Hughes Aircraft Co. is in line for a go-ahead from the Naval Surface Weapons Center to continue development of the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System Anti-Mine Munitions (RAMICS AMM) program. The company launched the effort under a $3 million exploratory development contract (DAILY, April 27, page 150), and the Navy said in a Dec. 7 Commerce Business Daily notice that Hughes is eligible to proceed on a sole source basis because it is the only company to have demonstrated all phases of the program.
Most U.S. special operations forces deployed to Bosnia will be ground personnel, but their airborne counterparts stand ready for night operations and combat search and rescue, a senior Defense Dept. official said yesterday. The main SOF contingent will be provided by the Army, but some Air Force special forces and Navy SEALs will also be available if necessary, Allen Holmes, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict, told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington.
A reported communications glitch forced Japanese engineers to beef up the supports on the Automatic Landing Flight Experiment (ALFLEX) during a test yesterday of the stability and positioning gear on the testbed for Japan's planned HOPE unmanned space shuttle. In a joint statement from Tokyo, the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) cited an on- board communications "non-conformity" in yesterday's decision to conduct a helicopter hang test using three cables instead of one as originally planned.
The House National Security Committee is looking into reports that Hungary is charging the U.S. $125,000 per aircraft for planes landing there in support of the Bosnia peace monitoring operation, Rep. Curt Weldon (R- Pa.) confirmed yesterday. Responding to questions from The DAILY, Weldon, chairman of the House NSC's research and development subcommittee, said committee staffers are seeking to determine whether the reports are true.
The U.S. Air Force's interest in unmanned aerial vehicles was sparked by improvements in the systems, and the increasing cost of manned aircraft could further boost the standing of UAVs in the service. "UAV technology...improved drastically over a short period of time," Air Force Col. Harry Disbrow, chief of combat forces requirements, said Tuesday at a conference in McLean, Va. Air Force interest in UAVs, particularly the long-endurance variants, also results from their ability to match traditional Air Force missions, he said.
Test programs for the new Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) and Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) efforts mandated by the Clinton Administration's space transportation policy are getting under way at NASA's Stennis Space Center, presenting new challenges - and opportunities - for the U.S. space agency's smallest field center.
Six defense or aerospace companies are on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp.'s latest list of those with underfunded pension plans, together accounting for some $2.5 billion in unfunded liability, or more than 8% of U.S. industry's total. Westinghouse is ninth overall on PBGC's list of the top 50 companies with the largest unfunded pension liability for 1994, made public yesterday. Loral, Textron, Rohr, BFGoodrich and United Technologies also make this year's list. Honeywell and Unisys left the list this year, a PBGC official told The DAILY.
NASA's $1.4 billion Galileo mission to Jupiter reaches a moment of truth today when its battered spacecraft is set to enter orbit around the sun's largest planet, after recording data from a probe parachuting into the gas giant's clouds of frozen ammonia.
AsiaSat 2 has completed its deployment sequence after its Nov. 28 launch on a Chinese Long March rocket, and will reach its geosynchronous orbit in about a week, Lockheed Martin Astro Space Commercial reported yesterday. Meanwhile, Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. of Hong Kong said Vietnam had leased C-band capacity on the new satellite for a Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) network. The hub station for the new service will be located in Ho Chi Minh City, with a backup in Hanoi.
The wing and fuselage of the No. 7 V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft were mated Tuesday at Bell Helicopter Textron's Flight Research Center in Arlington, Tex., marking initiation of final assembly of the plane. Bell and its V-22 partner Boeing Helicopters said the 51-foot wing, with nacelle structures attached on both ends, was placed upon the nearly 58-foot fuselage by a large crane and bolted into place.
Congressional negotiators of the national missile defense compromise tentatively approved by the House-Senate fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference have made eight language changes recommended by the Administration, and the revised package is being considered by the White House, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), the leading House negotiator on missile defense, said yesterday.
Lloyd Shoppa has been named president of Bell Helicopter Textron, not president and chief executive officer, as reported in The DAILY of Dec. 6, page 363. Shoppa succeeds Webb F. Joiner, who has been named chairman of Bell. In addition, a company spokesman said that Fred Hubbard, senior vice president for marketing, did not lose out in the shift, as the story reported. "This situation did not affect Hubbard," he said.
