Congressional sources note that the Senate Armed Services Committee's rejection of $500 million in long-lead funding for the B-2 bomber makes it extremely unlikely that the issue will be joined when the SASC-approved fiscal 1996 defense authorization is on the Senate floor later this month. B-2 supporters would be pursuing a high-risk strategy if they tried to add B-2 funds on the Senate floor.
NASA's plans for picking a single Space Shuttle prime contractor as a cost-saving measure should be made public this week. Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said Friday the STS-71 Space Shuttle mission to Mir took precedence over planning for prime contractor selection in the Office of Space Flight and elsewhere at agency headquarters. With the mission over, he said, "I believe in the next few days you're going to hear very clearly what the plan is."
Two high profile failures in the Defense Dept.'s command, control, communications and intelligence system-last year's friendly fire shootdown of two Black Hawk helicopters over Iraq and the downing of an Air Force F- 16 over Bosnia in June-can't be attributed to endemic command and control problems, DOD's top C3I official said. "It wasn't an organization problem, it was a procedural problem, a people problem," Emmett Paige, Jr., assistant secretary of defense for C3I said during an interview Friday, referring to both events.
Maj. Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, U.S. Air Force assistant chief of staff for intelligence, has been nominated by Secretary of Defense William Perry to head the Defense Intelligence Agency with concurrent promotion to the rank of lieutenant general. Minihan, 52, would replace retiring Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, who is slated to leave his post at DIA in August and retire officially in December.
As Orbital Sciences Corp. engineers continue to probe telemetry and other data in their search for the cause of last month's Pegasus XL failure, NASA has published a "request for information" on possible alternate rides to space for its small payloads. An OSC spokeswoman says it will probably be the end of July before the company has a clear idea of how long it will take to fix the apparent staging problem that forced a range safety abort June 22 (DAILY, June 23, page 469; June 26, page 478).
Although the Space Shuttle Atlantis and Mir space station were linked in orbit overhead, no questions about space came up when Vice President Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin faced reporters in Moscow at the end of their summit last month. Chechnya and the political crisis in the Russian government overshadowed accomplishments of the joint program initiated when Gore and Chernomyrdin started their series of regular meetings in 1993 (DAILY, Sept.
The Navy doesn't need a new radar to track ballistic missiles, but can settle for modification to the Aegis system, Huchting says. "It's not physically constrained, it's computer constrained" to show ballistic missile speeds altitude, he says. Changes would only have to be made in the software, he says, but the SPY-1B radar would lose some of its capability, such as horizon area.
GROUND BASED RADAR program office was made part of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program office during ceremonies July 1 in Huntsville, Ala. The GBR is at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., for THAAD testing. THAAD project manager is Col. Fred Kilgore. The GBR effort is headed by Lt. Col. Michael Perrin.
Rear Adm. George Huchting, manager of the U.S. Navy's Aegis program, says that even though threats have changed since the end of the Cold War, he's wary of closing any doors on shipborne systems of that era. For instance, the need for towed arrays may have declined, but that isn't to say a need for such systems won't re-emerge. "I'd leave space and weight, and have the integration drawings ready to go if I need it," he says at a recent conference in Washington.
The Defense Dept.'s Inspector General rejected a claim that the U.S. Navy used proprietary technology in development of real-time motion video downlink capability for the P-3 patrol aircraft. A McLean, Va., company, Aerobureau, said that its television enhanced situational awareness (TESA) concept was instrumental in the Navy's adaptation of the Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle's reconnaissance system to the P-3.
Defense Secretary William Perry confirmed yesterday that U.S. Navy officials have recommended the use of the Airborne Self Protection Jammer for F/A-18 fighters flying over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and said he expects to make a decision whether to approve the package "in a matter of a day or two." The ITT/Westinghouse jammer, which has a turbulent history, is being requested because Navy officials believe it would provide greater protection than the electronic countermeasure system now on the F/A-18.
Whittaker Electronic Systems has won a $7.1 million contract to modify and build airborne jamming and radar simulation systems for NATO's Multi- nation Electronic Warfare Support Group (MEWSG). The Simi Valley, Calif., company said yesterday that the 30-month contract, awarded June 28, calls for production and delivery of 26 pod- mounted EW systems, which will be fitted on various supersonic NATO aircraft.
