Titan IV space launch vehicles have been tentatively rescheduled for launch from each coast of the U.S. within a three-week period. Also, a Delta II rocket is slated to launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on April 19 to take its payload, a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) satellite, into polar orbit. Liftoff is scheduled at 8:27 EDT with a one-minute, 15-second, launch window.
With the April 15 deadline having passed for the signing of a memorandum of understanding on the international Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program, negotiators are still trying to assess how to deal with the French decision not to commit to the effort. The international air defense program has been caught up in France's comprehensive military review which began in earnest in February and led to the dismissal of French armaments director Henri Conze last month.
The Pentagon will realize no significant savings from its infrastructure budget between 1996 and 2001 to bolster defense modernization programs, the General Accounting Office reports. "The proportion of planned infrastructure funding in DOD's budgets will remain relatively constant at about 60% through 2001," GAO says in "Defense Infrastructure: Budget Estimates for 1996-2001 Offer Little Savings for Modernization" (GAO/NSIAD-96-131).
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS' STANDOFF LAND ATTACK MISSILE (SLAM ER) passed its critical design review and is on target for a first flight in February 1997, MDC said yesterday.
The fatal Jan. 29 crash of an F-1A fighter near Nashville, which the U.S. Navy attributed to pilot error (DAILY, April 15), has prompted the service to launch of number of initiatives to improve the evaluation of its aviators. A Field Naval Evaluation Board (FNAEB) cleared the pilot of the mishap aircraft, Lt. Cdr. John Stacy Bates, to fly again after an April 1995 F-14 crash in the Pacific, Navy officials said. It concluded that he had had enough time to avoid a crash if he had followed proper procedures.
The Office of Naval Research has set aside $14 million to begin studying the concept and technical feasibility of mobile offshore bases that could be used for a variety of missions, ONR said in an April 12 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Completing an acquisition announced in January, Parker Hannifin Corp. said yesterday it has purchased the aerospace assets of the Abex NWL Div. of Pneumo Abex Corp. from Power Control Technologies Inc. for $201 million. Abex, with sales of about $200 million in calendar 1995, has about 1,290 employees. Parker Hannifin is a $3.2 billion producer of motion- control components and systems for industrial, automotive and aerospace markets.
DynCorp Aerospace Technology, Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $12,263,574 indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity time and materials contract to provide calibration and repair support services for the Annapolis, Maryland, and Carderock sites of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Bethesda, Maryland. Work will be performed in Annapolis, Maryland, and is expected to be completed in February 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured with 54 proposals solicited and six offers received.
APPLIED MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS INC., Hollywood, Fla., beat two other competitors to supply scientific and engineering services for towed array sonar and associated array handling systems development through all stages of the array programs. The company won an $8 million contract for the work on April 2. It was awarded by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Div., Newport, R.I
LOCKHEED MARTIN Missiles&Space, Sunnyvale, Calif., will provide technical engineering services to support the U.K. Polaris (A3) and Trident II (D5) missile programs under a $19.3 million contract awarded April 4 by the U.S. Navy's Strategic Systems Program.
Russia's cadre of skilled military space engineers is apparently dwindling as funding for the Russian Space Forces declines and emphasis shifts to the civilian space sector, with its potential for foreign investment and profits. Last week President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree establishing a seven-year "space-military school" in St. Petersburg. The Ministry of Defense and the city of St. Petersburg will operate the school, with the ministry setting the specific enrollment size.
The Central Intelligence Agency plans to integrate its GNAT 750 unmanned aerial vehicle into the Joint Broadcast Service supporting peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, according to a senior CIA official. Vice Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the CIA's associate director for military support, told reporters at the agency's headquarters here Friday that "we intend to integrate the GNAT 750 into" the JBS system. JBS is the military equivalent of the commercial Direct Broadcast Satellite system, and allows bandwidth-intensive data to be transmitted to users in the field.
NASA has picked a lightweight Earth imager capable of continuing Landsat measurements at lower costs as the first Earth sciences flight in its New Millennium mission series, as well as the first two missions in its new Medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) series of low-cost astrophysics and space physics flights.
