United Technologies Corporation, West Palm Beach, Florida, is being awarded a $9,021,036 face value increase to a firm fixed price contract to provide for repair services for the F-117-PW-100 engine applicable to the C-17 aircraft. The work will be performed at Pratt&Whitney Manufacturing Operations, Middletown, Connecticut. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright- Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-89/C- 0032, P00068).
France is ready to change its mind and restore part of the funding for its share of the Future Large Airlifter, following assurances from the contractor team on cost cuts already made in the program, top industry and French defense officials told The DAILY.
Lockheed Martin Corporation, Marietta, Georgia, was awarded on March 27, a $283,654,805 face value increase to a cost plus award fee contract to definitize the FY 1996 rephase of the Engineering, Manufacturing and Development Program for the F-22 aircraft. The rephase adjusts the program to match the funding profile and reflects deferral of delivery and first flight of EMD aircraft and completion of the F-22 EMD program by six months. Contract is expected to be completed September 2002. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Cooperation between the U.S. and the U.K. on their standoff air-to- surface missiles would have the greatest benefit during the development phase, a McDonnell Douglas official says.
Two Northrop Grumman Joint STARS aircraft that had been flying surveillance missions over Bosnia from Germany since mid-December returned to the U.S. Friday, landing at the company's facility in Melbourne, Fla. A portion of the military-contractor team that operated the planes also returned. Northrop Grumman said other members of the team will return during the next two weeks.
Europe's Airbus Industrie consortium yesterday unveiled plans to create a new Large Aircraft Div. to flesh out plans for the 500-plus passenger A3XX - the so-called SuperJumbo - and executives hope to have a formal launch decision on the program within two years. Jurgen Thomas, until recently European project director for the joint Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT) study with Boeing and Airbus' four partner companies, will head the new division as Senior VP.
General Electric Company, Aircraft Engine Business Group, Lynn, Massachusetts, is being awarded a $22,053,726 modification to a firm fixed price contract to exercise Option FY96, for two 701C spare engines for the country of Greece; 36 701C Black Hawk install engines, and four 701C install engines for the country of Egypt. Work will be performed in Lynn, Massachusetts, and is expected to be completed by December 30, 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on July 8, 1993.
STANDARD Missile Company, McLean, Virginia, is being awarded a $250,195,306 modification to previously awarded contract N00024-96-C-5301 to provide research and development engineering services on a level of effort basis to support the STANDARD Missile Program in the areas of program management and planning, system and subsystem trade-off analysis, systems engineering, design efforts, fabrication and assembly of initial hardware, test equipment support, ground and flight test support, and documentation.
The Navy is leading the U.S. military services in upgrading weapons platforms to be able to receive national intelligence data in the cockpit, a National Reconnaissance Office official said at an American Defense Preparedness Association conference here Thursday. While all the services have programs moving in the right direction, Marine Corps Capt. Brian Schmanske, deputy director of the NRO's operations sypport office applications and integration division, said the Navy has the most initiatives in the works.
The U.S. Army is taking a fresh look at whether it should buy more RAH-66 Comanches to handle the attack mission, the Army's top acquisition officer, Lt. Gen. Ronald Hite, said here Saturday. The Army still plans a Comanche buy of 1,292, "but that may change," Hite told the Army Aviation Association of America during its annual symposium. The total number to be bought "is being looked at now," he said.
NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely in California early Sunday after weather at Kennedy Space Center forced a one-day delay in its planned early landing. Atlantis touched down at Edwards AFB, Calif., after clouds over Florida forced the diversion on Saturday and again on Sunday. The Shuttle almost was forced into an emergency landing on Saturday when it appeared that the crew would not be able to reopen the cargo bay doors to dissipate the heat buildup from Orbiter electronics.
Lockheed Martin's three-year feasibility study of driving a large lift fan directly from the main cruise engine - the propulsion concept slated for the company's Joint Strike Fighter entry - turned up no problems with hot gas ingestion and improved control during the conversion from V/STOL to conventional forward flight, program executives said yesterday.
Lockheed Martin yesterday unveiled its three design concepts to meet the Joint Strike Fighter requirement, revealing aircraft which externally are nearly identical for each of the three service missions, but declining to offer details on weight, dimensions or design approaches.
