SASC subcommittee actions on BMDO Actions by the strategic subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Defense Dept.'s fiscal year 1996 request for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization are listed in the following table. Request Change Recommendation Program $ M $ M $ M Patriot System* 666.869 666.869
On its final test flight earlier this month, the McDonnell Douglas DC- X "Delta Clipper" soared 8,200 feet straight above the gypsum dust of White Sands Missile Range, then heeled over until its blunt nose pointed 10 degrees below the horizon before swinging back for a base-first landing using its four throttlable RL-10 rocket engines as brakes.
The outcome of a launch agreement currently being negotiated between the U.S. and Ukraine will likely set a precedent on how the U.S. government deals with the increasingly complex internationalization of the commercial launch business. Sources say U.S. officials are still debating whether or not quotas in the agreement will cover a Boeing-led venture that plans to use Ukrainian rockets but will assemble and launch them outside Ukraine.
The U.S. has decided to renegotiate a 1993 bilateral launch agreement with Russia with the aim of softening quotas that strictly limit Russian entry into the commercial launch market, according to U.S. government sources.
-- HEXCEL AND CIBA COMPOSITES signed a letter of intent to combine Ciba's Composites Div. with Hexcel's business. Both companies specialize in lightweight, high-strength structural materials for aerospace and other industries. They said the new company would retain the Hexcel Corporation name and would continue to trade on the New York and Pacific Stock Exchanges under the symbol "HXL." John J.
-- BFGOODRICH AEROSPACE said Continental Airlines has chosen it to supply aft anti-collision/position lights for 75 MD-80 aircraft. The new light assemblies, to be supplied by BFGoodrich Aerospace Lighting Systems, Oldsmar, Fla., are a direct replacement for the original equipment.
The House Appropriations national security subcommittee has included funding for two F-16 and six F-15E fighters in its $244 billion fiscal 1996 defense appropriations bill, subcommittee chairman Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.) said yesterday. The House had authorized six of each fighter.
-- NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. is preparing to vacate its former B-2 bomber facility in Montebello, Calif. The 375,000 sq. ft. structure was built in 1987. Northrop Grumman expects to vacate 235,000 sq. ft. in December, and the rest by June 1996, according to The Seeley Company, a commercial real estate firm which has been awarded the listing. "There is no other building currently available in Los Angeles County that approaches the size of this facility with modern building features," said Scott Heaton, vice president/manager of Seeley.
-- DYNAMICS RESEARCH CORP., Andover, Mass., won a contract worth up to $200 million to provide information processing support services to the Internal Revenue Service. Initial funding from the Dept. of the Treasury is for $750,000. "This major contract award results from a concerted multi- year effort by DRC to serve federal agencies other than the DOD, traditionally our principal customer," said Albert Rand, president and CEO of Dynamics Research Corp. Albert Rand, president and CEO of Dynamics Research Corp.
-- MENASCO AEROSPACE said it will supply the main and nose landing gear systems for Bombardier's Dash 8 Series 400 Regional Aircraft. The subsidiary of Coltec Industries will build the systems at its Oakville, Ontario, facility. It said it will develop a proprietary design that will include the nose landing gear steering system, electrical and hydraulic installations, retraction controls, braking systems and other electronic control systems.
Space Imaging, the Lockheed Martin-led commercial remote sensing venture, has chosen Kodak Co. to supply a digital camera for its system. The agreement, announced yesterday, calls for Kodak to provide an imaging payload system that enables one-meter panchromatic resolution and four meter, four-band multispectral resolution. The digital camera is comprised of a Kodak focal plane array and a lightweight telescope using a mirror fabricated with Kodak's advanced ion figuring technology.
Language inserted in a NASA funding bill ordering NASA to essentially close three of its field centers is not set in stone, but is intended to force a "dialogue" on funding cuts with Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, an aide to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) said yesterday. "Those are suggestions; those are recommendations," the Lewis aide told The DAILY. "They are not requirements at this point. What we're trying to do is put the ball in Mr. Goldin's court and try to have them be responsive."
