Engineers on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Cassini Saturn probe have demonstrated its Lockheed Martin propulsion system with a 200-minute hot- fire test of its hypergolic engine that demonstrated the system's critical gimballing capability, NASA reported. Two redundant MMH/NTO engines will be mounted side by side in the base of the Saturn orbiter, and the one that fires to brake the spacecraft into its orbit must be gimbaled to account for the shifting center of gravity as more than 6,800 pounds of propellant is consumed in the 90-minute burn.
A Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS booster pushed Indonesia's Palapa C1 telecommunications satellite to its geosynchronous orbit Wednesday night as planned, missing the start of the 92-minute launch window by 25 minutes. LIftoff of the booster from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., with the Hughes-built satellite aboard came at 8:15 p.m. EST, and the satellite separated 29 minutes later.
The U.S. Army's quest for the digitized battlefield took a step forward with the recently completed Warrior Focus exercise at Ft. Polk, La., but both the developers and the users of the advanced technology conceded that there are still major bottlenecks in sensor fusion and prioritization of data.
Ronald S. West, a longtime computer manager at Johnson Space Center and the old Space Station Freedom office, has been named NASA's Chief Information Officer, the U.S. space agency reported. West will replace John C. Lynn, who is retiring after 40 years with the U.S. government. West's appointment is effective March 3.
Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski has signed an acquisition decision memorandum canceling the Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle program, but allowing the U.S. Army to temporarily keep one system operational.
U.S. ARMY MISSILE COMMAND is asking interested U.S. prime contractors to provide it with a list of potential requirements for government furnished equipment to support the Follow-on-To-TOW (FOTT) missile program. MICOM said in a Feb. 1 Commerce Business Daily notice that it wants the list no later than Feb. 9.
HELLFIRE SYSTEMS LLC, Orlando, Fla., received a $36 million contract Tuesday from U.S. Army Missile Command for the fiscal year 1996 option of 750 Hellfire II missiles. Work is slated to be completed October 30, 1998.
RAYTHEON ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS, Bedford, Mass., has won a follow-on Phase II contract for the U.S. Army's Enhanced Fiber Optic Guided Missile (EFOG-M) demonstration program. Under the three-year, $52 million effort, Raytheon will build eight fire units and 44 missiles, and has options for an additional five fire units and 256 missiles valued at about $40 million. The company said it is employing integrated product process teams in Huntsville, Ala., for the EFOG-M demonstration program, including team members SEI, SCI, SRT and Loral Fairchild.
The U.S. Air Force yesterday released the first draft request for proposal for the pre-engineering and manufacturing development phase of its coveted Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM) program. The draft sets a new per unit cost cap and keeps open the possibility of a merger with the U.K.'s Conventionally Armed Stand-off Missile (CASOM) project.
Contracts for kits to add GPS and anti-jam radio capabilities to the B-1B bomber are being planned for award in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 1997, and a contract option to allow the plane to carry the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) would be awarded a year later, according to the U.S. Air Force The AF's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, said in a Feb. 1 Commerce Business Daily notice that 94 Global Positioning System/anti-jam kits are planned, as are 123 JDAM conversion kits for the Multi-Purpose Rotary Launcher (MPRL).
Wild gyrations yesterday in the stock of Applied Signal Technology Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of RF signal-gathering equipment for the intelligence community, led the company to advise its shareholders that nothing had changed and that there was no basis for the unusual activity.
In an attempt to increase the production rate of V-22 Osprey variants and hopefully drive cost down, Bell-Boeing is pressing a variety of missions for the type, including Combat Search and Rescue for the U.S. Air Force. Norbert W. Josten, the team's manager for V-22 business development, presented Bell-Boeing's pitch here on Wednesday, saying that "my business interest is, of course, to beef up the program." He said "it is our position that they [the Air Force] have the wrong aircraft now" for search and rescue.
