MCDONNELL DOUGLAS was awarded a $311.3 million addition to an earlier contract for 17 F-18C aircraft for Finland, the Pentagon announced Monday. The aircraft will be assembled in Finland, an MDC spokesman said. They are part of Finland's five-year buy of 64 F-18C/Ds. All seven F-18Ds have already been delivered.
BOEING EXPECTS TO ADD 8,200 JOBS this year to keep up with sharply rising jetliner production rates, the company said yesterday. Washington state gets the bulk of the new jobs - 6,700 - while another 1,900 will be added in Wichita, Kan., and 400 elsewhere in the company. Boeing expects to cut 700 jobs at the suburban Philadelphia helicopter unit, along with another 100 at its Huntsville, Ala., Missiles&Space Div.
The House National Security Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee, both of which will mark up the fiscal 1997 defense authorization next week, are expected to increase the $2.8 billion '97 Ballistic Missile Defense request by at least $800 million, congressional sources said yesterday.
The Defense Dept. is asking Congress to authorize a change in the way it reports the costs of major weapon systems, letting it focus on procurement and excluding non-recurring R&D costs. The Pentagon asked that the term "program acquisition unit cost" be replaced with "procurement unit cost." It made the request in its legislative relief package submitted to Congress for consideration for the fiscal 1997 authorization act.
Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch will supplement the National Intelligence Estimate with a report on missile defense, according to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Inhofe and others in Congress have criticized a recent NIE because of its conclusion that the U.S. won't face a strategic missile threat for 15 years.
Companies interested in providing the Defense Dept. with a commercial satellite surge capability are being invited to outline their ideas for the Defense Information Systems Agency. DISA said in an April 24 Commerce Business Daily notice that it wants responses to its request for information by May 15. "The commercial surge may be required in support of the following conditions," DISA said: "(1) Formally declared national emergencies; (2) Worldwide crises; (3) Domestic emergency conditions; and (4) Military training exercises."
DEFENSE NUCLEAR AGENCY will be renamed the Defense Special Weapons Agency, Harold Smith, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons defense programs, told The DAILY yesterday. The new name, if approved, will better reflect the agency's mission, he said. In addition to nuclear weapons, DNA is also involved in biological and chemical weapons programs. It has the lead on the Pentagon's counterproliferation advanced concept technology demonstration.
Russia launched its final pressurized module to the Mir space station yesterday, using a huge Proton K booster to lift the long-awaited Priroda unit to the 10-year-old orbiting facility. Liftoff of the rocket with its 20-ton payload from Baikonur Cosmodrome came at 7:48 a.m. EDT, setting up an automated docking with Mir on Friday.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday approved a formal investigation into the transfer of Iranian arms to Bosnia. Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-Texas) said the committee took the action after being denied a copy of a report on the legality of the U.S. role in such transfers prepared by Anthony Harrington, chairman of the president's intelligence oversight board. Harrington is slated to brief the committee this week.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has approved legislation that permits the U.S. Air Force to proceed with a multi-year buy of the C-17 airlifter and protects the government from having to pay prime contractor McDonnell Douglas termination costs through fiscal year 1999 should the program go awry, a senior SASC aide said yesterday.
McDonnell Douglas is promoting new common software modules flight- tested on the AV-8B Harrier and soon to be flown on the F-15E and F/A-18 which should help cut total software cost in half, a company executive says.
Aviall signed a definitive agreement to sell its engine services operations to Miami-based overhauler Greenwich Air Services Inc., a transaction that includes the airline engine repair unit in Dallas/Fort Worth, component repairs in McAllen, Tex., and the engine repair operaitons in Prestwick, Scotland. GASI said in February that it expected to pay anywhere from $260 million to $280 million for the engine units, but now estimates the final price as about $250 million. Aviall didn't disclose the actual terms of the transaction yesterday.
McDonnell Douglas Corporation, McDonnell Douglas Training Systems, St Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $9,736,270 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus- fixed-fee, and cost-no fee contract for F-15I engineering organizational, and intermediate level training for Israel Air Force (Peace Fox VI). Contract is expected to be completed in August, 98. Contract funds will not expire at the end of current fiscal year. The solicitation was issued in September 95 and negotiations were completed in March 96.
