Russia's government has not kept promises on meeting International Space Station commitments that its first deputy prime minister made to two key members of Congress in January, raising the specter of an expensive slip in the Station assembly schedule, one of the congressmen warned yesterday.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS AEROSPACE is in line to develop a Tactical Aircraft Moving Map Capability (TAMMAC) for Naval Air Systems Command. NavAir says in a Feb. 20 Commerce Business Daily notice that the contract will be awarded to the company on a sole source basis.
U.S. COAST GUARD is surveying industry for sources able to provide a standby attitude indicator for its fleet of 95 HH-65A helicopters. Responses are due at Coast Guard Headquarters by March 27, according to a Feb. 28 Commerce Business Daily notice.
The Defense Dept. is falling behind schedules written into the fiscal 1996 defense authorization act for core theater missile defense programs, a development that's probably due more to Clinton Administration unwillingness to provide adequate funding than to technical difficulties, congressional sources said yesterday. The schedules were based on Pentagon guidance. Sources said the Administration was probably reluctant to boost funding since Congress will increase many of these programs anyway.
House National Security Committee Chairman Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) told Defense Secretary William J. Perry yesterday that Congress "will...increase the defense spending top line in the budget resolution." Spence did not specify the amount of the increase in his opening remarks at the start of his committee's first hearing on the Clinton Administration's $242.6 billion fiscal 1997 Pentagon budget. Perry and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the request in testimony before the committee
Lockheed Martin is proposing an advanced, Allison-powered version of the P-3 Orion called Orion 2000 as its entry in Britain's two billion-pound ($3.06 billion) competition to replace elderly Nimrod MR.2s under the replacement maritime patrol aircraft (RMPA) program, stopping only just short of reviving the long-canceled P-7 patrol plane design.
Clinton Administration negotiators plan to propose to their Russian counterparts that theater missile defense (TMD) systems with a velocity less than 3 kilometers per second be permitted by the ABM Treaty, senators said yesterday.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Tactical Aircraft Systems, Fort Worth, Tex., has created a System Development Center to coordinate and develop new products, programs, technologies and processes. The company said yesterday that the new unit will be headed by Vernon A. Lee as vice president-Systems Development Center and FS-X. He most recently served as VP of the company's Japan FS-X program, which he will continue to oversee as it moves toward production. Also, Richard G. Bradley, an engineering executive at Fort Worth, has been named deputy for development in the SDC; and Donald W.
House appropriators cut in half the Administration's request for $140 million in supplemental funding to pay for the transfer of a dozen F-16 fighters to Jordan. They also identified a series of offsets to pay for the F-16 transfer and emergency supplemental funding for U.S. military operations in Bosnia. The offsets include $310 million from Air Force missile procurement, $265 million from other Air Force procurement, and $315 million from Defense Dept. research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) programs.
U.S. AIR FORCE's San Antonio Air Logistics Center, Kelly AFB, Tex., is soliciting industry for 125 GPS modification kits for the C-5 aircraft. The center said in a Jan. 26 Commerce Business Daily notice that it plans a "four year requirement contract with an initial order for 44 each" in fiscal year 1996. Thirty-six more would follow in FY '97; 32 would be produced for FY '98, and 13 for FY '99. "The items are build to print or commercial off the shelf items," the notice said.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense has decided to upgrade the Royal Air Force's Tornado F.3 air defense fighters rather than lease F-16s from the U.S. Air Force. U.K. Defense Procurement Minister James Arbuthnot said in Parliament that the U.K. will upgrade about 100 Tornados for 165 million pounds ($252 million) to fill the gap until Eurofighter aircraft become operational early in the next decade.
A Boeing marketing executive said yesterday the "recovery is underway in the commercial airplane industry," but the company is cutting 1,500 aircraft from its estimate of the replacement aircraft market and expects nearly half the U.S. Stage 2 fleet to be hushkitted. Despite the reduction, Boeing said in its 1996 market forecast it expects airlines to need 15,900 aircraft over the next 20 years, up 500 over last year's forecast.