Adm. Leighton Smith, commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, said yesterday that he wants only combat-ready systems in the theater. "What I don't want to have happen is Bosnia being a proving ground" for untested weapons, he said. A number of systems, including the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle and the E-8C variant of the Joint STARS aircraft, made their operational debut in Bosnia. Supporters of other systems, including the Hunter UAV, were hoping for deployments that would demonstrate combat worthiness.
The Clinton Administration won't be able to send its fiscal 1997 defense budget to Congress before March 18, according to House Appropriations national security subcommittee chairman Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.). Young also said that if the Administration is to reprogram the fiscal 1996 appropriation of $493 million for the B-2 bomber, it would show up in the second phase of the fiscal '96 reprogramming and rescission to pay for the costs of Bosnia peacekeeping operations.
Maj. Gen. Carol A. Mutter, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps' Systems Command, has declared operational a new imagery processing system that is also slated to support the Air Force and Navy. The $700 million Joint Service Imagery Processing System (JSIPS) was developed by the Air Force's Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., with E-Systems as the prime contractor. It accepts data from a host of sensors, processes the information and displays it for field commanders, ESC said last week.
AlliedSignal Engines executives hope their new agreement with McDonnell Douglas - offering the F124 as the primary engine candidate for T-45s competing in Australia's lead-in fighter contest (DAILY, Jan. 31) - marks the beginning of solid growth for a successful engine program that has been somewhat overlooked in recent years.
Lockheed Martin announced that it had reorganized its Information&Technology Services Sector to focus on commercial markets, in the process abolishing one group and creating another, and setting up a new computer graphics company.
Arianespace has ordered another 10 Ariane IV launches from its European contractors to meet expected higher demand for launches in 1998 and 1999, the European launch consortium reported yesterday.
U.S. MARINE CORPS SYSTEMS COMMAND is soliciting industry for information on a replacement for the AN/TPS-63 and -73 radars. It said in a Feb. 1 Commerce Business Daily notice that the new radar must be able to detect tactical aircraft to 150 n.mi. and 100,000 feet; medium range tactical ballistic missiles to 200 n.mi., and 500,000 feet, and low observable targets to the radar horizon with a 90% probability of detection.
Although the congressional conferees on the revised 1996 defense authorization met President Clinton's objections in a number of important areas, they refused to remove the expansion of "Buy America" restrictions added in the original conference report. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a conferee on the original bill but not on the second conference, said the bill as it cleared Congress adds "Buy America" restrictions for many items which are "counterproductive to our ongoing trade relations with our most important allies."
U.S. Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall yesterday released a report by the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) that envisions a wide range of futuristic technologies ranging from directed energy weapons to next- generation unmanned aerial vehicles and worldwide reconnaissance across the electromagnetic spectrum. At a Pentagon news conference called to introduce the report, SAB chairman Dr. Gene McCall stressed that of equal importance is the ability to integrate the new technologies into operational systems.
RAYTHEON CO. said Gen. John R. Galvin (U.S. Army-ret.) has been elected to the company's board of directors. Galvin is dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe. His election, effective Feb. 5, brings to 15 the total board membership.
The Clinton Administration is planning to send Congress a fiscal 1997 Ballistic Missile Defense request of $2.731 billion, below last year's request and congressional increase, while cutting back funding levels for the politically popular National Missile Defense and the Navy Upper Tier programs, congressional sources said yesterday.
Despite heavy lobbying by some U.S. aerospace manufacturers - including mighty Boeing - the U.S. Export-Import Bank decided Tuesday night to go ahead with plans to loan $1 billion to Russia's Aeroflot to buy enough Pratt&Whitney PW2000 Series turbofans to power 20 four-engined Ilyushin Il-96M widebody jetliners.
Changes to the International Space Station program brought about by Russia's desire to keep its Mir station on orbit until the turn of the century will cost NASA about $124 million for an additional Shuttle flight, with additional costs to be worked out over "three or four weeks" of intense negotiations in March, the U.S. space agency's Station director said yesterday.