The cost of hardening space systems against a nuclear attack is much lower than estimates used by Pentagon leaders, according to R.C. Webb, chief of the Defense Nuclear Agency's Electronic Technology Division. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the Pentagon has resisted buying nuclear-hardened systems because of the perceived easing of the threat of a nuclear attack. Some critics of that thinking argue nuclear proliferation still poses great danger, and systems should continue to be hardened regardless of cost.
The U.S. Air Force late Friday released the request for proposal for the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile pre-engineering and manufacturing development phase, having received approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense of suggested source selection criteria. The JASSM program office had requested past performance be given equal weight with technical considerations in awarding the two contracts by June 28, but officials in OSD were reluctant to approve that balance (DAILY, March 26).
Here is the latest U.S. commercial space launch manifest, as compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation on March 13 and released last week. It includes the first launches of two competing low Earth orbit communications satellite network spacecraft, Iridium and Globalstar, and the first launch of Orbital Science Corp.'s Taurus booster. Payload (Country) Launch Company / Event Date / Description Vehicle Launch Site
Texas Instrument's Defense Systems and Electronics group will double its defense business and will additionally build about $4 billion in commercial business during the next decade, according to Cal Coolidge, the group's vice president for business development and strategy. TI is "projecting some very aggressive growth," Coolidge told reporters yesterday during a briefing in Washington. The defense business is projected to grow from almost $2 billion in revenue to $4 billion by the year 2006, he said.
The U.S. Army is forming the team that will develop tactics and procedures for the RAH-66 Comanche. Col. Chuck Grant, who heads Comanche efforts at Ft. Rucker, Ala., says his staff is comprised largely of scout and attack helicopter pilots. The tactics development process will begin with the first Comanches to see operational testing, around 2003.
COLLAPSED DUTCH AIRFRAMER FOKKER confirmed Thursday that talks continue with a handful of potential investors in its aircraft manufacturing operation, but stressed that any agreement is far off. Apart from other potential buyers of portions of the business or its assets, Russian aircraft designers Yakovlev and Tupolev have signalled their interest, Fokker spokesman Leo Steijn said. But a concrete offer would depend on "certain conditions" being fulfilled, he said, and the Russian companies so far haven't revealed those conditions.
Trying to determine how to classify intelligence and other battlefield awareness data sent to theater commanders and soldiers through space C4I assets is "a difficult issue" with no easy solutions, says Joint Chiefs of Staff Director of Operations Lt. Gen. Howell Estes. But "in the past year alone, a lot has been done in lowering classification levels to get more access," he says. Declassification of the National Reconnaissance Office several years ago was part of the process. Estes sees the trend continuing as new space and C4I systems come on line.
European Union anti-trust regulators on Thursday okayed Lockheed Martin's plan to acquire most of Loral, but said they reserved the right to re-visit the issue to check for compliance with competition rules as the merger's effects become clear. The European Commission - the EU's executive body - tends to look most closely at whether a given combination increases market share, and the EC said the proposed Lockheed Martin/Loral deal is more "complementary."
The Defense Dept., NASA and industry must agree on standards for design and development of military space systems, though previous attempts to do so have failed, Babu K. Singaraju, chief of the Space and Missiles Technology Directorate at Phillips National Laboratory, said at a conference here.
The U.S. Air Force is looking at a series of upgrades for its F-16 fleet, but Lockheed Martin says money could be saved by incorporating some of the modifications in new buys of the fighter in coming years. Some "logical questions" are being asked about forward-fitting some of the upgrades included in the Air Force Fighter Configuration Plan (FCOP), Bill Lawrence, Lockheed Martin's F-16 domestic programs leader, told The DAILY during an interview at the company's tactical aircraft systems facility here Wednesday.
Army aviators will get new, less cumbersome equipment under a contract to be competed later this year. Bogosian says the draft RFP to design the aircrew equipment will be out soon and the final RFP is planned for August. Contract award is planned for February 1997.
Goldin tells the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee that NASA has found about $1 billion in the agency headquarters budget that probably should be transferred to the field centers along with the new management authority given to center directors.
