Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) John Deutch is preparing to send a report on the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) funding practices to Capitol Hill today in the wake of charges that the spy satellite agency has not been fully accountable to its congressional overseers.
U.S. AIR FORCE doesn't plan to replace the E-3B that crashed last week near Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, killing all 24 personnel onboard. The crash, the first since AWACS planes entered service in 1977, was apparently caused by ingestion of geese into one or more of the engines. An AF spokesman said the E-3B won't be replaced because the service has sufficient attrition reserves.
The Thin CRT Consortium, Silicon Video Corp., San Jose, Calif., entered into a $50,318,327 "other transaction" with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) on September 15, 1995. ARPA is funding $22,202,000 of the agreement; $2,500,000 is being awarded at this time. The balance of the agreement is funded by industry, with some funding also provided by the State of California Trade and Commerce Agency's Defense Conversion Matching Grant Program.
GEN. MERRILL A. MCPEAK (USAF-ret.) has been elected a member of the board of directors of ECC International Corp. of Wayne, Pa. McPeak retired in November 1994 as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. George W. Murphy, president and CEO of ECC, said "General McPeak's keen interest in, and strong understanding of the role of simulation and technology-based training as it affects military training and readiness, will be an asset to the company."
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is not spending enough money on new technologies, and most of its systems today rely on technologies developed in the early 1980s, Robert Kohler, chief of TRW's avionics and surveillance group, says in a Washington appearance. The NRO needs to "shift back" from devoting so much of its budget to current operations, he says, a topic that has been under debate in Congress (DAILY, Sept. 15, page 411A).
The Joint Direct Attack Munition program office has been cleared to enter engineering and manufacturing development of the air-launched weapon, the JDAM director said, noting that the effort has been shortened to speed its transition to users.
Following the much praised C-17 testing, Fogleman takes the a more cautious approach. "One of the things I've done is dampen a little of the enthusiasm in the Air Force for the very successful RM&AE [Reliability, Maintainability and Availability Evaluation]," he says. "We've put in place a process" with the upcoming November Defense Acquisition Board meeting, and "I think I owe it to the people who have to make that [airlift mix] decision...to give them all the data we have and stay out of the way."
The U.S. Navy is still in search of a low signature aircraft, but affordability is the key, says Rear Adm. Brent M. Bennitt, chief of the service's Air Warfare Div. "Affordability in the future for us means common, it means probably smaller, quicker...emissions, and that's the JAST concept," he says.
Iridium, Inc. said it is withdrawing a $300 million public debt offering aimed at raising funds for its $3.3 billion constellation of low- Earth orbit communications satellites. The money will be raised instead through existing Iridium investors, led by Motorola, which formed the venture and is building the communications payloads for its satellites (DAILY, July 7, page 23).
Is Mach 2.2 fast enough for a High Speed Civil Transport? It may have to be-engineers working on the hoped-for U.S. successor to the decades-old Concorde are starting to think that dropping the Mach number may be an alternative to developing an advanced class of new titanium materials hearty enough to stand HSCT's baseline Mach 2.4 cruise speed. The elderly Concorde is built from humble aluminum honeycomb, but has yet to show any corrosion, thanks to the high altitudes and speeds at which it flies.
Top House-Senate conferees reached agreement Friday on a $243 billion compromise fiscal 1996 defense appropriations bill that includes $493 million in funding for additional B-2 bombers, congressional sources said. Approval by the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the two Appropriations defense subcommittees of the House's $493 million figure closed the B-2 fight for this year and assured funding no matter what happens in the national security authorization conference. The national security authorization compromise bill is stalled in conference.
In the midst of the debate about the mix of C-17s and Non-Developmental Airlift Aircraft, Fogleman restates the AF's basic position: "we continue to believe the most cost effective [package] that we could buy out there is 120 C-17s." Only in the event that is deemed too expensive, "even with new program prices for the C-17," does the mix issue arise. Fogleman says "the money is there to go forward with the C-17; we have programmed that."
