House and Senate conferees reached agreement Friday on a compromise missile defense policy, the last major hurdle to closing out the fiscal 1996 national defense authorization, but Democrats promptly sent the language to the White House for President Clinton's clearance, congressional sources said.
Lawrence J. Rytter, who most recently served as president of AAI systems management, AAI Corp., was appointed president of the command systems business area.
SEN. MARK HATFIELD (R-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its transportation subcommittee, Friday announced his retirement from Congress at the end of next year. Hatfield, a five-term senator, likely will be replaced as chairman of the full committee by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).
Jay Korman has been named senior analyst. Korman joined the company after serving as a defense industry analyst at Frost and Sullivan Market Intelligence Corp., Mountain View, Calif. Alisa Miller and Erika Warner have been named associates at DFI International's Washington, D.C., office.
That's the question Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Israel, director of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, asked at an industry meeting last week. He tells The DAILY he was inspired by industrial base arguments used in the B-2 bomber and submarine debates, and wants to know if the suppliers of sensors are disappearing. He says he's concerned some of the most advanced sensor technologies won't be available to the Pentagon.
BTG, INC. AND CORDANT, INC. on Friday were awarded a $929 million indefinite contract from the Air Force Electronic System Center, Hanscom AFB, to develop and build over the next five years interoperable systems and subsystems to upgrade the Intelligence Data Handling System and other systems, the Pentagon said Friday. The systems are used by a variety of intelligence agencies. Vienna, Va.-based BTG heads a team that includes Electronic Data Systems, Sterling Software, and Intermetrics. Teamed with Reston, Va.-based CORDANT are TRW, GTE Services-Logicon, and Sysorex.
Now that the Air Force expects to have 120 C-17s, it has settled on a deployment scheme. In addition to the 48 each to be sited at McChord AFB, Wash., and Charleston, S.C., eight will go to Altus AFB, Okla., six will be assigned to the 172nd Air Wing, Air National Guard, Jackson, Miss., and the remaining ten will be shifted around as backup aircraft wherever needed.
The U.S. Air Force plans to modify the communications system of the four E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) aircraft, basing the work on prototype command and control upgrades to a KC-135 tanker that would give an onboard commander a picture of tactical battlefields. The mod of the E-4Bs, whose Cold War mission was to control the launch of strategic missiles, was sparked by Defense Secretary William J. Perry's visit in October to the modified KC-135, called "Casey 01," when it was at Andrews AFB, Md., an AF officer told The DAILY.
Rep. Pat Schroeder's decision not to run for re-election next year makes her the third member of the House National Security Committee who won't be returning in 1997. Reps. Douglas (Pete) Peterson (D-Fla.) and G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.) have already said they won't seek reelection.
A top-level Russian Space Agency delegation will meet NASA human spaceflight officials in Houston this month to propose ways the new Spektr and Priroda science modules built for Mir can continue to be used once work begins on the International Space Station. Possibilities already discussed informally between RSA and NASA include continuing Mir operations as the Station is assembled, and transferring the two modules from Mir to the Station once the appropriate Russian nodes are installed on the international facility.
DCX INC., Franktown, Colo., will produce support equipment for Lockheed Fort Worth Co.'s Enhanced Diagnostic Aid (EDNA) program, a segment of current programs to upgrade avionics capabilities of earlier model F-16 fighters. DCX said it received an initial $1.5 million for the program, which will connect diagnostic equipment with avionics systems to evaluate performance. Fred Beisser, chief financial officer of DCX, said the EDNA contract, and a $1 million order from Olin Aerospace Corp.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS AEROSPACE yesterday received $69 million from the Naval Air Systems Command to integrate 31 Advanced Tactical Reconnaissance Airborne Systems (ATARS) on Marine Corps F/A-18Ds.
Following the lead of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force has resurrected the idea of combining a number of aircraft ground support functions in a single, multifunction cart. The goal is to reduce logistics requirements or, as one observer put it, "curtail the tail."
