Engineers at the U.S. Air Force Space&Missile Systems Center are studying the use of space launch vehicles based on foreign ICBMs, now that the White House has approved launchers derived from Soviet-era missiles for U.S.-built payloads.
DISTRIBUTING VIDEO to personal computers requires decompressing the compressed signal, which is limited by the data bandwidth available to PCs. Cubic Defense Systems, San Diego, has begun tackling the problem with new decompression software to be downloaded to a PC during the set-up procedure, and the effort has just been awarded a $1.7 million Advanced Technology Program (ATP) contract from the Commerce Dept.'s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Two new electronic materials, silicon-carbide (SiC) and silicon- germanium (SiGe), have begun to challenge the dominance of silicon in specialized military and commercial applications, and the challengers will change some of the ground rules for performance and affordability of military systems. Neither, technically speaking, is new - germanium was used in the first transistor demonstrated by Bell Labs in 1947 and carbon was also used sporadically in those days - but silicon rapidly swept the field because of its relative ease of manufacture.
Rep. William F. Clinger Jr. (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, concedes that major issues in the House-passed federal acquisition reform are still outstanding in conference, dimming hopes of working them into the fiscal 1996 national security authorization. Clinger said in an interview Thursday that he has been told by the House National Security Committee negotiators that acquisition reform has to be wrapped up this week if it's to be part of the national security authorization.
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, consumer electronics and office automation products will be big users of embedded microprocessors - in many cases depending on the microprocessors for their existence - according to market estimates released by Intermetrics Microsystems Software Inc., Cambridge, Mass.
Tracor Applied Sciences has won a five-year contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Div. to continue providing technical services in support of shipboard and shore-based U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Air Traffic Control and Landing Systems (ATC&LS). The contract is valued at $29.5 million, Tracor said. ATC&LS equipment provides the Navy with all-weather landing capability on board aircraft carriers and air traffic control and landing guidance on amphibious assault ships.
A PROTOTYPE navigation system combining satellite-generated data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and inertial navigation from a fiber optic gyro has been approved for initial manufacturing under a $15 million ARPA contract. Litton's Guidance&Control Systems Div., Woodland Hills, Calif., provides the gyro and is in charge of system integration, and Rockwell's Collins Avionics&Communications unit, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, furnishes the embedded miniature GPS receiver.
Taiwan is suspending builds of its new Indigenous Defense Fighter, or IDF, for six months to correct a fuel system problem blamed for a crash this summer. The country's military-run Aero Industry Development Center, or AIDC, has already built 40 of the aircraft, which now have to be recalled for repairs to their fuel systems, an AIDC official said.
SOLE TAPE RECORDER aboard the Galileo Jupiter probe worked as advertised during troubleshooting tests over the weekend, leading controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to map a "very cautious" plan for using the balky device after it enters the Jupiter system in December. A JPL spokesman said yesterday the tape recorder advanced, read and rewound tape in response to test commands sent Friday (DAILY, Oct. 23, page 132). Earlier, the recorder did not stop rewinding in response to commands, and was put into a safe mode (DAILY, Oct. 16, page 86).
AT&T Tridom has received a contract to provide hub stations, very small aperture terminals (VSATs) and technical support to Brazil's Empresa Brasileira De Telecomunicacoes (Embratel) for a shared-hub satellite communications service. The contract, announced last week, calls for AT&T to supply five Clearlink hub stations and 500 VSATs that will allow Embratel to support customers on each hub while managing the entire system from a central location in Rio. Embratel provides long distance service in Brazil.
Litton's Ingalls unit is teamed with Newport News, National Steel and Shipbuilding (NASSCO) and Lockheed Martin to compete for the LPD-17 amphibious ship program that could be worth more than $10 billion. The Ingalls team will compete against a team of Avondale, Bath and Hughes for the lead ship of the LPD-17 class. A contract award is slated for the end of this fiscal year.
Alliant Techsystems has received a $10.9 million contract from Aerojet for 110 low-rate production rounds of the Sense and Destroy Armor (SADARM) precision munition with a $9.6 million option for additional 120 units, Alliant said. Aerojet is the SADARM prime contractor and Alliant is the main subcontractor for the munition. The U.S. Army is expected to place orders for a 70,000 SADARMs over the life of the program. The total production value is about $400 million, Alliant said.
Boeing has put on line the first elements of a planned $25 million simulation facility to support the F-22 fighter program. The move is in preparation for first flight tests of F-22 avionics, scheduled for February 1998 on a Boeing 757 testbed.
The Russian Pacific Fleet, after months of deliberation, has decided to honor a contract with a South Korean company and sell the Kiev-class aircraft carrier Minsk for scrap, the Itar-Tass news agency reported yesterday from Moscow. About a year ago, a Russian navy spokesman said Minsk and another carrier, Novorossiisk, were being sold to South Korea for scrap. The ships had been declared no longer useful for military purposes (DAILY, Nov. 15, 1994, page 235).
ITALY would get 1,219 TOW-2A and -2B anti-armor missiles, plus logistics and other support, valued at an estimated $51 million, if a sale proposed by the Dept. of Defense goes through. Congress was informed of the sale last Friday. Prime contractor is Hughes Aircraft, and the cognizant service is the U.S. Army. Italy will use the missiles to upgrade its current anti- armor capabilities, according to DOD.
Saudi defense and aviation minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz may sign a long-awaited $7.5 billion jetliner deal with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas this week during an official visit to Washington, according to published reports in Riyadh. "It is his first official visit to Washington in 10 years and I don't think he wants to be received only as defense minister," wire services quoted a Riyadh diplomat as saying on Monday.
PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT used until recently to build McDonnell Douglas MD-11 trijet fuselages at the former General Dynamics Convair Div. plant goes on the auction block Nov. 13-18, and auctioneers Norman Levy Associates hope for a big turn-out from up-and-coming aerospace companies in Asia and the Pacific Rim. Apart from manufacturing equipment and machine tools, the San Diego plant's fleet of fire trucks and ambulances are for sale, as is a waste-water treatment plant.
Due to an editing error, Eurofighter prototypes DA.1 and DA.2 were transposed in a story last week about the test flight program (DAILY, Oct. 17, page 94). DA.1 is the Daimler-Benz aircraft and had flown only 11 times in nearly 17 months. It was incorrectly identified as the British Aerospace-built aircraft in a side-headline.
U.S. NAVY'S sixth Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Follow On satellite was successfully launched into geostationary transfer orbit Sunday morning on a Lockheed Martin Atlas II rocket. The 4:00 a.m. EDT launch from Cape Canaveral marked the third time this year that a UHF Follow-On has been orbited and the ninth consecutive successful Atlas launch of the year. It is also the third UHF Follow On to incorporate extremely high frequency (EHF) capability. A total of 10 satellites are scheduled to be delivered to the Navy by Hughes Space&Communications Co.
