CHINA has its eye on the commercial satellite business. By the end of the decade, China will commit to the development of "high-capacity communications and broadcasting satellites," Wang Liheng, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration, told an audience last week at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference in Arlington, Va.
JAPAN'S H-2 ROCKET shouldn't be limited to launching domestic payloads, Takashi Matsui, president of that nation's space agency, NASDA, told an AIAA audience. With three "near perfect" launches under its belt, NASDA wants to use the H-2 for "launching satellites based on international cooperation," such as lunar and planetary probes, he said. The H-2 can also be utilized for the "transporting of materials to the International Space Station," he said.
U.S. defense contractors must help Congress identify economies in defense spending as the fiscal 1996 Defense Appropriations Bill works its way through Congress if pro-defense lawmakers are to be able to "freeze" the Pentagon budget instead of letting it shrink as the Administration desires, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said yesterday.
GERMANY'S space agency, DARA, will place a higher priority on efforts that yield back near-to-medium term economic benefit, DARA Director General Jan-Baldem Mennicken told an AIAA audience. That means increasing concentration on areas such as remote sensing, navigation, and telecommunications-at the expense of some scientific research, he says.
The U.S. Air Force Standard Systems Group, Maxwell AFB, Ala., selected a Loral unit to provide the Defense Dept. with a new electronic messaging system which the company hopes will also appeal to the intelligence community and other customers. Manassas, Va.-based Loral Federal Systems will provide integration services, software, hardware, maintenance, training, installation and data as part of the Defense Message System-Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) contract.
An Airbus A320 twinjet testbed just finished a series of flight tests that will pave the way for full investigation of laminar-flow systems beginning in 1997, Airbus Industrie reported. The plane completed 10 hours of testing in five flights to check and validate instrumentation installed on the aircraft's tail that will detect airflows around the tail and fuselage. Researchers examined normal airflows around the aircraft in great detail during the tests, which began in March, and will use that data as a baseline during the second phase.
Boeing Co. and Rockwell International have received additional funding for work on the E-6A TACAMO aircraft program. Both contracts were awarded May 1 by Naval Air Systems Command. Boeing Defense and Space Group, Seattle, got $5.6 million to continue its effort on an automatic autothrottle flight control system for the E-6A. Rockwell's Command and Control Systems Div., Richardson, Tex., got $26.5 million for a high-power transmit set for the plane.
Proposals to add up to $47.9 billion in budget authority and $46 billion in outlays over the Clinton Administration budget for fiscal 1996- 2000 were revealed yesterday by the Senate Budget Committee. The panel starts its markup of the budget for '96-'00 today, and the House Budget Committee will begin its markup tomorrow.
The first upgrade to the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) Thursday passed part one of its critical design review by Army Missile Command, which clears prime Loral Vought to start placing vendor orders and working toward flight tests. "It was a very successful design review," Lt. Col. Barry Ward, the Army's program manager for improved ATACMS, told The DAILY.
The full Senate is scheduled to vote this week to confirm John Deutch as director of central intelligence (DCI). The Senate Intelligence Committee approved the nomination by a unanimous vote on May 3.
Airbus Industrie executives have dismissed what they describe as unfounded but lingering safety concerns among pilots-and in the mass media- over technologies introduced on Airbus aircraft. In press briefings in Toulouse Thursday, Airbus human factors experts denied that the consortium designs its cockpits "in the laboratory," without participation by pilots. And senior captains from United, Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific all gave their vote of confidence following experiences with the introduction of Airbus aircraft into their airlines' fleets.
U.S. information systems have been attacked in the past, and with many countries capable of conducting information warfare (IW) the Defense Dept. will have to examine how to protect its systems, the co-chairman of the Defense Science Board task force on information for the battlefield said last week.
Loral Corp. closed on its deal to buy Unisys Defense Systems for $862 million in cash, boosting Loral's air traffic control, ship defense and C3I businesses while marking the final step in Unisys' drive to evolve from a computer-maker into an information-management company.
The U.S. should cease protectionist practices and open its defense market to international competition, the British Defense Ministry's top materiel official in Washington said last week. Simon Webb, the defense materiel minister in the British Embassy, Thursday urged the U.S. to loosen tight export controls and match the U.K.'s open markets, arguing that easing export controls would benefit greater transatlantic cooperation.
Prodded on rumors that package carrier Federal Express is unhappy with range performance on Pratt&Whitney-powered MD-11 trijet freighters, McDonnell Douglas' chief financial officer, Herb Lanese, quips "you must have been talking to Boeing." The rumor, in fact beginning with some of FedEx's rivals, is that headwinds are hurting the planes' ability to fly long Asian routes. But Lanese says that "engine deficiencies...have been corrected." Correcting the record led Lanese to spill the beans on FedEx's plans for new aircraft.
The Air Force has no plans to try to get the Milstar military communications satellite effort killed, Brig. Gen. Robert Dickman, director of space programs in the service's acquisition office, assures Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), who is concerned about past AF efforts to eliminate the costly program. "I think the history of Milstar terminations is behind us," Dickman says "...We're now on contract [with Lockheed Martin] for the full constellation of four Milstar II satellites. We are committed to that, that's a done deed."
The McDonnell Douglas/Northrop Grumman team for the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) probably will not make an internal downselect between its two designs, Keith Hertzenberger, McDonnell Douglas's vice president, advanced aircraft programs tell The DAILY. Rather than choose one design over the other, he says, the new thrust will be to combine systems from both designs and put them into one.
The defense budget for the next seven years will be frozen at about the $270 billion level for budget and authority, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services acquisition and technology subcommittee said Friday. Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) opened up a subcommittee hearing Friday with the remark that it was important to develop specific strategies for funding the technologies for the battlefield of the future because "we're looking at a flat (defense) budget for the next seven years, with literally no growth."
The Defense Dept. is rewriting its rules for purchasing items but will likely hold off activating the new regulations until the new fiscal year starts October 1, says Colleen Preston, DOD's acquisition reform deputy under secretary. But new small purchase procedures will be released at the beginning of next month, she says, and are slated to take effect July 1.
The White House is working on a draft Presidential Review Directive on information warfare to fill-in the lack of any national policy on the subject, says James P. McCarthy, co-chairman of the Defense Science Board task force on information for the battlefield. The lack of national guidance has hampered efforts to systemize IW developments in defense and commercial sectors, he tells a group of experts on the defense information infrastructure in Washington.
The Army's digitization program is facing a problem with the ballooning of requirements for data transmission throughput, says Lt. Col. Steven Kostek, Information and Electronic Warfare PEO. Kostek predicted that the trend of commanders requesting increasing amounts of imagery will continue, resulting in the need to substantially increase data transmission bandwidth.
Revolutionary advancements in technology are underpinning the U.S. Air Force's plans to maintain its "dominance" of the skies, but budget constraints will mean that an increasing amount of that technology must be pulled from the commercial sector, Defense Secretary William Perry said last week.
