Navy officials, who up until recently didn't think they could afford more than 60 Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) systems for F-14 aircraft, have found the money for 75. Lockheed Martin said yesterday it had received a contract to supply 75 of the two-podded LANTIRN systems and integrate them with F-14 for the strike mission. Options could raise the contract's value to $270 million, the company said.
DIAGNOSTIC/RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS INC., Parsippany, N.Y., has received an $8 million U.S. Navy contract for additional field engineering, integrated logistics support and depot repair services for the Navy's AN/SPS-67 and the AN/SPS-55 series surface search radar systems. The work will be carried out by the Technical Services Div., a unit of DRS's Electronic Systems Group. DRS said TSD has provided technical services for these radar systems, as well as for air search radar systems, since 1983.
Defense acquisition chief Paul G. Kaminski sent the Pentagon's strongest signal yet yesterday that the Joint Advanced Strike Technology, or JAST, program is ready to include U.S. allies, both in development and in production. With the document outlining the formal framework for allied participation now in its final stages-it's expected to be completed before the month is up-officials of several NATO allies acknowledge that they have started lining up to consider the possibilities of JAST.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who heads the House authorization conferees on missile defense, said yesterday that he expects the House-Senate compromise on the fiscal 1996 national security authorization to fund the Ballistic Missile Defense program at close to the House's $3.5 billion authorization. The Senate authorized $3.4 billion for BMD. The Administration requested a $2.9 billion program.
The U.S. Air Force is well suited to play in the information warfare environment, which it can support through a variety of command, control, communications, computers and intelligence assets, Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall said. The service's plan to stand up its first IW squadron later this year "is an important step," she told reporters Tuesday at the Air Force Association's symposium in Washington. "We have a concept of operations," she said.
LONG BEACH, Calif.With the U.S. intratheater airlift study and a go/no-go Milestone IIIB decision looming in coming months, McDonnell Douglas is renewing its attack on claims by C-17 rivals that the plane's military-unique capabilities aren't critical to modern-day airlift.
Loral Federal Systems-Gaithersburg has received a 15-month contract from Lockheed Martin Corp. to design the ground segment of Lockheed Martin's entry in the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) competition with Hughes Aircraft. Loral said the effort, in which teammate Aerojet General of Azusa, Calif., is also involved, calls for the design of "ground systems to perform mission data processing, telemetry, tracking and control operations and to handle radio frequency communications."
The U.S. Navy is planning to pull out of a nosedive that has taken its aircraft procurement budget to modern-day lows, but funding for the increase is contingent upon achieving savings through planned drawdown reforms, according to the service's top air warfare official. Since 1983, the Navy's aircraft procurement accounts have declined from $10 billion (in current year dollars) to just under $2 billion, Rear Adm. Brent M. Bennitt told a Center for Security Policy luncheon in Washington yesterday.
Information from industry that could ultimately lead to production of nearly 1,400 shipsets of modular avionics for F-15 and F-16 fighters is being requested by the U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center. ASC said in a Sept. 21 Commerce Business Daily notice that avionics common to the F-15 and F-16, and potentially other aircraft in the future, would allow "flexibility for evolving threats, adaptability to mission requirements, cross-platform interoperability and interchangeability, and rapid insertion of technology."
Aerojet General's sales for the third quarter jumped 30.9% over the same quarter a year ago to $132.3 million, according to GenCorp, Aerojet's parent. GenCorp, releasing its results for the third quarter yesterday, said Aerojet's performance was up primarily because of higher volume on the Defense Support Program (DSP) and close-out of the Small ICBM contract. GenCorp said third quarter net income for the whole corporation amounted to $8 million ($.24 per share), up from last year's third quarter figure of $6.4 million ($.20 per share).
A RUSSIAN JOINT VENTURE has hired Space Systems/Loral to provide the communications payload and other electronic gear for two geostationary satellites scheduled to be orbited by a single Proton booster early in 1997, the U.S. company reported yesterday. The contract, awarded competitively, is the first commercial procurement of Western satellite hardware by a Russian company, Space Systems/Loral said.
