The House Appropriations Committee wants the Defense Dept. to stop robbing funds from the Army's RAH-66 Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter program and get the development program back on track. "The Committee is extremely frustrated at DOD's lack of commitment to the Comanche program and believes this program should be accelerated in the subsequent budget requests," HAC wrote in its fiscal 1996 appropriations bill.
Blaming the Defense Dept. for worsening many of its own readiness problems, the House Appropriations Committee is proposing several restrictions on continued Pentagon participation in humanitarian, refugee, peacekeeping and disaster assistance. "The Committee is increasingly concerned with the use of U.S. armed forces and Department of Defense resources in what the DOD now euphemistically refers to as 'operations other than war,'" HAC wrote in its fiscal 1996 appropriations bill.
NASA managers remained optimistic yesterday that the Space Shuttle launch schedule can be maintained almost as planned in the face of an anomaly on the past two flights that raised safety questions about the Redesigned Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM). A government-industry team is scheduled to report its finding on the anomalies in a teleconference with Shuttle program officials today at 3 p.m. EDT.
KING RADIO CORP., Olathe, Kan., will supply 69 Electronic Flight Information Systems to the U.S. Navy for use on the EA-6B tactical jamming plane. Naval Air Systems Command said in a July 25 Commerce Business Daily notice that it "evaluated six commercially available electronic flight information systems; King Radio's EFIS 50 System was the only system that provided the necessary tactical modes of operation, ease of integration into the EA-6B Aircraft and ability to meet the required delivery schedule."
Congressional and industry sources yesterday saw little likelihood that the full Senate Appropriations Committee would reverse its defense subcommittee position on the Tier II Plus unmanned aerial vehicle program. The subcommittee on Wednesday voted to zero the Pentagon's $117 million fiscal year 1996 request for the program.
GTE GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS CORP., Mountain View, Calif., received a $9.3 million contract on July 25 from the U.S. Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center, San Diego, for one AN/WLQ-4(V)1 radio equipment suite for the Seawolf submarine (SSN 21).
Two separate anomalies that surfaced as the first Lockheed Launch Vehicle was checked out on its launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., will delay launch of the solid-fueled vehicle one to two weeks, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space said Tuesday. Engineers were investigating a problem with the LLV first-stage flight safety system and completing checkout of a replacement actuator that will replace one in the second-stage controller that suffered a mechanical failure during a mission dry run.
Ball Aerospace's backlog reached a record $477 million in the second quarter of 1995 amid "significant increases in both sales and earnings," Ball Corp., the operation's parent company, reported yesterday. Ball did not release specific figures for the aerospace unit's earnings, but attributed the increase to "several new contract awards, as well as cost benefits associated with a reorganization that took place beginning in 1993."
ARETE ASSOCIATES, Sherman Oaks, Calif., is working under a $993,000 contract from the Office of Naval Research titled "Advanced Sensor Technology for Ultra-High Performance Shipboard Surveillance." The contract was awarded June 26, according to a July 18 Commerce Business Daily notice.
PRESIDENT CLINTON yesterday awarded Apollo 13 commander James A. Lovell the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at an Oval Office ceremony. Lovell, who also piloted the Gemini 7 and Gemini 12 missions and was the command module pilot on Apollo 8, becomes the ninth astronaut to receive the medal, which was authorized by Congress in 1969.
Pratt&Whitney hopes to start hot-fire testing a Russian/Ukrainian RD-120 rocket engine sometime during the fourth quarter, in order to understand completely how the engine works before going ahead with a planned RD-120 derivative venture with NPO-Energomash, P&W reported yesterday.
Westinghouse Corp. reported yesterday that operating profit in its Electronic Systems segment rose 65% in the second quarter of 1995, to $36 million. Sales for the segment were up 33% over the same period a year before to $651 million. Second quarter orders were up 2.5% to $544 million. But for the first six months of the year orders are up 19% to $1.09 billion, thanks largely to the segment's acquisition of Norden Systems in May 1994 and to a large marine propulsion order.
