Latvia demolished the 19-story building of the uncompleted Russian early warning radar at Skrunda yesterday despite numerous calls from Russian scientists and specialists to convert the large phase array structure into an international space watch facility.
Lt. Gen Malcolm O'Neill, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization director, yesterday told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. and Russia could live with a demarcation between theater and strategic missiles that limited theater systems to velocities of five kilometers per second. O'Neill stressed that he was speaking as an acquisition executive and not as a warfighter. He said the limitation would "not impede our program."
The Navy is seriously examining its options to fill the tactical unmanned aerial vehicle requirement in the face of problems with the Hunter UAV, including using the Tier II Predator UAV in the tactical role, Nora Slatkin, the Navy's top acquisition official, said yesterday. Hunter "can be fixed, but the cost is too high," Slatkin told the House Appropriations national security subcommittee. "We don't believe we can afford this cost."
ITT Aerospace/Communications Div. has been awarded an Army contract for as many as 1,200 AN-ARC-201 airborne Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio Systems (SINCGARS) that, with options, is worth $31.1 million. ITT said the contract covers production of the frequency-hopping battlefield communications systems in 1996 and 1997. The Army has also "finalized orders" for more than 18,600 ground receiver/transmitter systems in a contract valued at $145.8 million, the company said.
Nimble, world-class companies still will be able to make money and even grow in the defense business, despite the likelihood that the world's defense market will continue shrinking, a panel of top company executives agreed yesterday. "We are not talking about buggy-whips," said Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz. "The defense business is not disappearing."
The ability to integrate systems is providing U.S. and West European countries with advantages in weapons development and also marks the new focus for U.S. defense prime contractors, says James G. Roche, a Northrop Grumman official. The problem is neither technology nor components but "the notion of being able to take major systems and integrate those systems so they will serve the warfighting purpose," Roche, Northrop Grumman's vice president and chief advanced development, planning and public affairs officer, said last week.
The Navy's plans to have the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle fill the requirement the problem plagued Hunter UAV seems unable to meet will not be without difficulties, a Navy source told The DAILY last week. Among the issues the service would have to address if it were to make Predator sea-based would be its wings, the source said, which cannot be folded. Another consideration for Navy planners are the Predator's two downward- pointing tails.
Backed by a comprehensive, independent study, the Defense Dept. has decided against buying 20 more B-2 stealth bombers and instead will probably use bomber industrial base preservation money to start a follow-on program to the AGM-137 Tri-Service Standoff Attack Munition (TSSAM).
Hourly workers at United Technologies' Hamilton Standard controls and propeller unit okayed a new three-year contract by a 32-to-one margin this week, with about half the covered workers voting. About 1,550 workers are covered by the deal, which includes a 7.5% raise over the life of the contract, a $300 signing bonus, new pension and savings plans, and a provision for workers to contribute to their own health care in a managed-care program. Hamilton Standard said the vote was 743 to 23.
Dynamics Research Corp. will provide technology and engineering services to the Air Force aimed at improving system efficiency under a multi-million dollar maximum five-year contract award. Technical and engineering support will include technology insertion into new and existing Air Force systems and processes, intended to yield improvements to life-cycle cost, productivity, efficiency, reliability, maintainability, supportability, and survivability, the company reported.
An F-14A Tomcat crew has sent Kaiser back to the drawing board for improvements to two of its helmet-mounted display prototypes, criticizing the Kaiser Agile Eye Mark III and Agile Eye Plus for being too heavy, too hard to read and too laden with unnecessary flight instrumentation.
House National Security Chairman Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) yesterday talked of adding $10 billion to the Clinton Administration's fiscal 1996 defense request, but admitted later that he had no assurances of additional funding.
A wide range of U.S. and international smart weapons systems will be covered in a three-day classified training seminar scheduled by the Guidance and Control Information Analysis Center, which is sponsored by the Defense Technical Information Center.
Senate Armed Services ranking Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn (Ga.) said yesterday that he was "disappointed" that the Heavy Bomber Force Study recommended against the acquisition of additional B-2 stealth bombers beyond the present 20 but added that he wanted to review the report closely.
The Air Force plans to award Boeing a sole source contract for work on four E-3 AWACS radomes but has opened the contract to competition from interested parties, according to an announcement in yesterday's Commerce Business Daily. The Air Force's Electronic Systems Center (ESC) said Boeing is the only known source with sufficient E-3 knowledge to be able to strip, repair, paint, and perform frequency mapping and range testing on the aircraft, CBD said.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency will brief industry May 10 at Ft. Belvoir, Va., on its plans to develop and demonstrate affordable non- lethal technologies that both the Defense Dept. and law enforcement agencies can use, according to a broad agency announcement in yesterday's Commerce Business Daily. Specifically, ARPA is looking for "environmentally benign and socially and legally acceptable" technologies that can stop a moving vehicle, halt a person, stop several people in a crowd, and contain or divert mobs and rioters.
Debt-watcher Moody's Investors Service gave Lockheed Martin a Prime-1 short-term debt rating for up to $1.5 billion in new commercial paper, citing the combined company's healthy cash flow. In addition to the cash that should be wrung out from combining overheads, Moody's pointed to the backlogs of both companies, and "the potential for an above-average win rate for defense contracts," as factors that should lead to "generally stable sales in the intermediate term in spite of global defense budgetary pressures."
Aerospatiale is pushing for "reintroduction" of the crew rescue vehicle as one of the elements of the European proposal for International Space Station Alpha, Aerospatiale Space&Defense chief Michel Delaye said yesterday. "We are also suggesting that an American contractor be involved" to be sure that the program is able to "meet NASA requirements," Delaye said during a panel discussion at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Global Air&Space conference in Washington.
GENERAL ELECTRIC CHAIRMAN Jack Welch underwent a successful balloon angioplasty at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, Conn., yesterday to clear one partially blocked artery leading to the heart, GE reported. Welch is doing well enough that he expects to work from home next week, and return to the office the week of May 15th.
The Lockheed-Khrunichev-Energia International (LKEI) venture is planning four launches of Russian Proton rockets next year, according to the venture's president, Charles Lloyd. The first LKEI launch-and the first Proton launch of a commercial Western satellite-is now set for March 1, 1996, when the Russian rocket is scheduled to orbit a communications satellite for Europe's SES.
The Naval Surface Warfare Center wants industry proposals for the development of ordnance system technologies that would allow a single 500- 1,000-pound class missile ordnance system alter its operations in order to strike a variety of targets.
NASA managers believe Russia's FGB space tug is on schedule to be the first element launched to the International Space Station in November 1997, following a critical design review (CDR) in Moscow last week that turned up surprisingly few design problems.
A Senate panel will hold a closed hearing tomorrow to discuss the threat that foreign adversaries could disrupt crucial U.S. military operations by jamming or interfering with the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite network. The meeting was quickly scheduled yesterday after senior officials from the Air Force, Navy and Army told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee they could not go into technical details about threats to the GPS system in open session.
A draft version of nine best practices designed to improve the Defense Dept.'s software acquisition problems is being circulated among government and industry officials, Norm Brown, a DOD software official, told The DAILY. Brown, who heads the Software Program Managers Network that was set up to review and recommend changes in DOD's software acquisition process, said "low-tech management processes" are the crux of the software problem. "Software management is immature," he noted.