Privatizing depot maintenance work isn't likely to achieve the savings the Pentagon expects and may even be more costly, a General Accounting Office official told the House National Security military readiness subcommittee last week. Defense Dept. savings estimates of 20% were based on the May 1995 report of the Commission on Roles and Missions, which relied on results from public-private competitions for commercial activities, David Warren, GAO director of management issues, told the panel April 16.
MSAT-1, the first Canadian mobile communications satellite, is in geostationary transfer orbit after a successful launch Saturday atop an Ariane 42P booster from Kourou, French Guiana. Liftoff of the European rocket and its Hughes/Spar-built payload came at 6:36 p.m. EDT, and the satellite reached its nominal transfer orbit on schedule.
Center for Commercial Space Infrastructure, Norfolk, Va., is being awarded a $6,000,000.00-NTE firm fixed price contract for possible future launch services for the Launch Test Program within the Space and Missile Test and Evaluation Directorate. Multiple awards are being made and contract recipient has the potential to earn up to $6M. Future launches will be competed among the four contract recipients. Center for Commercial Space Infrastructure is awarded the basic contract as well as Task Order 0001 for the Launch Base Processing Plan and Interface Control Document.
EDO CORP., College Point, N.Y., is supporting Boeing Co.'s "Weapons Carriage Technology" (WCT) contract with the U.S. Air Force. EDO said it is working under a $1.1 million contract from the Military Airplanes Div. of Boeing Co.'s Defense and Space Group for work on the effort, aimed at development of new suspension and release equipment for future aircraft. Frank A. Fariello, president and chief executive officer of EDO, said, "The Boeing/EDO relationship will ensure that WCT will benefit from the unique perspective that each company brings to the effort.
First supersonic test flights of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet were made April 12 and 13 at NAS Patuxent River, Md., McDonnell Douglas said. With MDC project pilot Fred Madenwald at the controls, the No. 1 Super Hornet, F/A-18E1, hit Mach 1.1 during a 3.1 hour test flight April 12, and Mach 1.52 during a 3.5 hour test flight on April 13, the company said. It also said that on the April 13 flight, the plane was flown to the maximum altitude to date for the E/F, 48,000 feet.
The intelligence community should continue low level exploration of automated target recognition (ATR) systems while focusing more on assisted target recognition (ASTR) systems, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence says in a staff study report released last week. The area of ATR systems remains controversial, according to the report. Many analysts view such systems as competing directly with their jobs. Others doubt whether they will ever be able to replace the imagery analyst, the report notes.
Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation is being awarded a $6,000,000.00- NTE firm fixed price contract for possible future launch services for the Launch Test Program within the Space and Missile Test and Evaluation Directorate. Multiple awards are being made and contract recipient has the potential to earn up to $6M. Future launches will be competed among the four contract recipients. Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation is awarded the basic contract as well as Task Order 0001 for the Launch Base Processing Plan and Interface Control Document.
Machinists at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems Co. reported to work yesterday on schedule after more than three-quarters of the 4,800 unionized workers accepted a compromise contract worked out last week with the help of federal mediators in Washington. Workers voting at the main plant in Marietta, Ga., as well as in smaller facilities in South Carolina, Mississippi and West Virginia, approved the new, three-year deal that includes 3% raises in 1997 and 1998, along with $3,800 in bonuses and cost-of-living adjustments.
EVOLVED EXPENDABLE LAUNCH VEHICLE competitors - Alliant Techsystems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas - can expect the first glimpse of the downselect criteria for the next phase of the program in mid-May. An April 22 Commerce Business Daily notice said the draft pre- engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) solicitation will be issued May 16 and the final solicitation Aug. 30.
Chairmen of the House National Security Committee and the Appropriations Committee's national security subcommittee made it clear that increasing modernization funding would be their priority for fiscal 1997 as a way to redress the Clinton Administration's "underfunded defense plan," which is if anything "more pressing than last year."
Lockheed Martin and Loral today launched the months-long process to integrate, following expiration of a tender offer at midnight that gave Lockheed Martin control of Loral. Lockheed Martin CEO Norman R. Augustine told reporters in Washington yesterday during what he described as a "pre-closing briefing" that "we're building a new company the likes of which have seldom if ever before been seen."
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass., is being awarded an $8,160,288 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to establish the Trident II (D5) Guidance System Technology Sustainment Program for the development of a computer-based integrated engineering environment to support the replacement of existing technologies due to aging problems for the Mk. 6 guidance system. Work will be performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is expected to be completed by March 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
