Loral Vought Systems Corporation&MLRS International Corporation, Grand Prairie, Texas, is being awarded $26,103,240 (foreign military sales letter contract amount) as part of a $52,206,480 firm fixed price contract for Multiple Launch Rocket System hardware consisting of 8 launchers and 16 trainers for Denmark, and 12 launchers and 24 trainers for Norway. Work will be performed in Dallas, Texas (95%), and Camden, Arkansas (5%), and is expected to be completed by June 30, 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
ITT Aerospace Communications Division, Fort Wayne, Indiana, is being awarded a $5,070,000 increment as part of a $10,699,656 firm fixed price/cost plus incentive fee/time and materials combination contract to design, develop, and produce Near Term Digital Radio (NTDR) prototypes. The basic contract shall reflect quantities of NTDR radios, network management terminals, installation kits, testing, training and logistics support for a quantity of 200 radios. The award provides for an option for up to an additional 950 radios.
Lockheed Martin Information Systems says it will be using information technology originally developed for military target recognition applications in its automatic fingerprint recognition system in development for the FBI.
McDonnell Douglas Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri, is being awarded a $16,641,608 face value increase to a fixed price contract for development of 12 prototype Global Positioning System kits applicable to the F-15 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed November 1996. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Aeronautical System Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-92/C-2102, P00083).
One of the aviation industry's most conservative buyers, GE Capital, entered into an agreement through its aviation unit extending well into the next decade to buy at least 107 Boeing jetliners - about a year's production - worth more than $4 billion, and options could take the total to 259 aircraft.
Raytheon Company, Electronic Systems, Bedford, Massachusetts, is being awarded a $5,551,143 modification to a cost plus award fee contract for FY 95 PATRIOT engineering services for Saudi Arabia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Israel, Kuwait, and the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency.
United Defense, L.P., Ground Systems Division, York, Pennsylvania, is being awarded a $59,319,345 modification to a firm fixed price contract for remanufacturing 105 Cavalry Fighting Vehicles. Work will be performed in York**, Pennsylvania, and is expected to be completed by December 31, 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on August 28, 1995. The contracting activity is the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive&Armaments Command, Warren, Michigan (DAAE07-96-C-X036).
Lockheed Martin Services Company, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is being awarded a $6,487,228 time and material contract for operation and maintenance of the Cobra Judy Radar System aboard the United States Naval Ship (USNS) Observation Island (OI) and of the Cobra Judy Software Maintenance Management Facility at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. Contract is expected to be completed February 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were ten bids solicited and three proposals received.
THIOKOL CORP. said Adm. William O. Studeman (USN-ret.) has been appointed to its board of directors. Studeman, 56, retired Oct. 1, 1995, as deputy director of Central Intelligence. Thiokol said the appointment brings to ten the total number of board members.
Lockheed Martin delivered the last of four Block 40 F-16s that will be used during a test phase to evaluate specialized lighting installed on the aircraft to allow pilots to use night vision goggles. The special interior and exterior lighting is optimized for intense close-air support missions flown with night vision goggles, Lockheed Martin reported.
Johnson Technology, Muskegon, Michigan, is being awarded a $9,101,816 firm fixed price contract for 5,248 nozzle segments applicable to the F110 engine on the B-1, B-2 and F-16 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed April 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were two firms solicited and one proposal received. Solicitation began October 1995; negotiations were complete January 1996. Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, is the contracting activity (F34601-96/C-0139).
SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR landed safely at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., early Saturday after a successful nine-day mission to recover Japan's Space Flyer Unit and test Space Station assembly techniques and gear. President Clinton welcomed the six-member crew back to their Houston base, terming the U.S. space program "an important part of our partnership for world peace."
Germany's Daimler-Benz pulled the plug yesterday on its 51% stake in Dutch airframer Fokker, leaving in doubt the fate of dozens of airplanes, thousands of workers and a handful of cooperative programs with U.S. and other manufacturers. "Profitability must take precedence over revenues," said Daimler chief Juergen Schrempp. "With over 80% of our businesses running satisfactorily we owe it to our shareholders not to allow the other 20% to impede our overall performance."
Defense contractors are still working on strategies to capitalize on Defense Secretary William Perry's Single Process Initiative (SPI), which could enable companies to achieve cost savings by substituting performance specifications for traditional military specifications, but at least one consultant is urging immediate action.
House Republicans likely will decide on their strategy for keeping the federal government running after they return to hear President Clinton's State of the Union address tomorrow night. Their decision will have a large impact on NASA, which runs out of money again on Friday. Options include "targeted" funding favored that likely would see NASA getting the $13.8 billion in the fiscal 1996 spending bill Clinton vetoed over non-space issues, or a government-wide continuing resolution that probably would cut spending to about 75% of planned levels.
House-Senate defense authorization conferees wrapped up the second fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference Friday with veto-provoking provisions on National Missile Defense and United Nations command and control stripped from the bill so President Clinton will sign it into law.
Look for further clarification of DOD's position on small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs) in response to proposed changes to the "rule of two" published last month in the Federal Register (DAILY, Dec. 18). An edict is due in about a month, probably as a means to encourage more subcontracts.
Canada plans to spend at least $2.5 million each year to ensure that the flight training operation it runs in Goose Bay in Central Labrador is both environmentally friendly and considerate of its aboriginal tribespeople. A new Environmental Institute with a nine-member board will work out differences between the tribes and allied air forces that use the base.
LORAL VOUGHT SYSTEMS received a $33 million contract from the U.S. Army Missile Command to produce 50 missiles for ATACMS, the Army Tactical Missile Systems. Delivery is scheduled to be completed by July 1997, with the service expected to being buying the upgraded Block 1A missile later this year.
A team led by Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit was awarded $51 million by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Md., for basic research in sensor technologies intended to support the Army's development of future battlefield systems. Areas covered under the contract include radar, automatic target recognition, multiple sensor fusion, signal processing, and other areas, Lockheed Martin said Thursday. It said that extracting raw data using diverse sensors that can be fed into tactical networks will be reviewed under the contract.
Despite its $3 billion move to buy Westinghouse's defense assets, Northrop Grumman isn't ready to bow out of the acquisition game or even take a break, Chairman Kent Kresa told reporters in Washington Friday.
Due by the end of this month is a new DOD policy for evaluating past performance as a factor in contract awards. The move will probably lead to greater scrutiny of RDT&E projects during downselects to the production phase.
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has released the draft request for proposal for the Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Contractors expected the draft the week before last, but it was delayed until Thursday when the Pentagon was shut down because of weather and because coordination between the services took additional time. Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski signed the ADM that cleared the way for the RFP release late last month (DAILY, Dec. 26, 1995).
Reeling from several straight years of losses and hoping to spend its money on a new, 40,000-lbst.-class CFM International engine, French enginemaker SNECMA won't raise its 25% stake in partner General Electric's GE90 program to help pay for the thrust growth the big engine needs to keep up with Boeing 777 growth plans, SNECMA chief Bernard Dufour says. It doesn't mean the decades-long CFM partnership between SNECMA and GE is unraveling, but Dufour hints that it could mean SNECMA's share in 98,000 lbst.-105,000 lbst.
Former National Security Agency Director Bobby R. Inman told a panel looking into changes to the intelligence community that all clandestine human intelligence activity should be consolidated in one agency and not be part of the CIA. "We do not need three or four difference clandestine Humint activity [agencies]," Inman said Friday. "We need one." The new organization, which Inman dubbed the International Operations Agency (IOA), would have some covert action capability but not to the level of paramilitary activity.