McDonnell Douglas is gearing up for another round of flights with its DC-X vertical takeoff and landing reusable launch vehicle (RLV) prototype, this time under NASA sponsorship as the DC-XA upgrade. But while the X-33 design the company and its partner Boeing will bid next month also features vertical takeoff and landing, the industry team hasn't settled on a final operating mode for a commercial RLV growing out of the X-33.
Machinists at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems Co. in Marietta, Ga., are slated to vote Sunday on a new agreement worked out between union leaders and the company last week with the help of federal mediators. Some 4,300 workers would have walked off their jobs at midnight tonight without an accord (DAILY, April 8, 10), citing executive bonuses and the possibility of sending work outside the plant as major grievances.
The House National Security Committee wants to have the fiscal 1997 defense authorization ready for House floor action the second week in May. To meet the goal, staff recommendations are being put together this week, the non-hardware subcommittees will mark up next week, and the procurement and R&D subcomittees will mark up the following week, on April 30. The full committee markup is set for May 1. The Senate Armed Services Committee schedule seems less definite, but committee sources say SASC should start working on the markup in the next week or two.
CHARLES STARK DRAPER LABORATORY, INC., Cambridge, Mass., beat nine other competitors for a $14.7 million Office of Naval Research contract to demonstrate low-cost Global Positioning System (GPS)/inertial guidance technology for future Navy extended-range guidance munitions concepts.
House and Senate appropriators are itching to mark up the FY '97 defense appropriations bill, but their situation is different from the authorizers'. Appropriators need a budget resolution before they can act because each appropriations committee has to give its defense subcommittee a budget allocation before it can mark up the Pentagon money bill. House Appropriations staffers are talking about a markup by the national security subcommittee after May 15. The Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee wants to act no later than July 15, and if possible by the end of June.
A U.S. Navy team says the fatal Jan. 29 crash of an F-14A fighter in Antioch, Tenn., was caused pilot error. Rear Adm. Bernard Smith, releasing the results of an investigation in Tennessee on Friday, said the flight controls and all major systems of the F-14A were operating properly at the time of impact. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing the pilot, Lt. Cdr. John Stacy Bates; his radar intercept officer, Lt. Graham Alden Higgins, and three civilians on the ground. Several homes were damaged or destroyed.
The U.S. Army hasn't begun to fully address information warfare but will do so in coming years, said Lt. Gen. Paul E. Blackwell, the service's deputy chief of staff for operations and plans. Blackwell told the Association of the U.S. Army during a breakfast Thursday in Arlington, Va., that "we're behind the power curve" on winning the information war. "We have a long way to go" towards understanding IW, he said, but he's "optimistic" the Army will ultimately get there.
USS BENFOLD (DDG-65), the seventh ship in a series of Aegis guided missile destroyers being built by Litton's Ingalls Shipbuilding, Pascagoula, Miss., was commissioned into service with the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet on March 30 in San Diego.
The Japanese government is idle on ballistic missile defense, trying to figure out specifically how to do the mission, but it has many of the building blocks that are part of the U.S. system now in development, according to Lt. Gen. Malcolm O'Neill, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. He tells the Naval Surface Warfare Association that because the Japanese have AWACS aircraft, Aegis shipborne radar and Patriot missiles, "they could move very swiftly" on missile defense. He expects the U.S.
NASA AND THE UNITED SPACE ALLIANCE joint venture Friday signed two novation agreements that will bring the two largest Space Shuttle operations contracts under the same management in the first step toward a single prime contract for Shuttle operations. The agreements cover Rockwell's contract at Johnson Space Center and Lockheed Martin's contract at Kennedy Space Center. The two formed the joint venture to compete for the consolidated Shuttle operations contract and subsequently won it (DAILY, Nov. 8, 1995).
VECTOR RESEARCH CO., INC., Rockville, Md., received a $42.5 million contract for acoustic research and submarine silencing efforts. The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Div., Bethesda, Md., awarded the contract on March 14.
Internal Army analyses show that the service is "on the ragged edge" of being able to fight and win two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts, Decker says. There are some ideas floating around Capitol Hill that propose adding two divisions to the current force of 10, but that would take more money, he notes.
