The Senate Intelligence Committee is weighing in on how to restructure the U.S. intelligence community, with Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and ranking member Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) agreeing that the position of Director of Central Intelligence needs to be strengthened beyond recommendations of a presidential commission under former defense secretary Harold Brown.
Sen. Bob Dole made it clear yesterday that he intends to make missile defense an election issue. Dole, coming off big primary wins and assured of the Republican presidential nomination, announced that he and other GOP leaders will introduce a bill directing U.S. deployment of a national missile defense system by 2003. President Clinton vetoed the first fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference report primarily because of its call for deployment of such a system.
Officials of the Russian and Brazilian Space Agencies discussed a wide range of space cooperation programs here last week, including launch of Russia's proposed Rokot booster from the sounding rocket range at Alcantara and Brazil's use of the new Gonets data relay system. The Brazilian delegation, which completed its visit last Friday, was headed by Brazilian Space Agency Director Louis Gylvan Meira Filho.
FAA expects to be operating a National Satellite Test Bed in mid-1997 to evaluate technology more advanced than that of the Wide Area Augmentation System, problems in which prompted a "cure letter" from the agency to a team led by Wilcox Electric (DAILY, March 20).
The total cost to build and test the next two Milstar satellites is $1.3 billion, U.S. Air Force leaders have told Congress. Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall and Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman made the statement about Milstars 5 and 6 in a hearing last year of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, the transcript of which is just being released. Congress, in the FY '96 defense appropriations bill, provided $582.9 million for Milstar. The Pentagon's FY '97 Milstar request is $727.3 million.
Trimble Navigation Ltd. has acquired Albuquerque-based Terra Corp., a manufacturer of aviation communications electronics gear, in a bid to expand its avionics marketplace, the Sunnyvale, Calif., builder of Global Positioning System equipment reported. Trimble will pay about $2.7 million worth of its common stock shares for Terra's assets. The New Mexico company builds small, lightweight VOR/ILS receivers, communications radios, transponders, radar altimeters and audio panels.
The market for Earth remote sensing data, including synthetic aperture radar (SAR) products generated by Canada's Radarsat spacecraft, should double in the next five or six years as customers become better acquainted with what they can do with the information, a top executive of Spar Aerospace Ltd. predicts.
NORWAY wants to modify and upgrade four of its P-3C patrol aircraft with satellite communication systems, secure communications, and missile warning systems, the Pentagon told Congress yesterday. The prime contractor for the $65 million program would be Loral Defense Systems-Egan, St. Paul, Minn. The Pentagon said the upgrades will improve Norway's surveillance, anti- submarine and anti-surface warfare capabilities.
A full, effective missile defense of the 48 contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii will require "a three- or five-site deployment," Congress was told yesterday by Sidney N. Graybeal, the first U.S. commissioner of the Standing Consultative Commission, which is responsible for implementing the ABM Treaty. He told a combined hearing of the House National Security procurement and R&D subcommittees that each site would have no more than 100 interceptors and launchers.
SUN MICROSYSTEMS AND HUGHES DATASYSTEMS each received contracts from the U.S. Air Force yesterday for computer workstations. Under the contracts, awarded by the Air Force's Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., the companies will compete for a share of the $956 million program. Deliveries should be completed by March 2003 and will include workstations, associated software and other equipment to support command and control, scientific, engineering, logistics and other applications worldwide, the Pentagon said.
The Machinists' union yesterday temporarily put off strike plans at Lockheed Martin plants in Palmdale, Calif., and Marietta, Ga., to give newly resumed bargaining talks a chance to succeed. Negotiators returned to the bargaining table in California yesterday afternoon, and were slated to resume talks in Atlanta this morning.
NASA's fiscal 1997 budget request Following is a breakout of NASA's fiscal 1997 budget request, released Tuesday as part of the Clinton Administration's proposed spending package (DAILY, March 20). Dollar amounts are in millions. FY 1996 FY 1997 HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT 5,456.6 5,362.9 SCIENCE, AERONAUTICS&TECHNOLOGY 5,845.9 5,862.1
Pentagon Comptroller John Hamre is now in charge of financial oversight for the National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon's top space official said yesterday.
The anti-satellite technology program isn't a priority for the U.S. Army, the service's acquisition chief told the Senate Armed Services acquisition and technology subcommittee yesterday. Committee chairman Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) voiced concern about the Army's handling of the ASAT program. In fiscal 1996, he said, Congress appropriated $30 million for the program and directed the Army to develop a User Operational Evaluation System by FY '99.
The Defense Dept. has targeted the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Tracking System (SMTS) and new microsat programs for rescission in fiscal year 1996 to pay for non-space related shortfalls in the budget, senior Pentagon and AF space program officials told a Senate panel yesterday.
The Pentagon must reorder its match-up between capabilities and requirements, according to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who released a military strategy package that promotes a three-tiered approach to readiness.
Congressional leaders trying to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts under the Clinton Administration's seven-year balanced budget plan warned NASA managers to expect little sympathy on Capitol Hill this year as the space agency tries to accommodate another $3.2 billion in cuts over the next three years.
The House's top appropriator blasted the White House's fiscal year 1997 defense budget request, contending it would result in a loss of almost 300,000 military and civilian jobs and endanger national security. President Clinton's proposal would cut defense employment by 84,000 for active duty, guard and reserve forces and DOD civilian employees, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) said Tuesday.
President Clinton's fiscal year 1997 defense budget request is $14 billion shy of what the Senate Budget Committee had anticipated, according to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the panel's chairman. The Pentagon wants $242.6 billion in budget authority fiscal '97 and $247.5 billion in outlays.
The director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Office said yesterday that the planned six-year development and deployment phase for a ground- based National Missile Defense system could probably be cut to four years for an "emergency response system." Lt. Gen. Malcolm R. O'Neill told a Senate subcommittee that the threat that concerned him was the North Korean Taepo Dong-2, which national intelligence estimates put as being deployed by the turn of the century, with the potential to threaten portions of Alaska and Hawaii.
Former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey told the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday that the recently established National Imagery and Mapping Agency is missing the purpose for which it was created. As now envisioned, NIMA "is probably not worth the effort," Woolsey told the committee. It was intended to improve the dissemination of imagery, but Woolsey said it doesn't include the services' imagery dissemination branches.
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Bob Dole (R-Kan.) intends by the end of the week to introduce legislation that would bring the nation's ballistic missile defense program back in line with goals stated by GOP lawmakers in the fiscal year 1996 defense authorization and appropriations bills. The legislation is expected to be one of the strongest moves on the part of GOP senators who oppose the Administration's policy on national missile defense and the ABM Treaty.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has boosted its fiscal 1997 budget request for geostationary weather satellites by about $54 million to start paying for "clones" of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) now in operation.
Rejecting senators' charges that there still may be too much concurrency in the F-22 fighter program and that it could be delayed a few years, a senior U.S. Air Force officer stressed that the service is "comfortable" with the program.
