The progress of information warfare is hindered by a number of constraints, including a dependence on commercial technologies and the slow-moving acquisition reforms that will enable the purchase of non- military-unique systems, says Army Col. Ken Allard, a senior military fellow at the National Defense University. Also, while information systems offer great technology promise, tight budgets make them hard to buy. "The likelihood of getting them has never been less," Allard says.
The conventional turbofan that powers nearly every modern aircraft today may have already reached its evolutionary limit, says engineer Geoffrey Wilde, the 1995 winner of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' R. Tom Sawyer prize. Wilde instead proposes two radical ideas-a "contrafan," with a large, counterotating fan assembly at the rear, and an even more unusual configuration in which a single fan is driven by two smaller, separate gas generators, literally two engines driving the fan.
As part of its ongoing consolidation plans, the new Lockheed Martin Corp. is planning to jointly market launches on its Atlas rocket and Russia's Proton rocket. Before the merger, Martin Marietta's Atlas competed for business with a Lockheed venture that marketed Proton launches. The new move, scheduled to be announced at the Paris Air Show during the weekend, will enable Lockheed Martin launch customers to have one-stop shopping.
INTELSAT AND EUTELSAT have signed an agreement which allows customers to use earth station equipment that can operate on either system. Intelsat said the agreement with Eutelsat, which operates satellites for fixed and mobile communications throughout Europe, is effective immediately.
Goldin tells The DAILY he wants "more time to digest" the House Science space subcommittee's action authorizing multi-year funding for the International Space Station, and declines comment on the action. But a draft statement circulated by the agency at the subcommittee markup shows the agency shares some of the same concerns about the rest of the NASA budget expressed by Democratic members of the panel (DAILY, June 8, page 381).
Adm. William Owens will co-chair a high-level steering committee formed by Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch to oversee a study on consolidating national and tactical imagery operations. Owens, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will head the steering group along with Keith Hall, who is director of the intelligence community's Community Management Staff.
One of the computer industry's top executives gave the Pentagon some free advice Wednesday-invest more in computer technology that can increase mission readiness. The Dept. of Defense, like all of government, is suffering because it doesn't have a single "chief information officer" to make decisions on computer technology and is thus not investing as wisely as it could, said Scott McNealy, president and CEO of Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, Calif.
NASA isn't talking publicly about what it will do if its arguments fail and Congress cuts deeper. "I think it's very inappropriate right now to start assuming those cuts will occur, prepare the information, because it almost guarantees it will happen," he tells an agency employee wondering about how priorities will be set if a major program has to go. Instead, Goldin vows to "give 'em hell" on Capitol Hill to enthusiastic applause from staff gathered in the headquarters auditorium.
ORBCOMM, Orbital Sciences Corp.'s low-Earth orbit satellite system, has entered reseller agreements with Innovating Computing Corp., a provider of software and systems integration technology to the transportation industry, and Caribbean Satellite Services, Inc., which provides tracking and monitoring for shipping equipment and cargo to customers in the Caribbean and Latin America.
While the services are cooperating on information warfare doctrine and technology development, the Pentagon's Joint Staff isn't ready to consolidate their efforts, says Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, the JCS director for command, control, communication and computer systems. "I could not argue for centralization of the efforts because we are at such an early stage in development of this warfare capability that I don't want to close out people," he said at last week's AFCEA conference in Washington. "But I do encourage cooperation."
House National Security Committee Chairman Floyd Spence (R- S.C.) says that if the congressional budget resolution conference now underway winds up splitting the difference on national security budget authority, the committee will have to cut back in the conference with Senate Armed Services on the fiscal 1996 defense authorization. "It's all that we can do," he says. House NSC, following the lead of the House Budget Committee, marked up its bill to a budget authority figure of $267.3 billion, $9.7 billion over the Administration request.
Administrator Daniel S. Goldin says he has found a sympathetic ear among the leadership of both parties, in both houses of Congress, for his argument that cutting NASA R&D to trim the deficit is penny wise and pound foolish (DAILY, June 1, page 341).
