The U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command restructured its Arlington, Va., headquarters on March 1 to prepare for its planned move this summer to San Diego. SPAWAR said the "restructuring was done to increase coordination and integration with customers, focus on product areas, enhance system engineering, and reduce cycle time in delivery of systems to the Fleet." The Base Closure and Realignment Commission directed SPAWAR to move to San Diego by October 1997. The move begins this summer.
The U.S. Navy has ruled out using Israel's Barak surface-to-air- missile system on its LPD-17 amphibious assault ship, the Navy's acquisition chief informed lawmakers.
TRW Avionics Systems Div. will design, develop and build two integrated communications, navigation and identification (CNI) suites for the early part of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter flight test program under a $36.7 million subcontract it has won from Boeing Defense and Space Group's Helicopters Div. TRW is slated to deliver one laboratory system in 1997, and the first integrated system for an aircraft in 1998, TRW said. A software upgrade will be included with the aircraft CNI system.
The U.S. Navy this summer plans to run the third in a series of demonstrations using commercial satellite communications to ships, with a particular emphasis on increasing efficiencies.
Aircraft, missile, communications/electronics, space programs Aircraft, missile, communications and electronics, and space programs in the Dept. of Defense's fiscal year 1997 budget request are detailed in the following table, released by the Pentagon Friday. Dollar figures are in millions. Aircraft Programs FY 1995 FY 1996 FY 1997 I. Overview
The Pentagon today sends to Capitol Hill a fiscal year 1997 budget that represents a 6% decline in DOD spending from the FY '96 budget and puts off a ramp-up in weapons modernization for at least another year. The budget provides $242.6 billion in budget authority and $247.5 billion in outlays. Those topline figures do not include funding for Dept. of Energy defense-related programs.
Army planners decided to use $6.8 billion in added buying power gained from lower-than-expected inflation to keep Sikorsky's UH-60 Black Hawk production line open for another five years, and to accelerate procurement of the Texas Instruments/Lockheed Martin Javelin medium anti-tank missile in the fiscal 1997 budget request.
The U.S. Navy is planning a two-year study to assess technologies that could be used in manned and unmanned aircraft in the year 2025. The Naval Air Warfare Center, Warminster, Pa., said in a March 1 Commerce Business Daily notice that "this effort will be an unconstrained, technology driven look at ideas, concepts and trends which could form the basis for future research and development programs supported by the Office of Naval Research and the Naval Air Systems Command."
HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO., Fullerton, Calif., has been awarded a $262.75 million firm fixed price contract to provide operations, maintenance, and training support services to support Saudi Arabia's Peace Shield nationwide ground- air defense and command, control, communications system. The contract will be completed May 1997, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
The Russian government has granted rights for independent exports to five more aviation and missile companies, including builder of the S-300V air defense system. Companies obtaining arms export authority include Antey Concern, Moscow; Design Bureau of Instrument Engineering (KBP), Tula; Gidromash, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Rosvertol Stock-holding Co., and the Machine-building Association, both of Ufa, according to the business newspaper Kommersant- Daily.
ENGINEERS AT RUSSIA'S RSC Energia have concluded that a loose pipe fitting on a kick stage fuel line came undone during last month's Proton launch of a military communications satellite, dumping propellant into the engine of the Block DM-2 and causing it to explode. Failure of the kick stage raised questions about whether Russia would be able to carry out its first commercial Proton launch with a Western satellite aboard on March 28 as planned (DAILY, Feb. 22, 23), but the date held firm last week.
Although DOD says recapitalization will begin in fiscal 1998, the Navy is getting a head start, asking Congress today to let it spend nearly a third more on aircraft, 11% more on communications and electronics programs, and more on Fleet Satellite Communications (FLTSATCOM) in fiscal 1997.
House National Security Committee Republicans and Democrats continued their battle over the ballistic missile defense issue Thursday, with both sides sparring during a hearing of the research and development subcommittee that proceeded without witnesses.
