COMSAT Mobile Communications COMSAT Mobile Communications, Bethesda, Md. is being awarded a $5,438,808 indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract for International Maritime Satellite (INMARSAT) usage services supporting INMARSAT B, C and High Speed A and B terminals. This is a competitive award: the requirement was released under the Defense Information Systems Agency Acquisition Bulletin Board. Two offers were received. The contracting activity is the Defense Information Technology Contracting Office, Scott Air Force Base, Ill. (DCA200-95-R-0177).
Design and fabrication of the AN/SLR-24 torpedo Towed Array Sensor (TAS) and Array Power Supply (APS) is called for in a draft solicitation from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Detachment, New London, Conn. A Feb. 5 Commerce Business Daily notice from the unit says it wants "maximum use of non-developmental items (NDI) and commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies and materials" for the countermeasures system, and that "a maximum of eight" sensors will be covered by the contract.
Questech Inc., Falls Church, Va., will support development of electro-optical warfare capability with studies and analyses for the U.S. Air Force under a $5 million contract awarded Jan. 31 by the USAF's Wright Laboratory.
Higher launch quotas for Western satellites on Russian boosters will bring in much-needed cash to support Russia's hard-pressed space industry, which continues to be underfunded by the Russian Federation government, according to the head of the Russian Space Agency.
A post-production Class I engineering change proposal is required by Naval Air Systems Command for the AN/USM-458C(V) countermeasures test set. NavAir said in a Jan. 29 Commerce Business Daily notice that Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit will make the change, and that it will deliver 51 retrofit kits.
Lockheed Martin's Sanders will support thermal testing of the IDECM Fiber Optic Towed Decoy (FOTD) at the wind tunnel complex of the Arnold Engineering Development Test Center at Tullahoma, Tenn., according to a Feb. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice. "The IDECM FOTD will be tested to evaluate thermal dissipation under flight conditions using various angles of attack/roll and several conditions of altitude and Mach commensurate with the various prospective U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force IDECM platforms," the notice said.
Tracor Aerospace, Austin, Tex., received a $14.8 million addition to an earlier U.S. Air Force contract for 261 shipsets of the AN/ALE-47 countermeasures dispenser system to support the following aircraft: F-16, F-18, C-5, C-17, C-130, C-141, P-3, VH-3D, VH-60N and HH- 60H. The contract, announced Feb. 9 by the Dept. of Defense, was awarded by the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
REP. WILLIAM F. CLINGER JR. (D-PA.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, praised the federal procurement reforms in the fiscal 1996 defense authorization act and said the measure "attacks the inefficiency in the current system." President Clinton signed the $265 billion fiscal year 1996 defense authorization into law on Saturday. The measure included a title on acquisition which embraced reforms that unanimously passed the House last year.
The U.S. Air Force's expansion into information warfare is a challenge for the AF test community, according to Howard Leaf, the service's test and evaluation director. "I'm not sure how it's coming out," Leaf told The DAILY last week during an interview in his Pentagon office. "I'm fussing around with the rest of the Air Force trying to figure out what is this thing called information warfare, and how do you evaluate it."
IN-FLIGHT DIAGNOSTICS: Monitoring Technology Corp., Fairfax, Va., is applying digital signal processing techniques to isolate aircraft engine rotor resonances in flight in order to detect faults and forecast failures before they occur. The company has a $745,736 Air Force grant to apply its patented Rotational Vibration Monitoring (RVM) technology to continuously track engine rotor resonances. Engine blades, like tuning forks, resonate at known frequencies, which change in predictable fashion as growing cracks weaken the blades.
The Army announced it had successfully fired a production model of its Block IA TACMS missile Feb. 7 from McGregor Range, Ft. Bliss, Tex., to a target 175 kilometers away on the White Sands Missile Range. The Block IA is an extended range variant of the currently fielded TACMS Block I with the addition of a GPS receiver and antenna to enable the missile to receive inflight guidance updates and a reduced payload weight that doubles its range.
Japan's Hypersonic Flight Experiment (HYFLEX) was lost at sea yesterday after a successful launch aboard a J-1 rocket sent it through a suborbital trajectory to an on-target splashdown about 650 miles south of Tokyo. An official of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) told reporters in Tokyo that the one-ton, 14-foot-long lifting body probably won't be recovered from the Pacific, depriving researchers of data on its temperature during reentry and the amount of damage its thermal protection system sustained.
The White House-directed examination of the deep strike mission by all services could legitimize criticism of the Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber by other contractors and on Capitol Hill, congressional sources acknowledged yesterday. Last week, the White House announced that it was expanding its heavy bomber studies to consider deep strike capabilities in all the services, presumably pitting B-2s against carrier-based aircraft, deep penetration fighters and land-based and standoff missiles.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said last week that the fiscal 1996 defense authorization submarine compromise on building a four prototype attack subs before designating a new class seems to be "costly and impractical," and will have to be revisited in the fiscal 1997 defense authorization.
The U.S. Air Force has appointed Col. Richard V. Reynolds to become the new program executive officer for airlift and trainers in the Pentagon and said that Col. William Jay Jabour will replace him at the B-2 System Program Office at the Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. Reynolds, who has been selected for promotion to brigadier general, will take office this month, ASC said. He was formerly the Air Force's B-2 SPO director.
COMPUTER UPGRADE: Loral Federal Systems, Owego, N.Y., is upgrading Saudi Arabian F-15 aircraft with 79 new generation Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) central computers, replacing the existing AP-1R computers, under a $12.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force's Warner Robins Air Logistics Center. The contract has options for an additional 10 computers and 100 input/output modules, bringing the potential contract value to $16 million. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in February 1997 and be completed in April 1998.
GENERAL DYNAMICS LAND SYSTEMS INC. is buying the assets of Teledyne Vehicle Systems for $55 million in cash. Teledyne Vehicle, an operating company of Teledyne Inc., is located in Muskegon, Mich., and specializes in combat vehicles, mobility systems, suspension technology and diesel engines for armored vehicles. It will become part of GDLS, headquartered in Sterling Heights, Mich. GD said yesterday that Land Systems hopes to employ most of Teledyne Vehicle's 4,000 workers.
Only 11 of 44 Allison Engine Co. turboshafts delivered for the U.S. Army's OH-58D Kiowa Warrior program through July managed to pass performance acceptance inspections, due in part to problems left undiscovered because of failure to follow standard management practices, Pentagon auditors say.
The Defense Test and Evaluation Organization (DTEO) of the British Ministry of Defense has bought a Harris Computer Systems secure computer for data processing at the organization's Pyestock site. The contract value is $540,000, Harris said yesterday. The computer, known as the Night Hawk 6000 and based on the PowerPC 604 with a multilevel secure operating system, will enable the DTEO to use firewall technology to segment data of multiple customers within the facility.
The Pentagon's Inspector General has found that Ballistic Missile Defense Organization management controls are adequate, but urged BMDO to increase the tenure of its division heads to improve program stability and to decrease reliance on support service contractors.
C-130 RETROFIT: AlliedSignal Aerospace, Torrance, Calif., has been chosen by the Spanish Air Force to retrofit the automatic flight control and mission management subsystems of 12 C-130 transport aircraft as part of that service's avionics modernization. The program, which is managed by CASA, Spain's leading aircraft manufacturer, employs the same technologies originally developed for the U.S. Air Force's C-130/C-141 avionics upgrade. The contract with Spain is the first outside the U.S. under this effort.
