The U.S. Air Force T-38 avionics upgrade production program will run until September 2004, and not begin then as reported by The DAILY of Dec. 18, page 429.
ISRAEL'S RAFAEL is expected to receive a production contract for 54 AGM-142 standoff missiles under a contract planned for award by the U.S. Air Force. The contract will cover about about 32 months, and deliveries are slated to begin in fiscal year 1998, according to a Jan. 16 Commerce Business Daily notice.
The National Reconnaissance Office took a hit when the Pentagon decided to rescind a total of $820 million of the agency's money to pay for Bosnia operations, but congressional sources said Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch has assured oversight committees that the NRO program would be kept on track.
With a light legislative calendar for the next month, Congress is expected to act speedily on the revised compromise fiscal 1996 defense authorization with debate starting today in the House. Senate approval is expected to follow promptly. House National Security Chairman Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) told reporters Friday that Defense Secretary William J. Perry "thought he could recommend to the president that he sign the bill." A committee spokeswoman said Spence's confidence was based on a conversation with Perry.
MINIATURE AIR LAUNCHED DECOY request for proposals is scheduled to be released in about 15 days, the weapons division of the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Eglin AFB, Fla., said in a Jan. 23 Commerce Business Daily notice. Award of the MALD contract is slated for July.
Rear Adm. Bart Strong, the program executive officer for cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, doesn't expect the stringent cost requirement in the Tactical UAV program to hamper the competition. Industry officials commenting on the recently released requirements set for the TUAV said the target price of $350,000 at the 33rd air vehicle is too restrictive and won't allow bidders to provide the performance the Pentagon wants (DAILY, Dec. 26, 1995).
The U.S. Air Force wants to replace two National Guard C-21As - military Learjet Lear 35s - with new business jets, and plans to take options on two more, a Jan. 22 Commerce Business Daily notice says. The Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting office and plans to offset the price of the replacement aircraft by trading in two existing C-21As. The Air Force wants the aircraft to be an in-production business jet, the notice said.
The Defense Nuclear Agency will sponsor two unclassified workshops for companies seeking to participate in DNA's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program for dismantling the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The newest U.S. Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES 9, has reached its operational location over the Pacific Ocean after a successful checkout over the Gulf of Mexico, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.
Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to try again to fly its trouble-plagued Pegasus XL booster after a six-month rework period designed to wring out unanticipated bugs that could trigger a repeat of the vehicle's two failures in as many launch attempts. The Dulles, Va.-based launch services provider said Monday it will try again to launch the XL version of its Pegasus air-launched booster on a 30- day launch window opening Feb. 29. The U.S. Air Force's REX II science satellite will be the payload.
LORAL CORP., which won a $110 million, five-year integrated systems support contract at the U.S. Air Force's Cheyenne Mountain complex (DAILY, Dec. 19, 1995), sees the project as another step in modernizing other Air Force Space Command facilities. The company earlier completed the installation of the upgraded Space Defense Operations Center at the complex. The Loral team beat out three other competitors: PRC, Litton and OAO of Greenbelt, Md. The team is headed by Loral's Command and Control Systems Div.
Only about 15% of bird strikes against aircraft are being reported, according to preliminary information from a bird ingestion conference sponsored Jan. 11 by the National Transportation Safety Board. "We need better reporting to really understand the problem," NTSB member John Goglia told The DAILY.
Procurement activities at the service program offices and at the Defense Logistics Agency are using electronic bulletin boards to exchange information with their contractors until DOD can implement the Federal Acquisition Computer Network (FACNET) across the board, according to a report issued earlier this month by the DOD Office of the Inspector General.
The U.S. Air Force has appointed Col. Michael C. Mushala as head of the F-22 System Program Office at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. His predecessor, Maj. Gen. Robert F. Raggio, will head the fighter and bomber Program Executive Office in the Pentagon. Mushala, who has been selected for the rank of brigadier general, became the third F-22 SPO director last week. He previously headed the Electronic Systems Center's Cheyenne Mountain SPO at Hanscom AFB, Mass.
Interest in today's U.S. Federal Communications Commission auction of direct broadcast satellite (DBS) spectrum has soared in the wake of Monday's announcement that AT&T will market Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTv DBS service, and the price the FCC collects for spectrum is likely to follow suit.
The Defense Dept. will submit to Congress two more reprogramming and rescission actions totaling $925.4 million in FY'96 to pay the estimated $1.9 billion cost of the Bosnia peacekeeping operation. Unlike the $991 million reprogramming action sent to the Hill on Monday, which is based on estimates that inflation for the year will be 1.7% instead of the 2.8% previously projected, the next requests will represent actual cuts in programs.
George W.S. Abbey, deputy director of NASA's Johnson Space Center since January 1994 and acting director since August 1995, yesterday was named director of the Texas field center. A close associate of Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, Abbey was a senior civil space policy official in the Bush White House when Goldin was named to the top NASA job. He followed Goldin to NASA headquarters and remained there as his special assistant until returning to Houston in 1994, 30 years after he joined the facility as an Air Force pilot.
Visidyne, Incorporated, Burlington, Massachusetts, was awarded on January 16, 1996, a $1,500,000 increment as part of a $7,770,394 cost plus fixed fee contract for research, development, testing and evaluation of nuclear weapons effects for sensors. Work will be performed in Burlington, Massachusetts (92%), Goleta, California (7%), and Huntsville, Alabama (1%), and is expected to be completed by October 31, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were 22 bids solicited on September 25, 1995, and one bid was received.
Oshkosh Truck Corporation, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is being awarded a $9,443,016 modification to a firm fixed price contract for 72 each M977 Heavy Expanded Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs) and M983 tractors for Saudi Arabia. Work will be performed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and is expected to be completed by September 30, 1996. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on October 13, 1993. The contracting activity is the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive&Armaments Command, Warren, Michigan (DAAE07-94-C-R086).
Business Week magazine asserted this week - and FAA denied vehemently - that the agency certified the Boeing 777 last April without adequate demonstration that the aircraft can be operated safely with the engine imbalance and vibration that would result if one of its two engines lost a fan blade in flight.
The U.S. Air Force Electronic Systems Center has scheduled a one-day seminar for industry on Feb. 1 to review the service's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) programs and identify deficiencies. The meeting is part of the Air Force's modernization planning process and is sponsored by the center's ISR Technical Planning Integrated Product Team.
U.S. Marine Corps aviation planners will have to concentrate on the 2010 time frame, and that means buying the Joint Strike Fighter and not the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, according to Marine Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak. "I don't have a single dollar programmed against the -E/F," Krulak told The DAILY yesterday after a speech at a Washington breakfast sponsored by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security.
Fokker's top management continued to meet well into Monday night as The DAILY went to press to consider options for moving forward in the wake of majority shareholder Daimler-Benz ceasing its financial support for the Dutch company.
Managers at the U.S. space agency have quietly started work on an ambitious plan to survey nearby stars for direct evidence of life on planets orbiting them, using a large interferometer at the orbit of Jupiter to spot the planets and analyze them for gases associated with life forms on Earth.
The Hughes-built atmospheric probe that plunged into the atmosphere of Jupiter last month worked perfectly and set prevailing theories of planetary formation and evolution in disarray, NASA scientists said yesterday. In a report on the first-look data from the probe collected from the computer memory aboard the Galileo Jupiter orbiter, scientists said they found Jupiter drier and less electrically active than theories based on more distant observation would have predicted.