Loral Corp. announced record sales and earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal 1996, which ended June 30. Loral earnings rose 26% from the same period a year before to $69.3 million on sales of $1.5 billion, up 12%. Bookings rose 13%, to $1.36 billion. Meanwhile, the corporation's board of directors approved a two-for-one stock split. The stock had risen from 37 a share at the beginning of the year to 53 3/8 at the close of business Monday.
CHARLES STARK DRAPER LABORATORY, Cambridge, Mass., received a $5.8 million modification to a previously awarded contract to exercise an option for systems support of the submergence systems program. The contract, from U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command, was awarded July 25.
The Navy on Oct. 1 will stand up the Fleet Information Warfare Center in Norfolk, Va., primarily to provide operational IW support to the battle groups. At the same time, the Command and Control Warfare Group Pacific in San Diego will stand down and become a detachment of the new center. Including the incorporation of two electronic warfare reprogrammings, the IW center will have a national staff of about 87 officers and 290 enlisted personnel.
Rockwell International yesterday filed a formal bid protest with the General Accounting Office on the government's selection of Raytheon to build the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System, citing mistakes in assessing "best value."
France's Matra Marconi Space and the European Space Agency have entered an agreement for development of the Polar Platform for ESA's Envisat-1 mission, the largest satellite ever built in Europe. The Phase C/D development contract signed in Paris Monday advanced the $898.4 million prime contract for development of the 8-metric-ton Earth observation satellite. ESA said the work will be performed in Bristol, England, at British Aerospace Space Systems facilities purchased by Matra.
Hughes Missile Systems Co. and Raytheon Co. received contracts July 21 from the U.S. Air Force for production of additional Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs). Hughes got $7.7 million for 31 of the missiles, and Raytheon got $5.4 million for 41. Both contracts, for Lot 9 production, were awarded by the USAF's Aeronautical Systems Center.
Russian Space Forces plan to test the Rokot space launch vehicle for the first time next year from a launch site in the Russian Far East developed as an alternative to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee yesterday marked up a $242.7 billion fiscal 1996 Pentagon money bill that largely followed the Senate Armed Services Committee with a few notable exceptions, including funding for F-15 and F-16 production and a zeroing of funds for the Tier II Plus unmanned aerial vehicle program.
PLANNING SYSTEMS INC., McLean, Va., on July 19 received a $17.7 million contract from the U.S. Navy for signal processing, testing, and modeling for advanced systems. The work is expected to be completed by July 2000. The Defense Dept. said the contract was awarded by the White Oak Site, Carderock Div., Naval Surface Warfare Center, White Oak, Md.
NASA aeronautical engineers plan to begin six months of supersonic flight tests in September with a laminar flow "glove" mounted on the left wing of an F-16XL testbed. Sporting a titanium suction panel pierced by more than 10 million tiny laser-drilled holes, the glove will pull air from the wing's boundary layer to reduce drag in a test of High-Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) technology that could lead to a supersonic jetliner in the next future, NASA said.
NASA managers have picked an atmospheric sounder over a gamma ray spectrometer for the spacecraft it plans to launch towards a Mars orbit in 1998, the space agency announced Friday. Both the Pressure Modulator Infrared Radiometer (PMIRR) selected for the Mars Surveyor '98 mission and the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) that probably will fly on a Mars orbiter set for launch in 2001 are spares of instruments lost when the Mars Observer probe disappeared as it braked to enter Mars orbit in August 1993.
COMPUTER SCIENCES CORP., Falls Church, Va., is providing engineering and program management support to the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command under a contract valued at $21.3 million if all options are exercised. CSC said members of its SPAWAR team are Harris Corp., Alexandria, Va.; Engineering Management&Integration Inc., Reston, Va., and Arlington, Inc., Arlington, Va.
ANALYSIS&TECHNOLOGY INC., North Stonington, Conn., is working under an $8.8 million contract from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, R.I., for broad development, test and evaluation, fleet integration, and life-cycle support for anti-submarine warfare weapon systems. The Defense Dept. announced the contract on July 20. On July 21, DOD said the company got $5.2 million from the same Navy center for engineering services to support R&D efforts related to towed sonar arrays and associated handling systems.
