal 1997 national security request, ranking Democrat Rep. Ronald Dellums (Calif.) is seeking to cut about that same amount. In a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio), released Thursday, Dellums proposed a FY '97 cut of $13.6 billion, which would bring the request to $240.8 billion. Over six years, from '97 through '02, Dellums would cut the $1.615 trillion Administration plan to $1.462 trillion.
The Pentagon should resist any recommendation to neck down to one airborne signals intelligence platform, says the Army's program executive officer for intelligence and electronic warfare, Brig. Gen. David R. Gust. Although the SIGINT mix study being undertaken by the Pentagon is likely to recommend exactly that, Gust says "I think that's wrong." Excellent results are being garnered by the combination of Guardrail, the EP-3 and the RC-135 Rivet Joint, he says.
Carter, readying for a fight with the Republican Congress on funding for the Nunn-Lugar program to assist the former Soviet States dismantle nuclear weapons, defends the program, saying U.S. contractors get a lot of the work. But, he stresses, "there is no requirement in Nunn-Lugar that everything be made American." The U.S. government contracts to U.S. companies, and they are free to subcontract out work to other companies in places like Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, he says.
Controllers at Mission Control Center-Moscow reported a successful docking with the Mir space station Friday of the Priroda pressurized module, the last element in the original Mir design. Launched on Tuesday, the 20-ton module reached the orbital station at 4:43 p.m. Moscow time (8:43 a.m. EDT) and docked automatically as planned, controllers said.
Goldin is off to Moscow late next month or early in June to put the finishing touches on the latest International Space Station funding schedule worked out with the Russian government. Members of Congress have had a peek at Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's assurances to Vice President Gore that Russia will meet its Station commitments, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who first raised the alarm about slow payouts from Russia's treasury, was said last week to be satisfied with what he saw.
AMERICAN MOBILE SATELLITE CORP. has reported "positive results" from tests of reconfigured spot beams on its AMSC-1 mobile communications satellite. Undertaken to correct power fluctuations in the satellite's eastern spot beam, the tests showed the reconfiguration did not impact service in other parts of the platform's coverage area, AMSC reported. The company plans to begin introducing satellite maritime, aeronautical and dual-mode satellite/cellular telephones over the next three months.
McDonnell Douglas said its Sea SLAM missile showed its capability against land target in two back-to-back tests. On April 17, one of the missiles, fired from the USS Elliot off Point Mugu, Calif., precisely hit a small land target. A second missile, launched the next day, flew through the hole made by the first, McDonnell Douglas said.
U.S. Army chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer seeks to cool congressional enthusiasm for development of the Nautilus theater high energy laser system, which Israel is interested in deploying to deal with Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas from southern Lebanon. Reimer responds to questions about Nautilus in a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing by saying that its capability "is not as robust as we would like," and that "its limitation is its short range." He concedes Nautilus can defeat 122mm rockets.
The U.S. Navy will start putting money towards a replacement for the EA-6B Prowler when it drafts its Program Objective Memorandum '00, according to Rear Adm. Dennis McGinn, the Navy's Air Warfare Director. He says there are technical advances still needed in the areas of electronically scanned apertures, miniaturized processors and antennas. But he also says some of the technology can be taken from advances being made in the Joint Strike Fighter program.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington state have recommended to House National Security Chair Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) the addition of two stores stations to EA-6B Prowlers that would allow the aircraft to carry additional jammers. The initiative is sponsored by Republican Jack Metcalf and cosponsored by Republicans Richard Hastings, Jennifer Dunn, George Nethercutt and Randy Tate, along with Democrat Norm Dicks.
Only seven months after contract award, the Army will receive its first Joint STARS Common Ground Station. Delivery by Motorola is slated for May 20, Gust says.
The Air Force can terminate contracts with McDonnell Douglas and its suppliers covering the multiyear procurement arrangement for 80 remaining C-17s as of Sept. 30, 1998, without having to pay termination costs, under a bill passed by Senate defense authorizers last week approving the buyout plan. Bill language calls for each contract associated with the MYP to include a clause permitting the AF to terminate the contract "without a modification in the price of each aircraft and without incurring any obligation to pay the contractor termination costs."
