NASA has signed an agreement to use its satellite-based remote sensing technology to provide a view from space of changes to Narragansett Bay, R.I., over time. Brown University will analyze the data and provide it to local businesses.
Fokker yesterday reported a record first half net loss of 651 million Dutch guilders ($406.9 million)-far more than the 500 million guilders expected by the dwindling number of analysts who still follow the company. The company lost 196 million guilders in the same period last year.
The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has approved regulations governing control of exports, imports and transit of missile technology, as well as materials, equipment and technologies used in development of missile armaments. The Ukrainian government also approved a list of hardware and technologies covered by the regulations, which were adopted in accordance with the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which Ukraine has pledged to follow.
August 10, 1995 Westinghouse Electric Corporation Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Baltimore, Maryland, is being awarded a $40,455,384 face value increase to a Firm Fixed Price contract for 20 radar systems applicable to the F-16 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed September 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This effort supports foreign military sales to Singapore. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F33657-93/C-2263, PZ0001).
Dow-United Technologies Composite Products Inc., Wallingford, Conn., has been awarded $30 million in subcontracts to build a wide range of structural components for the U.S. Air Force's F-22 next-generation fighter. Dow-United's parts will be used for the first nine F-22s being built under the program's engineering, manufacturing and development stage. Its components will become part of the forward fuselage, vertical and horizontal tails, edges, and the wings.
An inadequate organization and outdated doctrine, not technological deficiencies, caused most the Defense Dept.'s inability to react efficiently to information warfare waged against the U.S. during a recent war gaming exercise. About 500 people from across the services, Congress, and industry- including the major telecommunications companies-participated in the joint war game set in 2003. In the scenario, North Korea attacked South Korea on very short warning and then, several weeks later, Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency's Sharpshooter missile guidance program promises to benefit munitions beyond the Joint Direct Attack Munition, but congressional language could impede this broader application, says an ARPA official.
The Russian government has ordered the Ministry of Defense to develop a new list of spacecraft landing sites so as to move recoveries of Russian spacecraft from Kazakhstan onto Russian territory. Until now the principal landing sites for recoverable spacecraft (piloted, reconnaissance, remote sensing) were concentrated in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, with some back-up sites in Russia. A new government decree shifts primary landing sites for unmanned Russian spacecraft to Russian territory.
Along with information warfare, theater ballistic missile defense and biological and chemical warfare also played a role for the first time during this year's Global game series, Naval War College President Rear Adm. James Stark told The DAILY. During the July exercise, which was set in 2003, U.S. forces used the Theater High Altitude Area Defense System, the Patriot Advanced Capability, or PAC-3, and a Navy upper-tier BMD system that Stark said he believed was derived from THAAD.
Managements at Pratt&Whitney and Rolls-Royce insisted yesterday that rumors of a pending merger of their engine businesses are the product of City financial analysts, and nothing more. London's Sunday Times newspaper quoted P&W President Karl Krapek as saying that P&W wanted to merge its commercial aircraft engine business with Rolls' civil business. But the paper never talked to Krapek, despite attributing the merger remark to him as a direct quote.
The U.S. Army's missile command is upgrading the calibration kit for the Apache helicopter's navigation, targeting, and weapon systems under an approximately $5.1 million contract to Photronics Corp. Hauppauge, N.Y.-based Photronics will provide an electro-optical upgrade to 150 Captive Boresight Harmonization Kits (CBHKs), a ground support device that is designed to provide accuracy to the AH-64's fire control system, Photonics parent company Diagnostic/Retrieval Systems said Friday in a statement.
Israel Aircraft Industries has agreed to a joint venture with Israel- based Electronic Associates Technology, or EATI, to develop and market commercial spin-offs from IAI research and development projects. The joint holding company has the "exclusive right of first review of its [IAI's] eligible technology applications," and first shot at selecting projects likely to be successful commercially, a statement released Thursday by West Long Beach, N.J.-based Electronic Associates, the majority owner of EATI, said.
Improperly installed wiring probably led to a fire that caused the crash in California last Dec. 14 of a Learjet flying under contract to the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The plane crashed while attempting to land on a street in Fresno, killing both civilian pilots, injuring 21 persons on the ground and destroying 12 apartment units in two buildings.
NASA MANAGERS WILL WAIT until they see how work is progressing on repairs to solid rocket nozzle rings before setting a new launch date for the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-69. Officials decided late Friday to use a vacuum technique to replace Room Temperature Vulcanizing (RTV) material that has allowed hot gases to scorch the critical o-rings on the past two flights, relying on complete replacement at one joint where non-destructive evaluation (NDE) is not possible, and on another using NDE to determine where there are air voids that need repair (DAILY, Aug.
NASA HAS SIGNED a memorandum of understanding with the state of North Carolina under which the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., will work with North Carolina State University's Industrial Extension Service to promote the transfer of aerospace technologies and innovations developed by NASA and its contractors to schools and businesses. Research facilities at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., and Stennis Space Center, Miss., are also included under the memorandum.
Engineers have begun work at TRW's Space Park facility on the first satellites ever jointly developed by U.S. and Korean aerospace companies. Engineering offices housing more than 100 engineers opened last week in Redondo Beach, Calif., as part of a $75 million contract TRW received earlier this year to participate in the Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite (KOMSAT) program. TRW received a 52-month contract in March from the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) to build two ready-to-launch satellites.
The U.S. Air Force has completed its Project Strike demonstration, in which mission updates were sent by satellite to a B-1B bomber and an F-15E fighter. Immediately after takeoff-the B-1B from Ellsworth AFB, S.D., and the F-15E from Eglin AFB, Fla.-the aircraft began receiving information "for a simulated forward edge of the battle area penetration at Nellis [AFB, Nev.]," said Maj. Gregory (Guido) Hawkes, Project Strike program manager.
Pentagon rules covering when and how to pay some of industry's merger costs don't comply with the requirements set down by Congress last year, the General Accounting Office concluded. The Defense Dept. distinguishes between internal and external restructuring activities, a practice that winds up excluding certain costs from the certification requirements laid down in Section 818 last summer, when conferees decided to formalize procedures that had been used to justify paying merger costs on a case-by-case basis (DAILY, Aug. 12, 1994, page 239).
The U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command has awarded an $86 million contract to a unit of Loral Corp. to continue operations and maintenance of electronic combat systems at a Nevada training range.
Nearly seven years into the U.S.-Japan FS-X fighter co-development effort, Japanese officials remain reluctant to share certain technologies with the U.S., even though technology exchange is one of the key agreements underpinning the entire program, the General Accounting Office reported.
American Mobile Satellite Corp. (AMSC) reported that second quarter revenues ended June 30 were up 63% over the same period a year before, to $1.8 million. But the company's net losses for the quarter hit $8.3 million, up 88% from the second quarter of 1994. AMSC plans to begin voice revenue service later this year for its AMSC-1 mobile communications satellite, which will serve the continental U.S. and provide fill-in-the-gap cellular phone coverage and other voice, data and fax services.
Even though the Pentagon is making progress whittling down its huge stockpiles of spare parts and other inventory, it still keeps billions of dollars' worth of materiel on hand that isn't really needed, the General Accounting Office concluded. GAO evaluators have looked at the problem several times in recent years, and the Defense Dept.'s response has always been that the watchdog agency is ignoring certain shortages in its review. By DOD's arithmetic, its secondary inventory shortage stood at $26 billion in September 1991.
Contractors believe that meeting the current JASSM cost goal of $500,000-800,000 a unit will be challenging, Soler says. "[The contractors] all thought they could do it, but it will take special attention to their production techniques," he says.