The Hughes/Raytheon team competing for the international Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program have begun preliminary talks with their European team members to get a head start for the formal negotiation period expected to begin early next year, company officials said yesterday. For the last six to seven weeks, the Hughes/Raytheon joint venture, H&R Co., has been working out preliminary plans to divide the workshare and to speed up technology transfer, an H&R official told The DAILY.
American Airlines has signed a letter of intent to buy Honeywell/Trimble HT9100 GNSS navigation systems for its Omega Replacement Program. The order, the first major project award for the Honeywell/Trimble team, calls for at least 400 of the Global Positioning System-based systems to be retrofitted in American's MD-80, 727 and DC-10 aircraft. Installation will begin this summer.
The consensus of the three panelists at yesterday's annual policy conference of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington was that the U.S. military is not prepared to counter the challenges that are likely to be encountered in the coming century - partly because the challenges have yet to be defined, and partly because the innovation needed to tackle them is alien to the military culture.
Conferees voted yesterday to return the bill containing NASA's fiscal 1996 appropriation unchanged to the full House, which last week rejected it over funding for veterans' medical care, but President Clinton is expected to veto the bill even if it passes Congress.
BFGoodrich Aerospace has won a contract for all heavy maintenance of America West Airlines. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but BFGoodrich said the award covers America West's fleet, which today includes more than 90 737, 757 and A320 aircraft.
The Kaman SH-2G helicopter will enter the Royal Malaysian Navy's competition for a new maritime helicopter, Kaman Aerospace International Corp. said. The SH-2G is being demonstrated at the Malaysian air show "so that Malaysian Navy officers may have an opportunity to evaluate its capabilities," said Huntington Haridisty, president of Kaman Aerospace International.
THIRTY-SEVEN SENATORS yesterday urged Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.) to bring up the START II treaty and Chemical Weapons Convention before Congress adjourns for the year. The 37 - 36 Democrats and one Republican, Sen. James Jeffords (Vt.) - called both treaties "overdue for Senate consideration..." START was signed by President Bush and Russian President Yeltsin on Jan. 3, 1993, and would limit the U.S. and Russia to 3,000-3,500 strategic warheads. The letter was originated by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Paul Simon (D-Ill.).
An industry team assembled by Raytheon Co. to compete for FAA's $1 billion Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) contract has passed a crucial FAA test qualifying it as a bidder, the company said. Raytheon Electronic Systems said the team successfully passed FAA's Operational Capability Demonstration (OCD), the final step in qualification to bid. FAA is expected to issue a request for STARS proposals sometime next month.
The Air Force's Phillips Laboratory is inviting industry to bid on a research effort to develop better focal plane arrays for potential use in ballistic missile defense.
The Defense Dept. is determining how to better leverage its own, and industry's, science and technology base for avionics, and hopes soon to release an initial plan for industry review. Since summer, a steering group of one Air Force, two Army and two Navy representatives have been tasked by Anita Jones, DOD's director for research and engineering, to work out a comprehensive avionics plan, according to Charles Kruegger, chairman of the group and the lone Air Force representative.
The White House has turned down a compromise national missile defense policy formulation primarily because it called for protection of all 50 states, congressional sources said yesterday. The rejection this late in the session could doom another effort to work out a compromise on missile defense, and mean that Congress will close out the session without passing a fiscal 1996 national security authorization.
The selection of Lloyd Shoppa as president and chief executive officer of Bell Helicopter Textron, announced yesterday by the company's corporate parent Textron Inc., puts a top technical man in the driver's seat at Bell Helicopter and may lead to further changes at Textron, according to industry observers. Shoppa succeeds Webb F. Joiner, who joined Bell in 1960 and has been president since 1991. Joiner moves up to the post of chairman, but sources in the helicopter industry see the move as grooming him for greater responsibilities within Textron.
U.S. Army Missile Command is surveying industry for technologies that could be horizontally or vertically integrated in smart and precision guided weapon programs. MICOM said in a Dec. 6 Commerce Business Daily notice that its commander "has been chartered.to produce a master plan for Smart Weapons/Precision Guided Munitions Horizontal Technology Integration (SW/PGM) opportunities."