Several U.S.-led ventures are staking billions of dollars on a new space-based component of the communications revolution. With demand for services such as fax, paging and mobile telephone communications soaring, they're betting that business consumers and the general public will pay for the ability to tie into such services just about anywhere on the globe via satellites.
DONALD G. HARD has been named president of Logicon Ultrasystems Inc., replacing Bobby McDaniel. Hard, a retired U.S. Air Force major general, most recently was general manager of Aerospace Corp.'s Colorado Div. McDaniel will remain with Logicon Ultrasystems as a VP, reporting to Hard pending his retirement in 1996.
House Budget Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) has told the chairman of the House Appropriations national security subcommittee that the $553 million add-on in fiscal 1996 for B-2 bomber advance procurement "becomes difficult to sustain" because of requirements in the FY '96 congressional budget resolution.
Weather forecasters predicted acceptable conditions at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., today for the planned 10:56 a.m. EDT landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, returning the Mir 18 crew to Earth after 115 days in space. Mir 18 crewmates Norman Thagard, Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennadiy Strekalov spent yesterday undergoing a final round of medical tests designed to determine how their bodies changed during prolonged exposure to microgravity (DAILY, July 6, page 11).
Britain's requirement for a conventionally armed stand-off missile, or CASOM, is expected to attract at least eight formal proposals this month, and deadlines are now being finalized for both CASOM and the related anti-armor stand-off weapon program.
LOCKHEED MARTIN SERVICES GROUP has won a $156 million contract from Air Force Space Command to operation portions of the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN). The contract, which runs for five years with options, calls for Lockheed Martin to supply a range of support services for AFSCN, which provides communications, navigation, weather and early warning data to U.S. military space programs, NASA, and U.S. sponsored space efforts with NATO and the United Kingdom.
Raytheon's Beech Mk. II aircraft, which recently won the Air Force and Navy's lucrative Joint Primary Attack Training System (JPATS) competition, is also a hot prospect for foreign sales that could exceed seven hundred aircraft, company officials said yesterday in Washington.
Lockheed Martin Astro Space has signed a contract with an Asian consortium to build and launch a turnkey mobile satellite system that will connect hand-held phones and public switch telephone networks in southeast Asia, India and China.
Debt-watcher Moody's Investors' Service modestly downgraded about $2 billion worth of Raytheon's shelf-registered debt securities yesterday, citing worries about the potential effects on Raytheon's cash flow of borrowing some $3 billion from a syndicate of banks to buy defense electronics specialist E-Systems. "Additionally, the company has pursued an aggressive financial strategy, reflected by its sizable stock repurchase program," Moody's said in a prepared statement.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) has invited Boeing and Airbus Industrie to bid on a multi-billion dollar order for 33 "medium-size, medium-range" aircraft, the airline confirmed yesterday. SIA is looking specifically at the Boeing 777 and the Airbus A330, and expects to make a decision on an order by the end of the year, and possibly by October, a carrier spokeswoman said. SIA plans to order 17 firm aircraft and 16 option. The airline has not placed a value on the order, but wire reports put it at as much as $5 billion.
A June 19 DAILY story on Aerojet's testing of the Russian NK-33 engine (page 440) incorrectly stated the engine's reliability. The correct number is 99.6%.
President Clinton has offered conditional support for a plan advanced by Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) to refund part of the $650 million the U.S. owes Pakistan for undelivered F-16s by reselling the planes to Taiwan and the Philippines. In a June 22 letter published in the Congressional Record late last week, Clinton told Pressler his proposal "is one possibility if we can resolve some areas of concern"-among them, whether Islamabad will be satisfied with getting only part of its money back.
Orbital Sciences Corporation, Fairchild Defense, Germantown, Maryland, is being awarded a $8,250,000 ceiling-priced-order to procure 91 data signal converters in support of the H-60 helicopter. Work will be performed in Germantown, Maryland, and is expected to be completed by May 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Navy Aviation Supply Office, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (F09603-95-G-0021).