The U.S. Air Force today will announce a $58.9 billion request for fiscal year 1997, including funding for four F-15Es and four F-16s to meet its fighter reserve requirement. This year's Air Force top-line marks the low-point since the budget numbers began sliding down in 1985. The AF plans to increase the budget top line from FY '98 on and reach real growth, 0.9%, in FY '99.
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to keep an eye on the Joint Strike Fighter internal carriage issue to avoid getting stuck with a weight penalty resulting from the Navy's desire to carry a 2,000 pound bomb, according to Marine aviation chief Lt. Gen. Harold W. Blot. A larger bay means more flexibility, but "it probably means a larger aircraft, it probably means a more expensive aircraft," Blot told The DAILY during an interview in his Marine Corps Headquarters office.
GE AIRCRAFT ENGINES won a five-year, $61.8 million NASA contract to develop technologies deemed critical for next-generation subsonic commercial engines, the U.S. aeronautics agency reported yesterday. The contract calls for work to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 70% and to cut engine noise levels. The company will also try to improve fuel efficiency by 8% and cut direct operating costs by 3%, NASA said. The contract was designed to provide technical data that addresses expected emission and noise regulations for large engines in the 20,000-100,000 lbst.
The Inmarsat mobile satellite communications consortium is offering a new self-contained pay phone that will link remote sites anywhere in the world with the terrestrial telephone network. Inmarsat told reporters in London Wednesday the new phones will be marketed to remote communities, hotels and other businesses at a cost of about $15,000 each. They will use the consortium's six satellites to relay calls from the remote phones to the terrestrial network.
Slowing regional aircraft losses and steady defense sales helped boost British Aerospace's pre-tax profits 95% to 330 million pounds ($505.6 million) on 5.7 billion pounds ($8.78 billion) revenue for 1995 before accounting for one-time items, according to preliminary full-year results posted yesterday.
The U.S. government should aggressively pursue increased cooperative arrangements with allied governments in space reconnaissance to make its own multi-billion dollar satellite systems less vulnerable to budget cuts, according to a bipartisan presidential commission tasked to review U.S. intelligence capabilities. Increased development and sale of commercial remote sensing systems by U.S. industry may also produce cost benefits, says the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS/LOCKHEED MARTIN Javelin Joint Venture has been awarded a $173.7 million contract for the third low rate initiation production lot of Javelin systems, the Pentagon said yesterday. Work will be performed in Texas (60%) and Florida (40%), and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 1998.
AIR FORCE GEN. JOSEPH W. RALSTON will be sworn in this morning as the new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing Adm. William Owens, the Pentagon said.
Cuts in the Space Shuttle program staff to accommodate a dwindling NASA budget may threaten Shuttle flight safety if not managed carefully, and comes at a time when the demands of International Space Station assembly are colliding with growing obsolescence in Shuttle systems, NASA's outside safety monitors warned yesterday.
The U.S. Army's fiscal 1997 budget request to be released Monday won't mark much of an improvement for modernization over last year's request in spite of criticism from Pentagon leaders that the Army has no modernization program. One Army official told The DAILY yesterday that the ratio between procurement funds and research and development funding will continue to be about one-to-one. He noted, however, that for a healthy modernization program, procurement should surpass R&D by three or four to one.
Two Russian cosmonauts and a German astronaut representing the European Space Agency landed safely in Kazakhstan yesterday after spending more than five months on the Mir space station. Cosmonauts Sergei Avdeyev, Yuri Gidzenko and Thomas Reiter of ESA touched down in their Soyuz capsule at 1:42 p.m. Moscow time (5:42 a.m. EST), and were declared in good health by recovery crews flown to the site near Arkalyk by helicopter.
Japan's Science and Technology Agency will use a robotic deep sea surveyor next month to search for the Hypersonic Flight Experiment (HYFLEX), lost when it sank earlier this month following a successful suborbital launch and reentry.