Rockwell International said it has delivered its first Digital Quartz Inertial Measurement Unit for tactical munitions market qualification testing. The inertial measurement unit, known as DQI, was delivered to Rockwell's Tactical Systems Div. for testing to the AGM-130 Guided Munition Qualifications requirements. A formal flight qualification program is planned in the October-December timeframe, Rockwell said.
U.S. officials are pushing for multiple commercial spinoffs from the Intelsat communications satellite consortium as Intelsat members wrestle with details of the consortium's breakup, according to a top White House official. W. Bowman Cutter told the Washington Space Business Roundtable yesterday that he pitched the Clinton Administration position on Intelsat to telecommunications officials in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany and the U.K. during a visit last week.
The U.S. Air Force has set up an office that, over the next 18 months, will merge the service's long-term planning efforts, USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Ron Fogleman said yesterday. The office will be headed by Maj. Gen. John Gordon, who will report directly to Fogleman. "I want to be very close to this effort," Fogleman said at the Air Force Association symposium in Washingon, explaining why it's under a special assistant to the chief of staff.
Potential applications of Israel's Delilah family of unmanned aerial vehicles in the U.S. will be explored under a business agreement signed by TAAS-Israel Industries Ltd. and McDonnell Douglas Corp. MDC said yesterday that under terms of the agreement, it has exclusive rights to jointly produce and market the Delilah system and variants.
Loral Fairchild System's Electro-Optical Long Range Oblique Photography System (EO-LOROPS) is being marketed abroad after meeting U.S. Air Force requirements during several months of testing, a company official said. Loral was told about 30 days ago that the system was successful in recent tests at Hill AFB, Utah, Donald S. Pickard, vice president of the company business development, said Tuesday at the Air Force Association's annual symposium in Washington.
U.S. AIR FORCE has chosen three companies to participate in Phase 1 of the Infrastructure and Generic Test Capability (I>C) upgrade under the Electronic Combat Integrated Test program at the AF Flight Test Center, Edwards AFB, Calif. The effort is aimed at providing a flexible and interconnected means for conducting integrated system testing of installed electronic combat and avionics systems, a capability the USAF does not now have. The three companies-Boeing Defense&Space Group, CTA Inc. of Rockville, Md., and Mission Research Corp.
Unwanted Capitol Hill add-ons to defense spending line items actually harm U.S. national security in the long run by bleeding funds from research and development programs better attuned to the post-Cold War security environment, a panel of top Clinton Administration policymakers charged yesterday.
U.S. Air Force officials will present two Boeing non-developmental airlift aircraft, or NDAA, proposals to the Defense Acquisition Board in November-one that meets the requirements laid out in the request for proposals, and another that "backs off" a fraction, but saves some $5 billion in acquisition cost alone, a top program executive told The DAILY yesterday.
Northrop Grumman is trying to entice the U.S. Air Force into supporting a program to make the BLU-113 penetrator bomb a Global Positioning System-aided munition (GAM) by leveraging technology used in the GPS-aided targeting system (GATS)/GAM program already underway.
McDonnell Douglas will design and develop for the U.S. Air Force a 250-pound air-to-surface weapon that uses Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System for guidance. The company was chosen over four other competitors for the work by the USAF's Wright Laboratory at Eglin AFB, Fla. MDC received a $6 million contract for the effort on Sept. 11. In addition to the design and development work, it will supply eight guidance/control sections and support ground and flight testing.
A new technique for insulating nozzle joints on the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters from the heat of exhaust gases will be applied on all future Shuttle flights, following inspection of the booster nozzles from the mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour just completed.
Loral Federal Systems-Owego said it will pursue the U.S. Air Force's T-38 trainer avionics upgrade program with two teammates-Loral Quintron of Chantilly, Va., also a division of Loral Corp., and DynCorp Aerospace Technology of Fort Worth, Tex.
Loral Corp. is shopping around a Tier II Plus unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) concept that lost out to Teledyne Ryan earlier this year, hoping Congress will add money for the Pentagon to select a second Tier II Plus contractor in fiscal 1996. The company's proposal, detailed at a briefing for reporters yesterday, involves a high altitude, heavy-lift UAV designed for 10,000- pound payloads that would be used as a sensor and weapons platform for theater missile defense.