McDonnell Douglas may move to increase commonality between Douglas' MD80 and MD90 series jetliners to help make the MD90 affordable enough to spur new sales, MD90 program chief Grace Robertson told The DAILY. Although a lot of progress has been made in taking cost out of the MD90 program since CEO Harry Stonecipher declared that the MD90's price was too high 10 months ago (DAILY, Nov. 17, 1994, page 245), "now we're at the point where we need to go further," she said.
NASA has received expressions of interest from four companies that plan to bid on the new Space Shuttle prime contract when a formal request for proposals in released early next year.
Prague has already received bids on modernizing two of its MiG-21 fighters as a possible prelude to upgrading the Czech Republic's entire 88-plane fleet, but plans are on hold while the defense ministry evaluates an offer from U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry of help in switching to F-16s.
The Navy must continue to support JAST "because the future for the Marine Corps in terms of expeditionary warfare lies in the ASTOVL product of JAST," Bennitt says. "So whether I do [Lockheed Martin's proposed Navy version of the F-] 117 or not, we are still into JAST up to our hips."
Two U.S. helicopters were hit by ground fire in separate missions over Bosnia earlier this month in unsuccessful attempts to rescue a pair of downed French pilots, the top commander in the theater said Friday. Three attempts were made between Sept. 6 and 8 to rescue the men, whose Mirage 2000 was shot down Aug. 30 by a Serb shoulder-fired missile.
The Senate late Thursday agreed by a vote of 55 to 45 to permit the delivery of $368 million of U.S. military hardware to Pakistan. Weapons deliveries to Pakistan have been prohibited since 1990 because of its nuclear program. The amendment, endorsed by the Clinton Administration, was sponsored by Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.). It was written into the fiscal 1996 foreign operations appropriations bill, which the Senate approved, 91-9.
BOEING AND ATC: Boeing is joining four other companies to pursue FAA's Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS), sister publication ATC Market Report has learned. Teamed with Boeing in the chase for the $1 billion-plus program are BDM, MCI, Formation, and Oracle Telecomputing. Oracle is the prime. The partners are expected to go public with the arrangement later this week.
NASA and the Dept. of Energy have joined forces to look for particles of antimatter from low Earth orbit, first on the Space Shuttle and then, after the turn of the century, from the planned International Space Station. Under an agreement signed last Wednesday, NASA will carry an advanced DOE particle detector on two Shuttle missions, the second to the Space Station, in the hope it will snare particles of antimatter and even the mysterious "dark matter" theorized as the source of 90% of the mass of the universe.
Kohler also says it's wrong for the U.S. to rule out using its intelligence assets to steal foreign trade secrets for U.S. firms-an idea that was put in the spotlight in January by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) but repeatedly shot down by senior intelligence officials. Kohler says U.S. national security and economic security are inextricably linked. "If we're willing to do dirty tricks for the defense part of national security, why aren't we willing to do [the same] for the economic part of national security?" he asks.
The overlapping functions within the intelligence community provide a synergy and variety of opinions that are vital to policymakers, the chief of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. "There's no reason for me to believe that a major reorganization is either necessary or appropriate at this time," Maj. Gen. Pat Hughes said in testimony last Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Community.
U.S. Air Force C-130s will be modified to carry the AN/ALQ-131 self- protection jammer to give them greater protection over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The system has previously been used largely by fighter aircraft. Lockheed Martin's Marietta, Ga., unit received a $5.2 million contract to for the work last week from the AF's Air Combat Command. It will modify 29 C-130Es and Hs to carry the Westinghouse system.
"We will have some sort of a formal review" of force structure in the next years, Fogleman says, echoing recent comments by AF principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, Lt. Gen. George Muellner. Other top defense officials have since said there are no plans for a second Bottom-Up Review. Fogleman says "the whole issue of force structure will be revisited" at some point, although "that doesn't necessarily mean it [force structure] will be reduced."
The U.S. Air Force should look at getting more use out of its larger platforms, says AF Chief of Staff, Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman. "I would like to try to find a way to get better utility out of things like JSTARS, AWACS, et cetera, that are on-station, and see if there is some way we can combine some of the sensors," he says. Although he acknowledges that "I'm way off my area of expertise now," he notes that "it's something that people keep talking about."
