Singapore Air Force CH-47D helicopter pilots will train with Texas Army National Guard units at NAS Dallas, Grand Prairie, Tex., the Dept. of Defense said. Boeing, manufacturer of the CH-47Ds, has been training the pilots. DOD said training opportunities with U.S. Air Force and Navy units are expected.
September 12, 1995 Lockheed Fort Worth Company Lockheed Fort Worth Company, Ft. Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $8,899,594 face value increase to a Firm Fixed Price contract for the cost impact on the F-16 production program resulting from the restructure of the Peace Gate III and IV Pakistan F-16 programs. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Aeronautical Systems Center Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F33657- 88/C-0037, P00835).
SPACE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR returned to Kennedy Space Center yesterday after an 11-day mission plagued by repeated glitches. It touched down at 7:38 a.m. EDT, capping a flight that saw two scientific satellites deployed and recovered, a successful spacesuit shakeout for construction of the International Space Station, and a host of equipment failures that cast the ultimate scientific "take" of the mission in doubt.
The U.S. Army's Airborne Surveillance Testbed (AST) aircraft, a modified Boeing 767, was used to track the test firing at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., of a Lance missile in its potential role as a target for the U.S. Navy's shipboard theater missile defense system.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. received two contracts Aug. 29 from U.S. Naval Air Systems Command totaling $58.6 million for ground support equipment for the E-2C aircraft program for the government of France. The efforts are being carried out under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
The General Accounting Office has found that U.S. Army and Navy combat identification efforts are in danger of winding up with "stovepiped" systems that are incompatible. "The two services have been pursuing systems based on different technologies without fully considering how and at what cost those systems will be integrated," GAO said in a report entitled "Combat Identification Systems: Changes Needed in Management Plans and Structure" (GAO/NSAID-95- 153).
An unpaid 12 billion ruble light bill triggered a 15-minute blackout Friday at Russia's Plesetsk ICBM test site, with a top military official warning the local electric utility that the power cut hampered control over nuclear weapons stored there, according to press reports from Moscow.
Thiokol and NASA engineers haven't found anything wrong so far with the nozzles on the solid rocket boosters that lifted the Space Shuttle Endeavour to orbit Sept. 7, clearing the way for a Sept. 28 launch of the Shuttle Columbia on a 16-day microgravity research mission. Although inspection of the recovered booster nozzles won't be finished at Thiokol's facility in Utah until today or tomorrow, it appears that reinsulating the primary o-rings in the nozzle joints was sufficient to prevent the hot gas charring that was noticed after two previous flights (DAILY, Aug.
The U.S. Air Force plans a communication upgrade to the MC-130H Combat Talon II aircraft. Requests for proposals are slated to release in December, contract award is planned for next May, and installations would begin in March 1998, the AF's Aeronautical Systems Center said in a Sept. 13 Commerce Business Daily notice.
The NATO air campaign against Bosnian Serb targets, halted on Thursday after the Serbs agreed to pull heavy weapons beyond a 12.5 mile radius from Sarajevo, was "remarkably accurate," a senior Pentagon official said Friday. He said NATO planes flew over 5,000 sorties, attacking 56 targets. The accuracy of their strikes, he said, was due mainly to the types of munitions used and the techniques employed in delivering ordnance.
Deutch says the air strikes in Bosnia show the significant improvements made since the Gulf War in getting accurate intelligence to military commanders in a timely manner. The Bosnia operation demonstrated "the ability to take out pockets without a lot of collateral damage," he says.
Orbital Sciences Corp. and Teleglobe Inc. of Canada have signed a $160 million financing agreement that will support construction of a 36- satellite constellation of Orbcomm data relay satellites, Orbital reported. Under the agreement, Orbital will invest $75 million and Teleglobe $85 million to complete the network, with each company to hold an equal interest in Orbcomm Global L.P., the ultimate owner and operator of the satellite system.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has signed an agreement with France and Canada that provides for continued operation of the SARSAT satellite-based search and rescue network through 2003, with automatic five-year extensions after that.
U.S. climate researchers have had just about enough micromanagement of the Earth Observing System (EOS) and related Mission to Planet Earth projects. Scientists on the Committee on Earth Studies (CES) of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board last week released a report-"Earth Observations from Space: History, Promise, and Reality"-that doesn't mince words on how well government has realized the scientific promise of long-term climate monitoring from space.
ADM. WILLIAM A. OWENS, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has informed Secretary of Defense William Perry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili that he intends to retire at the end of his two-year term in February, a JCS spokesman said Friday, confirming a story in the New York Times. He said Owens has received a number of job offers from the private sector, but hasn't decided which one to take. A replacement is likely to be named around December.
AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION'S 49th annual National Convention and Aerospace Technology Exposition will run from today, Sept. 18, to Sept. 20 at the Sheraton Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. For further information, contact Stephen P. Aubin, AFA director of communications, at 703/247-5850.
Industrial offsets required to allow Hungary to buy Gripen fighters from Sweden are in line for discussion by the two countries following the signing of an agreement last week (DAILY, Sept. 15, page 411B). The agreement, a memorandum of understanding between Hungary and Sweden's Wallenburg group, involves a broad economic program that includes "evaluation and possible procurement" of the fighter for Hungary, according to Saab, a unit of Wallenburg and manufacturer of the Gripen.
British Aerospace reported an 113% increase in before tax profit for the first half of the year. It said Friday that profit for the period ending June 30 leaped from 75 million pounds sterling last year to 160 million pounds, or $248 million. Sales for the first half slipped to 2.9 billion pounds from 1994's 3.6 billion pounds. BAe also said that: -- Defense activities brought in a profit before interest of 240 million pounds, up from 221 million pounds, on sales of 2.05 billion, down from 3.6 billion.
TRW Inc. has been selected to build the Earth Observing System (EOS) Common Spacecraft in a contract worth as much as $668.5 million if all options are exercised, NASA said Friday. TRW won with a new bid submitted after NASA rejected an initial round of bids in May for cost estimates that were "unrealistically" low (DAILY, May 12, page 234). Other bidders at that time were Lockheed and Martin Marietta, since merged, and Hughes.
