Japan's parliament is expected to sign off on government spending levels for the fiscal year beginning in April, which includes $47.5 billion for defense, an increase of 2.58% of the current fiscal year. Under the budget plan finalized last week, funding for procurement will be $8.19 billion, or 1.2% more than this year.
Following the approval of the Tactical UAV by Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski, contractors can expect a first draft of the request for proposal January 10. A Dec. 28 Commerce Business Daily announcement said the formal RFP will follow January 24, with proposals due March 11.
To help Russia save money and launch vehicles, NASA is willing to ferry Russian crews to and from the Station once it is inhabited, and to defer construction and delivery of the Science Power Platform (SPP) and the three Russian laboratory modules it was to have served. But the complex and expensive Russian Service Module is still set to be the third Station element launched under NASA's plan, and that could cause heartburn in Moscow.
Largely absent from last year's customer list, U.S. carriers can be expected to start dusting off long-postponed plans to buy new aircraft and engines. Jetliner market-watchers waiting for hopeful signs got a good one Friday - new figures showing that U.S. airlines finally made money in 1995, after four years of red ink. Air Transport Association chief Carol Hallet says a sound economy, higher fares, fewer fare wars and cheap gas combined to produce 1995's $2 billion industry-wide profit, adding that 1996 looks "hopeful."
If you're an aerospace CEO with cash burning a hole in your balance sheet, 1996 may be your best year for a merger or acquisition, but that doesn't mean the slow, steady consolidation of the 1990s will give way to a mad rush to close deals this year, financial analysts and industry executives agree.
The Joint Primary Attack Trainer System protest saga is slated to come to a close at the end of this month, when the General Accounting Office rules on Cessna's protest. Last month the GAO turned down Rockwell's protest. Raytheon won the hotly contest JPATS program in June (DAILY, June 23), but progress on the program ground to a halt when the protests were filed.
The balanced-budget battle and accompanying layoff of some federal workers may make for a relatively busy month of January on Capitol Hill, contrary to congressional leaders' intentions. House GOP leaders had planned a three-week vacation after the mandatory start of the second session of Congress tomorrow, with lawmakers returning the last week in January for the State of the Union message. Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.) had planned no roll call votes in the Senate in January.
The Defense Dept. will spend much of 1996 dealing with Bosnia operation and its $2 billion pricetag. As troops try to keep warring factions apart, planners back at the Pentagon will be trying to reprogram funds to pay for the effort.
Defense electronics will both push and be pulled by the commercial market in the coming year, drawing on dual-use technologies capable of satisfying military requirements for customized, compact, rugged, portable information subsystems, either embedded in military weapon systems or capable of providing tailored information services to military personnel.
Two McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E/F Super Hornets are set to enter flight testing at Patuxent Naval Air Station, Md. early this year. The company and the Navy last week completed another important milestone on its Super Hornet program when the second prototype, designated E-2, successfully completed its first flight. Both E-1 and E-2 will fly in the test program.
Events planned over the next 12 months promise to shape international spaceflight for decades to come, but just what that shape will be depends on the outcome of missions and commercial ventures set for launch in 1996, and on decisions to be made in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the polling places of the Russian Federation.
Although reworking the fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference report to satisfy President Clinton's veto will be the first order of business for the two congressional military committees, both panels start the year in strong agreement that for FY '97 the focus will be on funneling more money into procurement without raising the top line in defense spending.
To cash in on the potential savings from DOD's Single Process Initiative (SPI) this year, contractors will have to act quickly. DOD wants to post the actual savings by the close of the fourth quarter of FY '96, and that means contractor-proposed savings in overhead costs must be approved by already overburdened administrative contracting officers (ACOs) almost immediately if the changes are to be implemented by mid-year.
Israel's government continues to push its Shavit booster as a space launch vehicle for U.S. government payloads, and so far it hasn't been told "no." The issue came up during Prime Minister Shimon Peres' recent visit to the White House, which has the matter "under review." An Administration official says there has been no formal request from the Air Force for a presidential waiver of the policy against launching U.S. government payloads on foreign vehicles, and until there is, the question is academic.
U.S. Air Force directors of the JDAM and JASSM programs have switched places. Oscar Soler, who was heading JASSM, will take charge of JDAM, which entered EMD this month. JDAM's Terry Little will take JASSM. Observers say the move may be an attempt to duplicate JDAM success in JASSM.
The Defense Dept. released the list of the 34 winning proposals selected for support under its fiscal year 1995 Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP) cosponsored by ARPA and the services. The projects, culled from a list of more than 140 original proposals, have an anticipated cost to completion of $289.1 million, of which DOD will supply $137.4 million, or less than half. All but four of the projects are due to be completed in 24 months. To date DOD has invested $686 million in 131 TRP technology development projects.
The U.S. Air Force will release the draft RFP for the Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM) program next month, kicking off the competition to replace the Tri-Service Stand-off Attack Missile (TSSAM). The draft request for the pre-engineering and manufacturing development phase is scheduled for release Jan. 15, with the formal RFP to come in April. In the summer, the Air Force - executive agent for the joint AF-Navy program - will award two pre-EMD awards.
The U.S. Army has backed a Republican argument that it is not necessary to violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty's limitation on a single missile defense site to protect all 50 states, saying in a new report that it can do the job from one ABM site.
Meanwhile, the AF's acting acquisition executive, Darleen Druyun, plans to present the second of her "Lightning Bolt" acquisition reform awards to the JDAM program. The first went to the Pacer Crag program, charged with upgrading the navigation system of the KC-135 tanker.
Industry representatives looking to compete for the Miniature Air Launched Decoy (MALD) program will gather at Eglin AFB, Fla., Jan. 3 and 4 for briefings on the recently released draft RFP (DAILY, Dec. 21). The formal RFP will be released in February and a contract will be awarded by July 15, says Bill Scheuren, MALD program manager for ARPA. The contract will likely go to a system integrator whose task will be to combine existing technologies and remain under the projected MALD unit price of $30,000.
Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski has signed the Acquisition Decision Memorandum allowing launch of the long-delayed Tactical UAV program. Kaminski had been mulling the ADM for several weeks, but a disagreement between the services over requirements delayed the signing until late Thursday. The debate pitted the Army's 50-kilometer requirement and $300,000 price against the Navy's 240-km requirement. The Navy's system also would have had a higher price tag.
THE ASPIN COMMISSION has decided to hold only one meeting next year on the needs of the U.S. intelligence community in the post-Cold War era. The Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. intelligence Community, informally called the Aspin commission after its deceased chairman, Les Aspin, will hear testimony on Jan. 19 from a number of intelligence experts. The list includes former Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci, former Director of the National Security Agency Adm. Bobby Inman, and current DOD Assistant Secretary of International Affairs Joseph Nye.
The House-Senate fiscal 1996 intelligence conference report seeks to rein in the National Reconnaissance Office's practice of nurturing funds in carry-over accounts from one year to the next. The conference directed a review by the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General of internal controls over the NRO budget, particularly with regard to such funding. The CIA was directed to notify the oversight committees before reprogramming, reallocating and/or rescinding funds approved for NRO programs. And the president is directed to report by Jan.
Prime contractors competing for the JAST concept demonstration phase will have until the source selection process actually begins to ask government program officials what they want. Such talks are generally put on hold once the RFP is released, but this time the line will stay open until proposals are due.