As part of an overall effort to accelerate the prolonged acquisition of the Maneuver unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV officials want the development program demoted to a Level II acquisition category, the new M-UAV program director said. The tactical drone now has top priority as an ACAT I, but Army Lt. Col. Jack Hug wants to demote it to an ACAT II, he said Tuesday at the annual Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems conference in Washington, D.C.
Worldwide spacecraft launches in the second quarter of 1995 are listed in the following table. A total of 16 launches with 19 spacecraft were attempted, of which one launch vehicle failed. The U.S. performed seven launches (with one failure), orbiting eight satellites and losing one. Russia made five launches with five satellites, and one German satellite was launched from the Mir space station.
The House Appropriations national security subcommittee yesterday wrote $493 million in long-lead funding for renewed B-2 bomber production into its fiscal 1996 defense appropriations bill. Funding for the stealth bomber was not in the mark subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young presented to the panel yesterday morning, but was added later in the day. Young confirmed the subcommittee decision and the amount of the add-on for the B-2, and said the funds would support a planned buy of 10 of the bombers in the five-year plan.
The U.S. Air Force formally terminated Northrop Grumman's system improvement program, or SIP, for EF-111 electronic combat aircraft, finally carrying out its decision after months of hard lobbying by the company and its allies on Capitol Hill.
Newly installed British defense chief Michael Portillo is apparently ready to sign off on an earlier Defense Ministry recommendation to buy Westland-built AH-64 Apaches to fill the U.K.'s attack helicopter requirement, and Cabinet could endorse Apache today. The Defense Ministry wouldn't comment yesterday on reports-rife among London financial analysts and widely reported in British newspapers-that the formal Apache announcement would be made today.
Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical is firming up its design of the Tier II Plus unmanned aerial vehicle in anticipation of an initial design review next month, the company's president said Tuesday in Washington. "We still are in the process of completing wind tunnel tests before we go to the final lines" of the high altitude endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, Robert A.K. Mitchell said during a briefing at an Association of Unmanned Vehicles Systems conference in Washington.
Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical hopes the Medium Range unmanned aerial vehicles it is building as part of its contract termination process will convince the Defense Dept. that it needs more of the UAVs. Last Friday, DOD awarded the company $11.5 million to build six final MRUAVs. The program was canceled in November 1993 for convenience of the government. After the cancellation, Congress authorized and appropriated funds to pay for the termination costs, and last May the Navy proceeded with actions to build the six final MRUAVs (DAILY, July 10, page 29).
In a blow to B-2 builder Northrop Grumman, a Defense Dept. study has concluded that the U.S. doesn't need to keep producing stealth bombers in order to preserve bomber-manufacturing capabilities. "If needed, B-2s could be acquired in the future using resources that would include the tooling and data that will be preserved under the existing curtailment program," the Pentagon said in a statement released late yesterday. "Continuing B-2 production is thus unnecessary to preserve capabilities necessary to build a future bomber."
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said yesterday that he thought the House's limited support for the Boost Phase Intercept theater missile defense program would prevail in conference over the Senate Armed Services Committee's zeroing of the request in the fiscal 1996 defense authorization. Weldon said at a Capitol Hill breakfast that the $49 million request for BPI ran into trouble because of a general concern that there were too many theater missile defense (TMD) programs. The House funded BPI at $29 million.
The Symposium on Timely Realization of Affordable Military Systems Through Enhanced Manufacturing Technology has been scheduled for Oct. 18 to 20 in Albuquerque, N.M. Jointly sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) and Sandia National Laboratories, the symposium will address timely and affordable manufacturing of military systems through new developments in lean/flexible manufacturing, modeling and simulation and data sharing.
GE90-powered Boeing 777s grounded for more than a month could return to certification test flying early next week, following a successful eight- pound bird-strike test last Friday of a GE90 turbofan with redesigned fan platforms, officials said yesterday.
