The U.S. Army yesterday conducted the second of 14 scheduled demonstration/validation tests of the THAAD interceptor. The missile for the Theater High Altitude Air Defense program was launched from White Sands Missile Range, N.M., against a simulated target. Plans called for it to be put through "fairly severe maneuvers" to test its structure and control system, according to an Army spokesman, but results of the test were not immediately available.
Israel fired the first Arrow 2 interceptor in a test on Sunday. The missile, the tactical prototype of the interceptor planned for use in an Israeli missile defense system, "performed as planned," prime contractor Israel Aircraft Industries and the U.S. Army's missile defense program executive office said in a joint statement. Earlier tests used a prototype referred to as Arrow 1. Arrow 2 is smaller and has two solid fuel stages rather than the single stage of the earlier version.
A Russian space imagery firm plans to launch an advanced mapping satellite next year that will provide two-meter-resolution scenes of the Southeast U.S. in bulk to a consortium of U.S. firms. If the deal goes ahead as planned, it will be the first time that Americans have paid Russians to photograph the U.S. from space.
July 27, 1995 McDonnell Douglas Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri, is being awarded a $8,446,968 Firm Fixed Price contract for FY1995 post production support for the F-15 aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed September 1995. Contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Solicitation began August 1994 and negotiations were complete April 1995. This effort includes support for foreign military sales to Israel. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F33657-95/C-2007).
The Congressional Budget Office has put the procurement cost for buying 20 additional B-2 bombers at $18 billion in fiscal 1996 dollars, but says the costs could be "perhaps $2 billion" lower if the Defense Dept. accepts Northrop Grumman's offer to build the bombers according to the schedule and specifications it offered in a fixed price contract.
LORAL FEDERAL SYSTEMS CO., Manassas, Va., on July 27 received a $9.3 million contract from U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, Training Systems Div., Orlando, Fla., to incorporate a change to the Semi-Automated Forces software portion of the U.S. Army's Close Combat Tactical Trainer.
July 25, 1995 AAI Corporation, Hunt Valley, Maryland, is being awarded a $7,382,153 face value increase to a Cost Plus Award Fee contract for development of modifications for 2 prime mission equipment maintenance training sets applicable to the E-8C Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS). Contract is expected to be completed July 1996. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah is the contracting activity (F42630-94/C- 0325, P00011). July 26, 1995
For the first time, information warfare has been included in the U.S. Navy's Global war game series, says Navy command and control warfare director Capt. Rocco Caldarella. The main problem was figuring out how it would fit into the three-week Global '95 exercise, which wrapped up last week. IW was performed on a rudimentary and primarily defensive level. "What we're finding is long-lead early preparation of the battlefield is what we're talking about," Caldarella says. "If someone fires a missile at you, it's too late to do something in the information warfare concept.
Cessna Aircraft Co. on Friday filed a second protest of the Air Force's Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) award to Raytheon's Beech Aircraft. The Textron subsidiary filed its first protest July 7, arguing that despite public talk about a "best value" procurement, the services opted to go simply for the lowest bidder (DAILY, July 10, page 28).
U.S. ARMY Communications-Electronics Command said in a July 21 Commerce Business Daily notice that it will issue a request for proposals for additional Advanced Threat Radar Jamming (ATRJ) engineering and manufacturing development systems and spare parts. It said ITT Avionics, the only company to submit a proposal for ATRJ EMD, received a $54.4 million contract for the effort in July 1994.
Despite Lockheed Martin's best efforts to sell the Defense Dept. a reconnaissance version of its stealthy F-117 fighter, Pentagon recce managers aren't interested. "[F-117s] have tremendous leverage in hitting high-value, tough-to-get targets," U.S. Air Force operational requirements director Brig. Gen. David McCloud said in an interview. "I don't want to go taking pictures. I want to drop bombs with those airplanes."
The U.S. Navy's decision to put Airborne Self-Protection Jammers on F/A-18D strike aircraft flying over Bosnia is a one-time solution and not something that will be extended to other Hornet aircraft, Rear Adm. Brent Bennitt, Navy director of air warfare, told The DAILY.
The Czech Army appears to be heading for a showdown with parliament over plans to upgrade its MiG-21 jet fighters. In June, the Parliamentary defense and security committee voted against the planned upgrade even though it had approved and funded the $138 million effort as part of the five-year defense budget last year. Now Defense Minister Vilem Holan has announced the Army will prepare two modernized MiG-21 prototypes "for evaluation."
The dozen McDonnell Douglas C-17s flying in the Reliability, Maintainability and Availability Evaluation, or RM&AE, logged 404 hours during the test's two wartime surge days July 17 and 18, averaging more than 16 hours per day per aircraft the first day and topping 17 hours on the second, AF officials confirmed Friday.
The U.S. Air Force is expected to issue two long-awaited pre-EMD contracts Thursday for the Air Force's Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS). Three teams are competing for the two contracts-Hughes-TRW, Northrop Grumman-Harris and Lockheed Martin-Loral-Aerojet. The Hughes-TRW team is seen having an inside track because Hughes builds the sensor that the Air Force wants to base the new early warning constellation on. The AF plans to downselect to a single contractor in about 15 months.
Caldarella doesn't predict that countries will end this shared-satellite system, either. "Motorola's about to launch the Iridium system, which will give everyone a built-in, world-wide command and control access system and everybody will be on that," he explains. Now that Cold War is over, 85%-90% of all DOD communications are transmitted commercially. Satellites are only part of this new type of MADness, Caldarella (Cont. p. 147) says. Most of the world's bulk data runs through fiberoptic cables.
The objective price of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) has gone up $100,000 a copy-and the Mission Needs Statement hasn't even been approved yet. The Pentagon wants JASSM's average unit procurement price to be $600,000 in fiscal 1995 dollars, according to a "sources sought" announcement in the July 31 Commerce Business Daily. But an announcement one month ago listed the desired price at $500,000, also in FY '95 dollars (DAILY, June 5, page 369).
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $14 million increase to the Joint Surveillance/Target Attack Radar System in fiscal 1996 to support NATO activity, but at the same time cut $12 million out of development of JSTARS' airborne component.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-Tex.) is joining his Senate counterpart, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in mulling an idea to establish a "director of national intelligence." As Combest sees it, such a director could be appointed for a fixed term and serve over three major intelligence chiefs: a director of military intelligence, who would be a four star general and possibly a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; a director of civilian intelligence; and a director of collections, who could be in charge of coordinating the wide array of intelligence collec
Meanwhile, the AF's plans to issue an RFP for the Global Positioning System GPS Block IIF satellites by today have been pushed back in the wake of a move to scale down the contract from 55 to 33 satellites. The anticipated RFP release date is now Sept. 12, and a contract award is now expected in early 1996 instead of December 1995.
The current IW funding level is sufficient to support DOD's effort, which for now amounts mostly to organizing and creating doctrine, Caldarella says. "I'm not sure if Congress said 'I can rain money on you in the IW world' that we would know how to spend it effectively," he says. "...This thing's so far from maturing, we're probably on the right track right now."
Lockheed Martin has received a $34.4 million contract for engineering and manufacturing development of pre-planned product improvements (P3I) for the LANTIRN system. P3I for LANTIRN-Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared System for Night-includes integration of a laser spot tracker in the AN/AAQ-14 targeting pod. It will also increase the laser designator's maximum operational altitude from 25,000 feet to 40,000 feet.
