Price is the only issue remaining in the C-17 airlifter program and the U.S. Air Force expects McDonnell Douglas to deliver C-17s beyond the 40 already under contract at a firm fixed price of $212 million a copy in 1995 dollars, Lt. Gen. Richard Hawley, AF principal deputy for acquisition, said Friday. Hawley told a Capitol Hill breakfast seminar on airlift that he expected to reach agreement on price and was developing "good pricing data." He added: "They know they've got to deliver at an attractive price."
Draft RFP for the Navstar GPS Block IIF program was planned for release Friday, according to the U.S. Air Force. Under the current schedule, the formal request for proposal will be released in July and a contract will be awarded in December, the service's Space and Missile Systems Center said in a May 19 Commerce Business Daily notice. The contract could involve as many as 50 satellites (DAILY, Feb. 3, page 173B).
After nine years in orbit, real estate aboard Mir is at a premium, and visitors like Thagard have to take what they can get. The storage locker where the veteran U.S. astronaut keeps his gear was originally the toilet, since supplanted by a newer model elsewhere on the station.
The Office of Commercial Space Transportation sees an even more buoyant market for low earth orbit (LEO) mobile communications satellites than it did a year ago, releasing an update yesterday to its 1994 LEO market assessment projecting deployment of as many as five systems between now and 2005.
Gen. John M. (Mike) Loh, head of Air Combat Command, says the more he looks at the strategy of swinging about half the U.S. bomber force from one major regional conflict to a second one breaking out shortly thereafter-aimed at meeting a bomber shortfall-the more he feels a need to understand not just logistics but the effect on crews. It would put "enormous stress" on them, he says at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. It can be done, but "We need to do more work on it."
Astronaut/physician Norman Thagard has settled in to life on Russia's Mir space station after six weeks in orbit, but he readily admits that the living isn't always easy. That is particularly true at mealtime, when Thagard and his two Russian crewmates partake of a Russian menu prepared for a six-day cycle. The wiry Thagard has already lost a lot of weight, and he's not likely to make it up on the Russian space diet. "I don't eat some things, like jellied fish," he says in an interview beamed down from the orbiting lab.
The January accident involving a Long March rocket and a Hughes-built satellite had nothing to do with Hughes' deal to purchase at least 10 launches on the new Delta III, Hughes executive Steven Dorfman says. An internal company report on the accident is due "soon," he says-but he won't comment further. "We both agreed we're not going to resolve this thing in the media, we're going to resolve it by objective failure evaluations."
LOCKHEED AERONAUTICAL SYSTEMS CO. will supply the Navy with 76 Auxiliary Switching Matrix (ASM) units for P-3C aircraft. "The ASM is being designed in conjunction with the P-3C Communications Improvement Program (CIP) and will be a common box with the Global Positioning System (GPS) installation," U.S. Naval Air Systems Command said in a May 18 Commerce Business Daily notice. "These 76 units are being procured to support the October 1995 start of GPS installations into P-3C aircraft."
NASA headquarters has given life sciences officials at Johnson Space Center until mid-June to develop a plan for tightening controls over research involving human subjects in the wake of an incident last fall in which astronaut Bonnie Dunbar suffered a severe allergic reaction to a test chemical.
Rear Adm. Brent Bennitt, the U.S. Navy's air warfare director, says the service is working to keep a number of sustainability issues in the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program high on the agenda. Vulnerable to being pushed back, he tells The DAILY at an Association of Naval Aviation conference in Alexandria, Va., are such issues as sustaining the plane in a sea air environment-special attention is required here-and ensuring that JAST is maintainable with tools now aboard Navy carriers.
NASA is relying on industry to provide about half of the savings it believes it has found with its zero-base review, adopting a "crawl before you walk" approach to privatizing the Space Shuttle and other functions, Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told reporters Friday.
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY, Raleigh, N.C., will fabricate and support large scale (about 1/5 actual size) remotely piloted vehicles for use in flight simulations by the Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Div., Patuxent River, Md. "The anticipated period of performance is for a base year with four one year options," NAWC-AD said in a May 18 Commerce Business Daily notice.
