FAA awarded a $69 million contract to Denro Inc. to build and install the Enhanced Terminal Voice Switch (ETVS), which the agency said yesterday represented a 30% savings over originally projected costs to upgrade communications at civilian and military air traffic control towers and approach and departure facilities.
Adrian T. Dillon was elected vice president-chief financial and planning officer, effective Sept. 1. Dillion, currently vice president-planning, will succeed Stephen R. Hardis, who will become Eaton's chief executive officer on that date.
Dale P. Hoffman was appointed vice president and manager of advanced technology programs. Allan M. Frew Jr. has been appointed deputy general manager of Defense Systems Division. Joanne M. Maguire was appointed vice president and general manager of the Space and Technology Division.
As part of a major reorganization put into place Tuesday, the Advanced Research Projects Agency has created a new Information Systems Office strictly for projects that are joint, information-intensive, and focus on systems of systems. When ARPA Director Larry Lynn took the agency's reins earlier this year, he made no secret of his plans to restructure the organization, which he felt had grown too big (DAILY, July 17, page 65).
PANAMSAT CORP., Greenwich, Conn., has filed a registration statement for an initial public offering of common stock. PanAmSat plans to use the proceeds from the offering for development and launch of its PAS-7 and PAS-8 satellites and to pursue international opportunities in direct-to-home services, among other things. Morgan Stanley and Co. is leading the offering with co-managers Bear, Stearns&Co. and Donaldson, Lufkin&Jenrette Securities Corp.
SPACE INDUSTRIES, INC. is developing a briefcase-sized satellite that is expected to cost "considerably less than $1 million" per copy. The 15 pound, free-flying platform can maneuver for up to 12 hours before requiring refueling and can be controlled via a joy stick from on the ground or on a human-tended space platform. Applications seen by the company include providing video to the ground during Space Station assembly. Space Industries said the satellite could also be fitted with solar panels, allowing it to fly longer missions as a telecommunications platform.
An Ohio consortium of universities, companies and government agencies awarded $270,000 in grants to nine university teams for collaborative aerospace research, the group reported this week, bringing the total awarded to $1.3 million since the program began three years ago. Each team received $30,000 from the Ohio Aerospace Institute to conduct year-long projects in a host of aerospace-related technologies. Among topics to be studied are power electronics for engines, the airflow characteristics of laser-drilled holes, and high-temperature sensors.
Adm. Stanley R. Arthur, formerly vice chief of naval operations, was appointed vice president of naval systems. Lawrence J. Cavaiola, formerly special assistant to the U.S. secretary of defense, has been appointed director of technology special projects.
Keith DeConde, former director of business development, was appointed director of operations. Kuai Lok "Happy" Tsui has been promoted to deputy program manager and special assistant to executive vice-president Max Jacobson.
INTERNATIONAL SPACE ENTERPRISES of San Diego, Calif., has selected PanAmSat to provide satellite services for a new nationwide airline ticketing system it is planning to establish in Russia.
Robert J. Fitch, who most recently served as vice president of Corporate Strategic Development at GDE Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of Tracor, has joined the company as vice president of government relations.
Robert Choulet, previously president of AlliedSignal Engines, Phonenix, Ariz., has been named senior vice president of business strategy of AlliedSignal Aerospace.
Douglas K. Mang has joined the company as manager of Air Force programs. Prior to joining Raytheon, he was a senior military fellow at the Institute of National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, Washington, D.C.
Chris Hornblower has been named vice president-Seattle operations. Hornblower succeeds John B. Hodson, who will retire Jan. 1, 1996, after 46 years with the company.
Aeronautics researchers at NASA have received word from the top that their budgets must fall along with the rest of agency spending, and so are adopting the "faster-better-cheaper" approach already in the pipeline for future space systems, according to the new associate administrator for aeronautics.
The Joint Direct Attack Munition program office has postponed a draft request for proposal and industry day planned on a millimeter-wave seeker effort aimed at increasing JDAM accuracy through a product improvement program (PIP). "We're waiting to make sure the funding is stabilized," Wesley Gunn, director of projects JDAM Joint Systems Program Office, Eglin AFB, Fla., said Monday in an interview. "I don't like to have contractors go and spend their wheels and spend a bunch of money trying to do stuff until we've got the funding stabilized."
CHIP-MAKER MICROSEMI CORP. clinched a broad, two-year agreement to supply up to $8 million worth of space and mil-spec semiconductors to the entire group of Lockheed Martin defense and satellite companies. The contract reported yesterday expands on a similar agreement worked out with Martin Marietta shortly after it acquired General Electric's aerospace businesses.
Long-awaited recovery may be underway for U.S. helicopter-makers, with shipments rising a little through the first half of 1995 but revenues jumping nearly 80%, data released Monday by the Aerospace Industries Association show. At 170 aircraft, total commercial shipments through the first half were about 6% ahead of last year's pace. But new sales of civil helicopters and military helos sold commercially to non-U.S. governments ballooned to $110 million during the period, compared with $62 million midway through 1994.
The F/A-18E/F won't have its full electronic warfare suite, or Integrated Defense Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) system, when it reaches initial operational capability, even though that program is the top priority for Naval Air Systems Command's tactical EW office. "They [IDECM systems] will not be on it initially; they'll be on it a few years after initial production," Col. Nolan Schmidt, NAVAIR's program manager for tactical aircraft EW, said Monday in an interview. IDECM IOC is slated for the year 2003, but F/A-18E/F IOC is scheduled for 2001.
The Senate yesterday remained deadlocked over ballistic missile defenses in the Senate Armed Services' $264.7 billion fiscal 1996 national security authorization with opposing Democratic Senators apparently holding a tactical advantage. As talks continued, there was increasing talk of putting the bill aside and taking up the defense appropriations bill, which does not contain the Missile Defense Act of 1995, provisions of which the Democrats find objectionable.
The U.S. Air Force's Airborne Laser (ABL) program, designed to intercept ballistic missiles in their boost phase, wouldn't require the financial investment involved in terminal defense systems and even has potential for anti-cruise missile and post-boost phase intercepts, the service chief of staff said yesterday. "We'll always have terminal systems," Gen. Ronald Fogleman said during an ABL briefing at the Pentagon. But he cautioned that "the affordability of all of them I think is a very serious question."
NASA officials will brief industry on its plans to consolidate some 85 Space Shuttle-related contracts under a single prime contractor at a briefing in Houston Aug. 21, according to a notice in today's Commerce Business Daily. Bryan O'Connor, deputy associate administrator for space flight (Space Shuttle) will conduct the briefing at Johnson Space Center, the CBD notice stated.
