EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY on Dec. 1 will transfer operational command of its Meteosat satellites to the newly built Eumetsat headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. The aim is to ensure continued operations of the satellites into the next century. Eumetsat will control two spacecraft, Meteosat-5 and Meteosat-6. They replaced Meteosat-3 and -4, which were removed from geostationary orbit this month.
The U.S. Army and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization are on schedule for the first attempted intercept by a Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in mid-December using a Storm target missile, Army officials said yesterday. THAAD successfully completed a fly by and seeker lock-on, also using a Storm target, on Oct. 13, and prime contractor Lockheed Martin had predicted the next test would involve an intercept and intended destruction of the target (DAILY, Oct. 18, page 102).
In a bid to leapfrog Boeing, Airbus Industrie formally launched development of a long-range version of the A330 widebody twinjet, the A330- 200, with a go-ahead decision by the consortium's supervisory board Friday.
The U.S. Army hopes efficiencies will provide the savings that would allow it to retain a force structure of 495,000 people, according to Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis J. Reimer. "When you look at the future, the 21st century, and you look at the resources we are putting into modernization, my concern, and I think everybody's concern in the Army, is we're not going to have the best equipment and the best weapons systems for our soldiers. And we've got to be able to fix that."
Eurofighter's two biggest partners - Britain and Germany - may settle their program-threatening dispute over production shares by putting off talks on how to juggle workshares until Bonn's actual order total clears up, a move that could kick real decisions well into the next century. British defense chief Michael Portillo met yesterday with German counterpart Volker Ruehe to try to break the logjam, and at an afternoon press conference in Bonn both pronounced themselves satisfied with progress to date.
November 22, 1995 SYSCON Corporation SYSCON Corporation, Washington, D.C., is being awarded a $5,736,491 modification to previously awarded contract (N00024-94-C-6408) for technical engineering services for manpower, personnel, and training support for AEGIS combat systems. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia, and is expected to be completed by September 1996. Contract funds in the amount of $5,736,491 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity.
Daimler-Benz okayed Daimler-Benz Aerospace's plans to eliminate 8,800 jobs by the end of 1998 as part of a larger restructuring. The cutback follows a $1.1 billion loss in the first half of this year and the continuing weakness of the dollar - DASA's big problem is its sales are in dollars but it must pay most of its costs in marks.
Final congressional action is expected this week on the fiscal 1996 VA-HUD appropriations bill which funds NASA programs (DAILY, Nov. 20, page 286). Congress adjourned Nov. 20 for Thanksgiving, but didn't act on the bill. Before the break, however, a unanimous consent agreement was reached in the Senate for consideration of the bill today, Nov. 27. The House will consider it tomorrow.
Davis is still promising industry representatives that the Joint Space Management Board - with officials from DOD, CIA and NRO - will be activated soon. In September, he said issues related to its establishment would be "resolved in the next few days, certainly in the next few weeks." Last week, Davis said the board is "almost created" and that "it should be signed any day now by Secretary [of Defense] Perry."
House and Senate conferees on the fiscal 1996 intelligence authorization are said to be near an agreement on the issue of how many large and small satellites to buy. According to congressional sources, the conference may settle the issue by allowing the executive branch to have the final say. Senate intelligence conferees are on both sides of the issue. The same is true on the House side. Rep. Larry Combest (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is a proponent of the small satellites, 2,000-pound models costing about $100 million each. Rep.
The U.S. Air Force's Wright Lab is looking to post-silicon technologies to move signal processing closer to the sensors and thus eliminate much of the costly and difficult analog conversion. Current silicon devices take too long to process the RF input signal, but recent advances in III-V compounds such as gallium arsenide or the even newer silicon-germanium devices look promising in streamlining the process.
NAVAL AIR SYSTEMS COMMAND plans to buy additional Exdrone unmanned aerial vehicles from BAI Aerosystems, Easton, Md. BAI has built more than 100 Exdrones to demonstrate expendable UAV operations.
Congressional sources say the attack submarine compromise worked out in the fiscal 1996 defense authorization conference - under which construction of four new subs will be split between General Dynamics' Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding (DAILY, Nov. 17, page 278) - also has language stating that if the plan is derailed by a future Congress, the program will revert to competition between the two yards.
Total cost to completion of the Defense Dept.'s major acquisition programs rose by more than 10% from $652.6 billion to $723.5 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, according to figures contained in the latest Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) released last Friday at the Pentagon. The $70.9 billion increase is due principally to the transition from development to procurement of the Navy's New Attack Submarine (NSSN) and, to a lesser degree, to Air Force procurement and military construction in support of FAA's National Airspace System (NAS).
The U.S. Navy is getting ready to launch a cost and operational effectiveness assessment (COEA) to determine what path to take in developing a passive radio-frequency targeting system for a number of tactical aircraft, according to a Naval Air Systems Command official.
Pentagon officials, expecting the worst, are bracing themselves for another White House-Congress budget impasse before this fiscal year's budget is approved. To help soften another blow, some are trying to award December contracts early, before the continuing resolution runs out on Dec. 15.
The FAA, reversing an earlier position, said last week that it will not allow Boeing Defense and Space Group to compete as a prime contractor for its $1 billion-plus Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) air traffic control program. Boeing said in September that it will compete for STARS as leader of a team consisting of Oracle Telecomputing Inc. of Ottawa; BDM Air Safety Management of Washington, D.C.; MCI Government Markets of McLean, Va., and formation of Morristown, N.J.
The Pentagon's space chief said last week that he has four major priorities. Robert Davis, who became the under secretary of defense for space in August, said he wants to: - Restructure DOD's space business. This includes setting up his own office and the appointment of Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert Dickman as DOD's space architect. Dickman "will develop an architecture for [DOD's] entire military satellite communications" and determine where military satellites are headed after 2000 and 2005, Davis said.
The Marine Corps' new think tank, the Commandant's Warfighting Laboratory (CWL), established Oct. 1 at Quantico, is using focus groups to do some heavy duty thinking. Some of the ideas that have emerged: A "holistic" approach to warfighting, changing "command and control" to "command and coordination," focusing on the "sharpened mental processes of individual Marines" and figuring out how to fight on a "non-contiguous, non-linear" battlefield.
Representatives of the military services are scheduled to meet all day Wednesday at the Crystal City, Va., offices of ANSER to work out with the Defense Mapping Agency an infrastructure to make space assets (communications, intelligence, navigation, etc.) more useful to combat units. The Marine Corps, which has the toughest requirements, will be the testbed for any field tests.
Provoked by word of $2.5 million in new bonuses awarded to top Boeing executives, rank-and-file Machinists soundly rejected a settlement last Tuesday night endorsed by union negotiators that would have ended a 45-day walkout Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Pentagon space chief Robert Davis says "we are beyond studying the issue." With stacks of paper laying out the pros and cons of small satellites, he recommends "building something" to assess their utility. He says he feels "insufficient attention has been given to small satellites," but he won't endorse their use outright.