LAV-25 TRAINER sought by the U.S. Marine Corps "should be portable, appended, high fidelity, full crew, and designed to support gunnery and crew communication/coordination training contained in FMFM 6-32 Light Armored Vehicle Gunnery Employment," according to a May 18 Commerce Business Daily notice from the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Div., Orlando, Fla.
The House yesterday approved the House Budget Committee's plan to balance the federal budget by 2002 while increasing defense budget authority by $69 billion over the Administration's plan through the year 2000. Approval came on a 238-193 vote that largely followed party lines, with the Republican majority prevailing. The vote came after alternative plans were defeated.
The General Accounting Office urged the U.S. Army yesterday to finish operational testing on the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter before making production decisions on the program, citing the risk of committing to low- rate production nearly a year before testing even begins. Typically programs that have gone into low-rate initial production before operational testing was finished, such as the T-45 trainer and C-17 airlifter, have had troubled histories, requiring extensive-and expensive- modification to fix problems uncovered in tests.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jeremy Boorda said yesterday that he is more confident about the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program that he was a few months ago, but that the Navy will continue to watch it closely. "JAST has to produce...we're not looking for anything else," he said.
The crash Wednesday of a U.S. Navy F/A-18D in northwest New Mexico claimed the lives of the commander of the USS Carl Vinson carrier battle group, Rear Adm. James G. Prout III, and his pilot, Cdr. Joseph G. Kleefisch, commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 25, based at NAS Lemoore, Calif.
Eurofighter DA.2 made its first flight in nearly a year Wednesday night, kicking off an intensive flight-testing phase which Eurofighter executives hope will clear the plane for Paris Air Show demonstrations next month and make up for time lost while the Eurofighter prototypes were grounded for flight control system work. The second prototype, built by Eurofighter partner British Aerospace, was supposed to return to flying status last weekend (DAILY, May 15, page 243) but further delays, mostly due to weather, forced BAe to wait.
ECC INTERNATIONAL CORP., Wayne, Pa., said its ECC Simulation Ltd. subsidiary in the U.K. has received a $12.1 million follow-on contract from Vickers Defense Systems to support training on the British Army's Challenger II main battle tank.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS AEROSPACE, St. Louis, will supply an F/A-18 Weapon Systems Training Device to the Kuwait Air Force under terms of a Foreign Military Sales contract. U.S. Naval Air Systems Command said in a May 15 Commerce Business Daily notice that MDC is the only known firm capable of carrying out the work in the time required.
One of NASA's SR-71 Blackbirds is scheduled to return to the Skunk Works for modifications that will allow it to test a scaled-down version of an aerospike engine intended for use on the Lockheed Martin X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, formerly Lockheed Advanced Development Co., will change the structure of the SR-71 to allow it to carry the engine, a spokesman at the Palmdale, Calif., facility said. The modification will add "a small platform" to the aircraft, he said.
Work on the International Space Station is gathering steam under its new management structure, according to program managers at prime contractor Boeing and its major subcontractors, who say morale and enthusiasm among the 4,200 contractor personnel on the project grows with each additional pound of metal bent.
NASA's plan to restructure itself may not reach the $5 billion in savings that was its five-year target, and could fall short by as much as $600 million even as it trims almost 20,000 jobs from space agency and contractor payrolls.
PULAU ELECTRONICS CORP., Orlando, Fla., is in line for a contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division to "provide Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and several OCONUS sites with operational and training support for the Brigade/Battalion Battle Simulation (BBS), Corps Battle Simulation (CBS), and JANUS Battle Focus Trainer," according to a May 15 Commerce Business Daily notice. "This support will be required from 30 Sept. 1995 through 30 Sept. 1996," it said.
The time when rogue nations can strike Europe, Japan and even outlying portions of the United States with their ballistic missiles is fast approaching, former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) R. James Woolsey warned. Nations in the Middle East such as Iran may be able to reach Europe with ballistic missiles in five years, while North Korea's ballistic missile program is on track to acquire the capability to strike Alaska and Hawaii "sometime in early in the 21st century," Woolsey said Tuesday in a breakfast address on Capitol Hill.
