Texas Instruments, Dallas, Texas, is being awarded a $5,293,632 face value increase to a Firm Fixed Price contract for 96 Aircraft Launcher Interface Computers applicable to the launcher for the AGM-88 High Speed Antiradiation Missile (HARM). Contract is expected to be completed May 1996. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Aeronautical Systems Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida is the contracting activity (F08626-93/C-0043-P00008).
Listen to the talk going around the U.S. remote sensing industry these days, and you'll likely hear about technical advances and political decisions that are allowing the emergence of new, high-resolution commercial imaging systems. But if remote sensing is to successfully follow the computer industry in making the leap from a limited domain used by scientists and government into a high-volume, mass-market business, quality will have to be a paramount concern, says one senior remote sensing executive.
Even though the Army needs $14 billion annually for modernization, it can get by with $12 billion, according to the service's R&D and acquisition chief, but he warned that the $10.5 billion currently in the fiscal 1996 request is "dangerously low." Gilbert Decker, assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, told a National Security Industrial Association conference in Arlington, Va., Friday that "to really fix a 10-division force with all its supporting structure we really ought to have about $14 billion in modernization."
The European Union needs to radically overhaul its industrial policy to promote the growth of pan-European aeronautics companies, according to Manfred Bischoff, soon to be the chief executive officer of Germany's largest aerospace group. He said that both civilian and military aerospace production are riddled with overcapacity and waste limited national resources, and that Europe's aeronautics sector faces a growing disadvantage against the U.S. unless it is restructured.
Westinghouse Electronic Systems Group, Baltimore, Maryland, is being awarded an $8,142,000 Firm Fixed Price contract for upgrade of four Radar Test Benches applicable to the B-1B aircraft. Contract is expected to be completed May 1999. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. One firm solicited; one proposal received. The solicitation was issued in July 1994 and negotiations were completed in March 1995. Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity (F34601-95/C-0222).
NASA is replacing the panel at Johnson Space Center that oversees the protocols for medical research involving human subjects in the wake of an incident last fall when an astronaut suffered a severe allergic reaction to a tracer chemical. Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told The DAILY the space agency is also setting up a medical ethics task force to review the whole question of medical experiments on humans "tops to bottom."
Martin Marietta Technologies, Incorporated, Electronics and Missiles, Orlando, Florida, is being awarded a $750,000 increment as part of a not- to-exceed $7,850,000 cost plus fixed fee contract for a study to reduce the cost of manufacturing millimeter wave transceivers (flexible manufacturing environment for millimeter wave transceivers, Manufacturing Science and Technology Project #2051). Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida, and is expected to be completed by September 30, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Ground controllers re-established communications with one of two Orbital Sciences Corp. Orbcomm satellites on Saturday after the on-orbit spacecraft completed a self-activated "reset" procedure, the company said yesterday. The automatic reset procedure cleared and reset a processor that was blocking normal procedures of the satellite's subscriber communications subsystem, which is responsible for communicating with ground terminals (DAILY, April 19, page 104).
AT&T and Lockheed Martin said yesterday they have reached an out-of- court settlement of their lawsuits against one another over the Telstar 402 satellite, but the two companies have agreed to keep the terms of the settlement under wraps.
Lockheed Martin, Ocean, Radar&Sensor Systems, Syracuse, New York, is being awarded a $9,950,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for TPS-59 radar modification engineering services and studies for the U.S. Marine Corps. Work will be performed in Syracuse, New York, and is expected to be completed by April 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity (M67854-92-C-1069).
Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia, is being awarded a $12,746,328 face value increase to a Firm Fixed Price contract for integration and launch of Space Test Program Mission 4 Satellite on a Pegasus launch vehicle. Contract is expected to be completed March 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California is the contracting activity (F04701-90/C0105, P00050).
Loral's Globalstar venture said Friday that it has chosen Ukraine's Zenit-2 rocket to launch 36 of its mobile communications satellites into low-Earth orbit in 1998. Three Zenits launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan will orbit the Globalstar satellites in bunches of 12. The rockets will employ Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology developed for the former Soviet Union's strategic nuclear missile program, allowing the satellites to be stacked in three tiers of four each so they can be dispersed sequentially.
House National Security Chairman Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) says he plans to mark to the House Budget Committee's $9.7 billion boost of the Administration's fiscal 1996 budget authority request. "Tentatively, we're going to mark up to that [$267.3 billion] and hope that it holds" in conference with the Senate, he tells The DAILY. The Senate Budget Committee endorsed the White House's $257.6 billion in BA and $262.7 billion in outlays. House National Security starts its markup of the FY '96 authorization on Thursday.