GE Aircraft Engines' GE90 turbofan passed its FAA-mandated layout inspection last month, and DAILY affiliate Aerospace Propulsion has learned that participating officials from FAA's northeast and northwest regional offices recommended no changes based on the inspection hardware's condition.
Trying to gauge the direction to steer the Defense Dept.'s planning on space programs, Robert Davis, the Pentagon's top space official, yesterday urged a panel of space experts to tell him when an operational reusable launch vehicle would be available, but they were unwilling to provide a firm date. Davis said at an Arlington, Va., symposium on space that the Pentagon will need to know soon when it can plan on being able to use RLVs, and that this will guide its satellite development programs and overall space system architecture.
SATCON TECHNOLOGY CORP., Cambridge, Mass., said it will develop an experimental actuator to test the effects of vibration on helicopter rotors for the Navy H-60 helicopter. The company received a $750,000 contract for the work from the U.S. Navy. David Eisenhaure, president and chief executive officer of SatCon, said the device "will provide a low-cost method of reproducing vibrations at the exact frequency of rotors in airborne helicopters. This is the critical first step toward reducing vibration in helicopters."
VITRO SERVICES CORP., Austin, Tex., has won a 54-month contract to provide range mobile target support at Eglin AFB, Fla. Tracor Inc., the company's parent, said that under a conditionally awarded contract for $9.36 million, Vitro Services "will provide repair and transport of mobile wheeled and tracked vehicles which serve as targets for tests conducted under the purview of the U.S.
Ukraine's space enterprise is emerging from the shadow of its Russian cousin and actively seeking Western joint venture partners, but with the government in Kyiv (Kiev) unwilling to fund concerns that can't make it on their own, capabilities built up under the Soviet Union are likely to vanish without outside investment, a U.S. expert said.
The current intelligence budget structure and diffused responsibilities over program areas have resulted in unnecessary duplication, interoperability problems and other inefficiencies, a presidential commission tasked to study the nation's intelligence community reports. Similar intelligence activities aren't grouped for purposes of funding allocation or program execution, says the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community.
MANAGERS ADDED A DAY to the Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-75 mission to give more time for microgravity research, while engineers on the ground pondered the significance of new o-ring damage in the solid rocket boosters that lifted the orbiter almost two weeks ago. A spokesperson at Marshall Space Flight Center said the new o-ring problem was in a different location than the one that threatened to ground the Shuttle fleet last summer (DAILY, July 27, 1995), and apparently gave less cause for concern because the singed o-rings are less important to mission safety.
ALLIANT DEFENSE ELECTRONICS SYSTEMS, Clearwater, Fla., has won a $16.4 million U.S. Air Force contract for the Common Munitions Bit/Reprogramming Equipment (CMBRE) program. The contract calls for the company, a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Alliant Techsystems, to "develop and produce a portable field test system for air-delivered smart weapons, including Joint Stand Off Weapon (JSOW), Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD), and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM)," Alliant said.
Last month's breakup of NASA's innovative X-34 small reusable space launcher program showed you can't mix experimental and commercial space programs in the same vehicle, Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told Congress yesterday.
DUCOMMUN INC., Los Angeles, will provide chemically milled fuselage skins for the Boeing 747 aircraft under a 10-year contract with Northrop Grumman Corp. that is valued at at least $15 million - $20 million. Ducommun's Aerochem subsidiary will manufacture the skins.
The U.S. Air Force this year will begin development of a UHF satellite communication radio as part of the overall effort to extend and enhance the U.S. E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, AF officials said.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili told lawmakers yesterday he is very concerned the Pentagon's procurement budget accounts are inadequate, and recommended a modernization budget target to see if they should be beefed up. If Congress adds money to the Administration's $242.6 billion defense budget request, it should be used to bolster programs funded at lower levels now in the budget instead of creating new programs, Shalikashvili told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Heavy activity in Loral stock and options marked the two trading days before Lockheed Martin's $9 billion acquisition of most of Loral's defense business, with some purchasers of speculative call options receiving a return on their investment of almost 900%. A Lockheed Martin spokesman confirmed that the Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an "informal inquiry" into trading before the announcement of the acquisition on Monday, Jan. 8.
