The success of Integrated Product Teams in ferreting out early problems in developing and fielding new systems has encouraged Pentagon acquisition chief Paul Kaminski enough to predict the imminent end of the formal Defense Acquisition Board review. He tells a luncheon audience that of 16 formal full DAB reviews slated since IPTs began to be adopted, "we have only had to have five of them-11 were canceled." He allows that "it will take awhile for all of this to propagate" throughout the system, but eventually "we should be able to do away with formal DAB meetings."
The Pentagon yesterday published a list of more than 160 military standards to be scrapped as part of a larger program of acquisition reform, including those that originally governed the construction of the Internet. Objectors have until next Friday to ask for specific standards to be spared.
NASA and the Pentagon want their suppliers to come up with ideas for developing common processes of any type, so long as they promise significant savings, the agencies said.
Ranking Senate Armed Services Democrat Sam Nunn (Ga.) sees joint procurement as an issue whose time has come. "I think the next concept we're going to have to get into is jointness in the procurement area...so that we can begin to have the services start off with joint requirements and then decide which service does what," he tells Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. John M. Shalikashvili at a hearing on the general's renomination as chairman.
The Navy is still looking closely at Lockheed Martin's F-117 proposal, but the biggest challenge would be to find the resources to pay for it, Bennitt says. He believes the service will probably use some of the F-117 technology in the long term, probably for JAST.
Kohler's statements on the NRO weren't a blatant attempt to get more business for TRW, a major reconnaissance satellite contractor. Big companies "aren't particularly good at revolutionary technologies," he says, so the U.S. government must reach out to smaller, more entrepreneurial businesses.
The U.S. Air Force on Monday will show off a new design concept for an airborne command, control, communications, computers and intelligence platforms based on a KC-135 aircraft. The plane is "an elaborate airborne multi-media platform with plug and play capability," the Defense Dept. said yesterday. The aircraft, known as "Casey 01," will be reconfigurable "with different computer systems should the battlefield threat change significantly."
A stealthy replacement for modified Lockheed C- 130 transports flown by U.S. special operations forces is taking shape at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace's Ad-vanced Transport Aircraft Development, or ATAD, unit here. A little less than a year ago, officials at Air Force Special Operations Command asked for industry's ideas on aerodynamic and integration issues raised by the need for a new SOF airlifter, kicking off a three-year, $920,000 study effort. At the time, many industry executives didn't take it seriously. Why not?
JWID '95, the Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration, is scheduled to commence Sept. 25 under U.S. Marine Corps leadership. The hub for JWID will be Camp Pendleton, Calif., but players at 50 other locations, including some in Europe and Australia, will be connected. The exercise is intended to improve interoperablity between command, control, communication, computers and intelligence systems.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may answer the need for an ability to "stare" at enemy mobile targets and quickly cue attacks on them before they disappear, according to the chief of the U.S. Navy's Air Warfare Div. U.S. military forces can currently cue attacks on certain mobile targets "in a fairly non-precise way" using space and air-breathing assets, Rear Adm. Brent M. Bennitt said.
The U.S. Air Force has backed off a plan to retire its fleet of EF-111 tactical jamming planes by the end of fiscal year 1996 and will instead maintain a robust capability until the U.S. Navy's EA-6B can take over the mission, according to AF Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman. "We were going to bring the force down in fiscal year '96" but now "we think that it's prudent to keep some of those aircraft," Fogleman told reporters at the Air Force Association's annual symposium in Washington.
LOCKHEED MARTIN SUNNYVALE, Sunnyvale, Calif., beat three other competitors to win a $36 million U.S. Air Force contract on Sept. 12 to provide systems engineering, demonstration and integration support for the Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) program. The contract was awarded by the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles, Calif.
SCIENTIFIC ATLANTA INC., Signal Processing Systems, San Diego, Calif., will supply scientific engineering and technical support for the interface of AN/WSQ-7, AN/BQR-22, and AN/BQH-5 radar systems under an $8.5 million contract awarded Sept. 11 by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Div., Bethesda, Md.