Boeing and General Electric are working together to try to understand whether and how a fan balance problem on the GE90 turbofan will affect first delivery of a GE90-powered 777 widebody twin to British Airways, scheduled for September, Boeing sources told The DAILY yesterday. Officially, GE and Boeing executives say they're still assessing the effect of the modification on the September delivery date, and GE "continues to work toward delivery" in September, GE said yesterday.
NASA managers have set July 13 as the launch date for the Space Shuttle Discovery once workers have repaired more than 100 holes drilled in its external tank insulation by a pair of Northern Flicker woodpeckers. Discovery was moved from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center back to the Vehicle Assembly Building early yesterday, and repairs to the foam insulation were scheduled to begin last night.
NATO has accepted Defense Secretary William Perry's offer to send the Tier II Predator unmanned aerial vehicle to Bosnia for intelligence operations, sources said yesterday. The General Atomics' medium-altitude drone probably won't arrive in the area until early next month, as it is participating in a classified mission with Special Operations Forces in the U.S.
The latest update of the U.S. Navy's "Copernicus" command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) architecture addresses information warfare (IW) issues for the first time. "Copernicus...Forward," the fourth reincarnation of a document released in 1990, is the "Navy and Marine Corps vision to ensure Copernicus remains a viable and evolving construct to fully support the warfighter" and the Navy's "From the Sea" strategy, according to Vice Adm. Walter Davis, the Navy's space and electronic warfare director.
NASA plans a fiscal 1997 startup of the prototype science institutes it is developing as a way to stretch research dollars, and will seek "up- front commitments" from industry and academia to share the costs of operating the institutes, Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said yesterday. In an interactive question and answer session with NASA employees broadcast on the agency's internal television network, Goldin said the institutes are one way agency managers hope to minimize the pain of downsizing to meet a shrinking federal space budget.
LORAL DEFENSE SYSTEMS, Litchfield, Ariz., has received contracts valued at about $1 million to supply equipment for a weapons guidance and targeting demonstration for the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program.
In the summer of 1961, just five months after he took office, President John F. Kennedy found himself on the receiving end of a blunt face-to-face threat from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Either pull out of the western sectors of Berlin, the bombastic Soviet leader warned, or face war. Kennedy was ultimately able to call Khrushchev's bluff because of Corona, a highly secret U.S. reconnaissance satellite program that recorded its first successful mission less than a year earlier.
In the wake of yesterday's rescue of the U.S. F-16 fighter pilot who was shot down one week ago over Bosnia, electronic warfare experts continued to puzzle over how such an incident could have happened in the first place.
The Defense Dept. will privatize much of its infrastructure and lease weapons systems on a multi-year basis-at least according to Adm. William Owens' vision of DOD in the year 2005. "Entire platforms are run and managed and built by contractors, some of which are huge things, perhaps aircraft," Owens, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said yesterday at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's annual conference in Washington.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said yesterday that he is concentrating on winning Senate Armed Services Committee funding for the third Seawolf submarine (SSN-23), even though the Connecticut House delegation is looking to him to restore congressional backing for the U.S. Navy's plan to let General Dynamics' Electric Boat build the New Attack Submarine. "Do or die priority is the third Seawolf," Lieberman told The DAILY in a brief interview. "My first priority is to keep the [EB] yard [in Groton, Conn.] alive."
While no one is doing it officially, Boeing and its enginemakers are all converging on plans to develop a roughly 747-sized 777 widebody twin with engines running at nearly 100,000 lbst., a panel discussion here made clear Wednesday.
SCHWARTZ ELECTRO-OPTICS INC., Orlando, Fla., received a $3 million increment of an $11.2 million contract on May 23 from the U.S. Chemical and Biological Defense Command for research and development services in the development of a Long Range Biological Standoff Detection System. Teamed with Schwartz is CAI, a division of Recon/Optical. A total of 81 bids was solicited on Oct. 14, 1993, and four bids were received, according to the Dept. of Defense.
LORAL VOUGHT SYSTEMS, Dallas, will produce additional Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) for Japan under a contract valued at more than $55 million. Loral said the contract, the fourth commercial order for MLRS launchers by Japan, calls for nine MLRS M270 launchers, bringing the total ordered by Japan to 36. The total value to Loral of the Japan MLRS program is now over $300 million.
