JSECST AWARD: The U.S Naval Air Warfare Center awarded United Industrial Corp. subsidiary AAI Corp. a contract valued at $16 million to produce 75 Joint Services Electronic Combat Systems Tester (JSECST) units. The Navy and Marine Corps will use the units to test electronic warfare equipment aboard its fighter aircraft.
NASA's ICESat (Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite) and CHIPS (Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer) spacecraft, which were dual-launched on a Boeing Delta II booster from Vandenberg Air Force Base Jan. 12, have been checked out and are beginning to return science data.
Raytheon Co. announced after the close of trading March 5 that projected earnings for 2004 would fall short of expectations due to higher pension expenses. The announcement makes Raytheon the second major defense contractor to lower its earnings-per-share estimates. Northrop Grumman Corp. lowered its 2003 earnings-per-share estimate on March 5 due to higher interest expenses on debt inherited from the acquisition of TRW Inc. (DAILY, March 6).
House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) and NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe appeared before a Senate Government Affairs subcommittee March 6 to present their plan for helping NASA overcome its workforce challenges.
The Air Force is close to refining a design and migration strategy for a secure new communications gateway system programmed to replace almost its entire inventory of 124 radios over the next decade. The airborne cluster of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) is shaping into a family of 10-20 radio sets relying on commercial off the shelf hardware components and software-defined programming.
Northrop Grumman has won a $32.6 million contract to supply Litening Extended Range (ER) attack and targeting pods for the F-15E aircraft. The ER's predecessor, the Litening II, already is in service with Air National Guard and Reserve F-16s, and with AV-8Bs of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Italian and Spanish navies. The contract was announced by the Department of Defense on March 4, the same day that Northrop Grumman got $19.7 million to upgrade the Air National Guard's 45 Litening II and 19 Litening ER pods.
MDA plans to begin two to four more projects in fiscal 2004 for its new laser technology program, the scaled-down but broadened successor to the Space Based Laser (SBL) program, according to FY '04 budget documents the agency recently submitted to Congress.
Northrop Grumman said March 5 its 2003 earnings would fall slightly due to higher than expected interest payments on debt acquired from the acquisition of TRW Inc. The higher interest payments are not expected to affect the company's plans for capital expenditures or product development, a company spokesman said.
A new launch market forecast from Futron Corp. predicts that the possible introduction of a new reusable launch vehicle (RLV) in 2015 could cause worldwide launch demand to jump from 70 launches to 120 launches a year by 2021. Futron conducted the 20-year Analysis of Space Concepts Enabled by New Transportation (ASCENT) forecast for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center between June 2001 and Jan. 2003. The study assessed launch demand through an analysis of more than 200 countries.
WARRIOR WORK: Rockwell Collins is developing the Helmet Mounted Display and building the Daylight Video Sensor for the U.S. Army's Land Warrior Stryker Interoperable Capability Improvement Program, the company said March 5. The work will be performed by Kaiser Electro-Optics (KEO), a Rockwell Collins subsidiary. KEO is a member of the General Dynamics Land Warrior team, which is enhancing the Army's Land Warrior system under a $59.9 million contract. That team is led by General Dynamics Decision Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz.
Hughes Electronics and Boeing Satellite Systems will pay $20 million over the next seven years in a settlement with the U.S. State Department over alleged technology transfers to China in the 1990s, Boeing announced March 5. "We're really pleased to have this finally behind us, and it doesn't hinder our ability to do business with our overseas customers, so we're very pleased today," Boeing spokesman Dan Beck said.
The FAA awarded a $34 million contract March 5 to a Lockheed Martin-led team to begin work on adding a third satellite to the Wide Area Augmentation system (WAAS). WAAS corrects and enhances Global Positioning System (GPS) signals by comparing them with position information from ground stations and two Inmarsat-III satellites in geosynchronous orbit (DAILY, April 10, 2002). Rather than using new satellites, WAAS currently leases transponders on existing spacecraft.
AVIONICS WORK: Rockwell Collins will provide its Pro Line 21 avionics system for use in the MA-60 regional aircraft being developed by Xian Aircraft Co. of China. Deliveries of initial shipsets will begin later this year, with aircraft certification expected in 2004, Rockwell Collins said March 5. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
AROTECH, New York Bert W. Wasserman, the former chief financial officer of Time Warner, has joined the board of directors as a director and chairman of the audit committee. COMPUTER SCIENCES CORP., El Segundo, Calif. John Biggs has been appointed president of the company's Canadian operations, replacing Tony Canning, who has retired. ENGINEERED SUPPORT SYSTEMS, St. Louis
Information technologies that improve force protection and connect military authorities to local first responders offer two immediate business opportunities for industry, a senior Defense Department official said March 5. Lt. Gen. Joseph K. Kellogg Jr., the joint staff's director for command, communications and computer systems, outlined the Pentagon's top IT priorities for domestic bases and the newly created U.S. Northern Command. Kellogg was addressing industry officials attending the Homeland and Global Security Summit in Washington, D.C.
The Air Force is continuing plans to develop a Raytheon-made alternative to the ALE-55 fiber-optic towed decoy (FOTD) system on contract with BAE Systems. An acquisition notice posted March 4 calls for the delivery of three more mass model, or dummy, versions of Raytheon's FO-50. Delivery is needed to meet the "original test plan and accomplish the goal of the program," says the notice, drafted by the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), a staunch advocate of NASA's human space flight programs, has picked up a seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee's NASA panel, the committee announced late March 4.
The Boeing Co. is working under a $73.6 million contract to upgrade the U.S. Air Force's E-4B aircraft. Each of four E-4Bs, highly modified Boeing 747-200s, is intended to serve as a survivable alternative to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon in case the center is put out of action, and to allow senior leaders to control military and civilian assets during a national conflict or disaster.
Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI) plans to acquire Technical and Management Services Corp. (TAMSCO), which provides information technology logistics services and telecommunications integration for the Department of Defense. St. Louis-based Engineered Support, which builds support and electronics equipment for the military, will pay $66.5 million for TAMSCO, subject to some price adjustments that may be made after the deal is closed.
AWARDS: Six technologies will be inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame this year, according to the Space Foundation. The inductees, derived from space technology, include a Northrop Grumman technology for cell phone power amplifiers and an ATK Thiokol Propulsion device to disarm landmines. For a list of the inductees, go to www.spacetechhalloffame.org/news.cfm.