Russia's Mir space station, in orbit since February 1986, should be functional until the end of 1997, Alexander Medvedchikov, deputy general director of the Russian Space Agency, tells an AIAA conference in Arlington, Va. He adds that Russian specialists have not excluded the possibility that Mir's life could be extended "somewhat longer."
The NRO's new openness still hasn't filtered down to the Pentagon mail room. Remember the package that was sent to an NRO employee with proper name and address, only to be returned by the Post Office marked "addressee unknown" (DAILY, April 17, page 82)? The package was re-sent, this time with an enlarged copy of the employee's business card, which included the name, title, Pentagon office number and nine digit zip code. It came back 28 days later, this time marked "insufficient address."
The three manufacturer teams vying in Britain's contest to supply 91 new attack helicopters now expect a decision to be announced in Parliament in early July, only weeks before the U.S. is slated to decide whether and how to go ahead with a modification program that could take advantage of work being done under the British requirement. McDonnell Douglas' AH-64 Apache, Eurocopter's Tiger and Bell Textron/GEC-Marconi's Cobra Venom version of the AH-1W all made their final bids to the U.K. Defense Ministry nearly two years ago.
A senior Intelsat official says he's delighted with McDonnell Douglas' plans to develop a new Ariane/Atlas class launcher. Intelsat will definitely consider using the Delta III rocket-once it's sure the development effort is for real, Pierre J. Madon, vice president of engineering and operations, tells The DAILY. Intelsat is a big launch customer, having had two of its satellites orbited so far in 1995, and three more slated to go before the end of the year.
While critics have downplayed the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) declassification of its headquarters structure (DAILY, April 25, page 129), intelligence satellite expert Jeffrey Richelson says it was truly significant. Richelson, who has authored a book on the history of U.S. satellites, says when he filed a Freedom Information Act request not long ago, he received only a small fraction of the NRO organizational structure that was just declassified.
Although he's not on the Armed Services Committee as he was in the House, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) still closely tracks the Ballistic Missile Defense program and says he expects the fiscal 1996 defense authorization to increase the Navy Upper-tier theater missile program and approve the shift of the Brilliant Eyes space sensor program from the Air Force to BMDO. Upper-tier is funded at $30 million, but the Navy is seeking at least $150 million more.
President Clinton took "extraordinary steps to reveal U. S. intelligence" to Russian President Boris Yeltsin to back off the sale of nuclear reactors to Iran, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said. Kyl, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told a breakfast seminar on Capitol Hill last Thursday that he was sure the president revealed intelligence data about Iran's nuclear capability to the Russians to persuade them that the Iranian threat is real.
Ballistic missile defense middle-of-the-roader Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. Friday called for a kinetic-kill, ground-based interceptor national missile defense program that is focused on deployment. The South Carolina Democrat also told a Capitol Hill breakfast seminar on missile defense that a one-year funding buildup of the Administration request for NMD will gain nothing.
The Russians have set May 20 as the date for launching the Proton booster that will take Spektr to Mir. As a result, NASA Shuttle managers have pushed the target launch date for Atlantis on its first docking mission back to no earlier than June 22. That will give the Mir crew time to reconfigure again for the Shuttle docking, and ground crews at Kennedy Space Center a little more time in their hectic schedule to prepare Atlantis for the flight.
Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennady Strekalov have another spacewalk scheduled Wednesday after their successful trip outside Mir Friday to begin readying Mir for the arrival of the long-awaited Spektr laboratory module. The cosmonauts installed electrical cable attachments that will be used to reroute power once they begin shuffling solar arrays to make way for Spektr and, later, the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The spacewalk took about 45 minutes longer than planned, and failed to achieve all of its objectives, but three more are planned this month.
Top 100 Defense Dept. contractors for fiscal year 1994 The Defense Dept.'s Top 100 contractors for fiscal year 1994 are listed in the following table, released last week (DAILY, May 11, page 227). Net value of prime contract awards to each contractor and the value of awards to their divisions and subsidiaries are given. Thousands of dollars Rank Companies 118,114,086
Top Republicans on the House Science Committee have entered a game of political chicken with their Democratic counterparts on the panel, using a project they all support as a pawn in the struggle over programs that lack universal support. Rep. Bob Walker (R-Pa.), the full committee chairman, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), chairman of the space subcommittee, have pulled the Station authorization bill from the markup schedule after ranking Democrat George Brown (Calif.) threatened to withdraw his support for Station.