British Aerospace's Concorde Re-life Group, or CRG, is expected to present structural analysis and a list of minor modifications to U.K. and French authorities next month aimed at keeping British Airways' supersonic jetliner in service until as late as 2010.
ANALYSIS&TECHNOLOGY INC., North Stonington, Conn., will provide engineering and technical services and materials to support U.S. Navy heavyweight and lightweight torpedo programs under a $21.3 million contract awarded Sept. 12 by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Div., Newport, R.I.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. John M. Shalikashvili yesterday expressed a concern that there might not be sufficient funding in fiscal 1997 and in the outyears to preserve existing modernization programs, and resisted any moves that he said might jeopardize their funding or lead to their postponement. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on his renomination to a second term as JCS chairman, Shalikashvili turned down suggestions for a second Bottom-Up Review to replace the one conducted in 1993.
ITT FEDERAL SERVICES CORP., Colorado Springs, Colo., received a $21.2 million contract from the U.S. Air Force on Sept. 11 that increases the value of an earlier contract for fiscal year 1996 operation and maintenance of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. The 21st Space Wing, Peterson, AFB, Colorado, awarded the contract.
Lockheed Martin has set up an F-22 fighter concept demonstrator in its Washington-area office to help woo congressional support and familiarize Pentagon officials with the capabilities of the plane.
HUGHES MISSILE SYSTEMS CO., Tucson, Ariz., yesterday received a $6.2 million U.S. Navy contract for risk reduction engineering and long-lead material to support the design and development of a Ship Self Defense System (SSDS). Naval Sea Systems Command awarded the contract, and work will be carried out at Tucson and in San Diego.
MAJOR ISSUES remained unresolved in the FY '96 defense appropriations conference yesterday, although Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, wasn't ready to abandon hope of an agreement by this weekend. He said late yesterday he was awaiting a call from House Speaker Newt Gingrich on the submarine issue. His panel avoided staking out an independent position in expectation of a Gingrich- imposed settlement.
LOCKHEED SUPPORT SYSTEMS INC., Arlington, Tex., received a $16.5 million in crease to an earlier U.S. Air Force contract to provide maintenance services for T-37, T-38 and T-1A aircraft. The contract was awarded Sept. 11 by the Air Education and Training Command, Reese AFB, Tex.
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP., Orlando, Fla., beat two other competitors for a $13.2 million U.S. Air Force contract for FY 1995-1999 software and hardware development, and operation and maintenance for the Theater Air Command and Control Simulation Facility at Kirtland AFB, N.M. The Dept. of Defense said Sept. 19 that the work will be performed at the 505th Command and Control Evaluation Group at Kirtland.
The U.S. Marine Corps is set to move up from being the last service to receive its Joint Advanced Strike Technology fighter to being the first. JAST guidance stated the Marines wouldn't get their plane until 2009- two years later than the Air Force and a year after the Navy-but the Corps was reported to be unhappy about the arrangement (DAILY, Sept. 7, page 361). Lt. Gen. George Muellner, the AF's principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, has said the dates were in flux, but that they would be nailed down in September.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles J. Precourt, who served as pilot on the first Space Shuttle docking mission with the Mir space station, has been named manager of NASA operations at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center, NASA said. U.S. Navy Cdr. Wendy B. Lawrence, who flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in March, has been named to train in Star City as backup to John E. Blaha, already named to a future Shuttle/Mir mission, NASA said.
RAYTHEON AEROSPACE said U.S. Navy contract it received to maintain the service's fixed wing trainer program aircraft has a potential long-term value to the company of $325 million. It said the contract, valued at about $60 million for the first year, would grow to the larger figure of all four of its one-year options are exercised. The company has held the contract for the past five years to maintain more than 3,000 Navy aircraft.