The General Accounting Office has criticized the heart of the U.S. Army's modernization effort - a plan to develop a highly computerized fighting force for the next century. "The Army's plan to digitize the battlefield is expensive, contains many risks, and lacks specific, measurable goals for the series of large- scale experiments that are to be conducted," GAO said in a new report titled "Battlefield Automation: Army's Digital Battlefield Plan Lacks Specific Measurable Goals" (GAO/NSIAD-96-25).
Computer technology is moving so fast that the Defense Dept., which earlier this year agreed to easing export restrictions on supercomputers, will have to ease them again in about two years, a former DOD official told a panel session sponsored by the Economic Strategy Institute yesterday in Washington.
NASA decided to go sole-source in its selection of a Space Shuttle operations prime contractor out of fear it wouldn't otherwise be able to maintain the tight Space Station assembly schedule, Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told Capitol Hill yesterday. But Goldin warned United Space Alliance - the Rockwell/Lockheed Martin joint venture selected to negotiate for the operations contract - that if contract negotiations bog down, NASA will break them off and reprogram funds to cover any savings lost because the Shuttle contract consolidation isn't realized.
House-Senate negotiators were close to agreement late yesterday on a compromise national missile defense policy, the last major unresolved issue in the fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference, but a potential new stumbling block appeared involving B-2 bomber production, sources said. While conferees neared agreement on language that would settle the contentious "multiple sites" issue by calling for an NMD that would protect all 50 states, sources said Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Maine) raised a B-2 funding issue that could develop into a new snag.
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS said its ARSR-4 surveillance radar, in use by the FAA, has completed U.S. Air Force tests and received the USAF designation AN/FPS-130. The radar is the first to provide the 3-D aircraft position data needed by the military and the high reliability required by the FAA, Westinghouse said. So far, the company has received production contracts for 44 of the radars from the AF, Navy and FAA.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS said its Delta II 7920 rocket slated for use Dec. 4 in the launch from Cape Canaveral of NASA's X-Ray Timing Explorer (XTE) satellite will be equipped with a new avionics system. It "will use an array of redundant laser gyros and accelerometers to sense the vehicle's velocity and attitude movement," MDC said. The system "feeds data to onboard computers that control Delta II's engines and power, engine start, main engine cutoff, staging and payload separation."
HONEYWELL is extending a price freeze on commercial avionics through the end of next year, holding prices at June, 1993, levels in an effort to nurture the aviation industry recovery that emerged this year. "We feel that by extending this 'no increase' offer we're showing our commitment to customers in the strongest possible way," said customer support VP Vance Bradley, who just sent a letter to existing customers detailing the plan.
Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems took what it called a "first step" toward fulfilling the U.S./Japan FS-X fighter codevelopment program's technology sharing goal by displaying a cocured composite wing box at a defense conference this week in Dallas. About 700 government and industry officials attended the four-day Defense Manufacturing Conference, which ended yesterday.
HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO. is working under a $500,000 U.S. Air Force contract in the first phase of a program to develop a low-cost airborne active array radar. The company said yesterday that the one-year effort in the Radar System Aperture Technology (RSAT) program calls for requirements definition and launch of a production run of 350 transmit/receive modules.
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to upgrade its Advanced Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance System (ATARS) to give real-time intelligence to ground users. The Marines will buy 24 data communication pods that provide the X- band common high-band datalink. "It's near real time right now, and with the follow-on software for the F/A-18 [fighter], we are going to try to achieve real time," Lt. Col. John D. Dewitt, the Marine F/A-18 aviation weapons requirements officer, said yesterday in an interview.
CANADIAN MARCONI CO. has won orders for avionics systems valued at over $2.6 million from Northrop Grumman Corp. The Kanata, Ontario, company said it will supply 44 of its CMA-882-5 Avionics Management Systems, plus a further 60 spare subassemblies, for Northrop Grumman E-2C aircraft. Northrop Grumman ordered 13 of the same systems less than a year ago, Canadian Marconi said. In addition, CMC has received a $900,000 order from EER Systems to provide components for a validation shipset of an integrated navigation and communication suite for the U.S.
