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.
Lockheed Martin thinks more focus on spare parts and modifications could help improve the generally dismal mission-capable rate posted by the U.S. Air Force's big C-5 transports, an improvement that the General Accounting Office concluded could work out to the equivalent of adding 10 McDonnell Douglas C-17s to the active fleet.
The U.S. Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter won't fly for the first time in November as program officials had planned because of delays in two areas. The Boeing/Sikorsky team developing the helicopter was hoping to complete first flight of a prototype by the end of next week, but one Army official said first flight is now unlikely before mid-December.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) defended the Pentagon-backed Affordable Composites for Propulsion program yesterday, which has spent its first two years of life trying to shake the "corporate pork" label hung on it by budget-cutters in Congress. Lieberman was at the Dow-United Technologies Composite Products operation in Wallingford, Conn., to install the final bolt on an all- composite resin-transfer molded fan exit case developed under ACP, the largest of the Advanced Research Projects Agency's Technology Reinvestment Program, or TRP, projects.
Northrop Grumman Corp. on Jan. 1 will combine its B-2 and Military Aircraft divisions into a single element of 15,000 workers and annual revenues of $3 billion to be called the Military Aircraft Systems Div. The company said yesterday that the move is part of a continuing effort to cut costs and streamline operations. A spokesman said some jobs would be lost, primarily in the headquarters staffs and support functions of the two current divisions. It's too early to say precisely how many employees would be affected, he said.
NASA came out of last week's government shutdown relatively unscathed and, the agency said, it managed to stay on schedule for planned missions this year and early next year. The shutdown forced NASA to operate with a skeleton staff - all but 1,300 of its 21,000 employees were forced to stay home. The 1,300 employees deemed essential supported the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission that was completed Monday (DAILY, Nov. 14, p. 251).
Eighteen House Republicans, including Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), have told Defense Secretary William J. Perry of their "strong opposition" to any cuts or delays in the Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), Navy Upper and Lower Tier, and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) programs. In a letter sent to Perry last Wednesday, the signers noted "recent press reports" indicating that Pentagon officials may recommend "significant cuts" in fiscal year 1997 and the outyears for critical theater missile defense (TMD) programs, particularly THAAD.
Arianespace said the European Telecommunications Satellite Organization has chosen it to launch three satellites starting in mid-1997. An agreement signed yesterday in Paris calls for two telecommunications satellites and a direct TV broadcast satellite, Hot Bird 4, to be launched from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana, using either Ariane 4 or Ariane 5 rockets.
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY boosted the orbit of its Infrared Space Observatory from 518 km perigee to 1,030 km, ESA said yesterday. The maneuver was performed Nov. 19 and controlled from ESA's Darmstadt, Germany, facility. An apogee lowering maneuver is set for Friday that would put ISO in its final operational orbit. On Nov. 27, ISO will discard the cover on its cryostat allowing it to start receiving infrared radiation.
The Defense Dept. is concerned about the scope of the proposals received for its Enhanced Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program and it is trying to resolve a funding impasse, DOD's space chief said yesterday.
DUTCH ARMY awarded about $82 million to French manufacturer SAGEM for four squadrons of Sperwer unmanned aerial vehicles. Sperwer, a derivative of SAGEM's Crecerelle UAV in use by the French army, was chosen earlier this year, but the deal didn't become official until the Dutch parliament approved the army's choice.
The Defense Dept. last Friday awarded contracts totaling $10.5 million to three U.S. firms to help Ukraine convert former Soviet military production facilities into commercial joint ventures. The recipients are: -- ABB Combustion Engineering, Windsor, Conn., $4.8 million to convert a manufacturer of military guidance systems into a producer of control systems for nuclear power plants. -- Die Casters Inc., Wayne, N.J., $3 million to convert a radar facility into a factory that manufactures die cast automotive and other consumer products.
HOUSE-SENATE defense authorization conferees have adopted a waiting game, congressional sources said yesterday. They said the conferees didn't get into the still unresolved missile defense policy issue, but preferred to wait and see what President Clinton does on the $243 billion defense appropriations bill. He's expected to veto the bill as too big when domestic appropriations are being cut, but sources said conferees still wanted to hear what Clinton says in his veto message to get a better idea of what's unacceptable to the White House.
The American military deployment to Bosnia to implement the peace agreement worked out yesterday at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, by the three contending factions will proceed in three phases, one of which is already under way, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday.
AEROJET said its Tennessee Operations, in Jonesborough, Tenn., has met requirements for certification to ISO 9002, the international standard for quality systems. It said the facility was inspected by a team of seven auditors from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Command, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. government's Industrial Operations Command. Aerojet said ISO 9002 will soon be required for companies doing business internationally.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. said a mission planning system built by its Fairchild Defense unit, Germantown, Md., has been selected by the Egyptian Air Force for use with its F-16 fighters. The contract for the MSSII+ system is valued at more than $7.5 million, OSC said. The system was used during the Gulf War and now incorporates lessons from that conflict, the company said.
FAA gave a green light yesterday to a Boeing/General Electric proposal to modify fan tip clearances on GE90 turbofans powering 777 widebody twins due for delivery to British Airways and program executives hope to have the aircraft ready to go before the end of the week.
C-17 Globemaster III airlifters have flown 120 sorties so far with only one airplane-caused mission delay as part of U.S. support for NATO's Bosnia operations, Air Force and industry officials said yesterday.
PRATT&WHITNEY said All Nippon Airways has chosen the PW4090 engine for its ten Boeing 777-300 airliners. The sale is worth about $200 million to P&W, the United Technologies company said yesterday. Deliveries of the 777- 300 are slated to begin in 1998.
Preparations for the International Space Station by two partner nations will dominate the next Space Shuttle mission, set to lift off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on Jan. 11, 1996. The primary objective of STS-72 aboard the Shuttle Endeavour will be retrieval of Japan's Space Flyer Unit (SFU), a 7,000-pound space exposure experiment that includes important Station elements. Once the SFU is safely in the cargo bay, the five-member crew plans two spacewalks to test hardware developed to help astronauts assemble the Station in orbit.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. said yesterday it has completed the acquisition of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, a leading supplier of commercial space remote sensing ground stations. OSC, based in Dulles, Va., said it exchanged about 4.1 million shares of its common stock for all of the outstanding stock of the Vancouver, B.C., company. Also, MDA employees received options for about 328,000 shares of OSC common stock.
