The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and U.S. Space Command have asked for an updated national intelligence estimate to "take a harder look" at proliferation and to help them better determine what weapon systems they should develop on what timeline, BMDO Deputy Director Bill Evers told The DAILY in an interview. "The whole world situation and the perception of stability, of ownership and intent, suggest that we have to take a very hard look about the possibility of proliferation of some of these systems," Evers explained.
Loral Federal Systems Co. has beaten three other competitors for a $36.5 million contract to further develop the Advanced Deployable System (ADS), a network of rapidly deployable sensors that would monitor shallow coastal waters during joint operations of U.S. forces.
Loral Conic, San Diego, has acquired Microcom Corp., Warminster, Pa., for $7 million in cash. Microcom, which employs about 250 people and had sales of over $20 million in 1994, designs and manufactures airborne communications and telemetry components and systems used by the Dept. of Defense and the aerospace industry, Loral Corp., the parent of Loral Conic, said yesterday. It said the products are used mostly for training and test and evaluation.
NASA pilots are ferrying the Space Shuttle Columbia to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., atop its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft following six months of inspection and maintenance at Rockwell's Shuttle facility at Palmdale, Calif. Bad weather in Florida yesterday blocked the return of the oldest Shuttle to KSC on the 14th anniversary of its first flight. Instead, the refurbished space plane stopped at Ellington Field in Houston.
BALL AEROSPACE has won a $20 million contract from NASA to build three Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) instruments for the Earth Observation System (EOS), part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program. The instruments measure the concentration and distribution of aerosols and areas of the Earth's atmosphere believed to contribute to global warming. The first SAGE III instrument is slated for launch in mid- 1998 aboard a Russian Meteor-3M meteorological satellite, and its data will be shared with Russia.
RUSSIA'S PROGRESS M-27 supply capsule docked with the Mir space station yesterday, delivering food and equipment to the three-man crew aboard. A live video feed received at the Russian mission control center near Moscow and rebroadcast on NASA's internal network showed the capsule executing an automated docking with Mir shortly after 5 p.m. EDT. Progress M-27, the second of six Progress missions originally scheduled for Mir resupply this year, was launched Sunday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (DAILY, April 11, page 51).
COMSAT CORP.'s vice president and chief financial officer, C. Thomas Faulders III, has resigned effective April 25. He will be joining BDM International in McLean, Va., as chief financial officer. Comsat has not yet named a replacement.
NASA has reactivated an option to switch the first Shuttle/Mir docking mission with a later Shuttle flight after Russian spacecraft managers indicated they might not be able to launch the Spektr laboratory module to Mir as early as planned.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. is consolidating its remote sensing ventures into Orbital Imaging Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary. The move brings under one roof Eyeglass, a high-resolution remote sensing satellite project scheduled to begin service later this decade; SeaStar, a satellite scheduled for launch later this year that will provide color monitoring of the world's oceans; and SunCast, a fully-operational service offering daily predictions of levels of ultraviolet radiation at specific locations across the U.S.
ROBERT L. CRIPPEN, a former astronaut who most recently served as director of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, has joined Lockheed Martin Corp., the company said yesterday. It said Crippen, 57, is vice president automation systems for its Information Systems Co., headquartered in Orlando, Fla.
The U.S. Navy is looking at the possibility of constructing an off- shore, forward operating base that would include aircraft take-off and landing facilities and that could be deployed in areas where regular air bases aren't accessible to U.S. aircraft, Vice Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, deputy chief of naval operations, said yesterday. The Navy will look at the concept and its affordability and then decide how many-if any-mobile sea-based operating platforms should be procured, Lopez said at the Navy League's annual conference in Washington.
Loral Fairchild Systems has received a $28.6 million U.S. Air Force contract to produce AN/AAQ-23 navigation forward looking infrared systems for B-52 bombers. The system, it said yesterday, gives the pilot and navigator a full frontal field of view during navigation and weapons delivery. The 30-month contract, for 97 of the systems, follows a September 1992 award under which Loral provided AAQ-23s for flight testing.
President Clinton yesterday sympathized with Pakistan's demand that the U.S. either deliver 28 F-16 fighters held up for five years or return the $600 million paid for them, but otherwise offered no hint that a breakthrough was near. "I don't think it's right for us to keep the money and the equipment," Clinton told a White House news conference after meeting with the Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. "I'm going to try to find a solution to this."
The senior U.S. Navy budget officer said the Pentagon's latest round of base closure recommendations cuts the Air Force too little, and warned that his sister service won't have enough resources to sustain its infrastructure.
HUGHES SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS CO. and Computervision Corp., Bedford, Mass., have signed a three-year agreement to jointly implement a new approach that allows products to be designed, "built," and proven on- screen electronically before metal or composites are cut. The two companies are looking at ways to apply the approach to Hughes' satellite manufacturing and design operations. Hughes will purchase $9.4 million in Computervision software, technical services and training as part of the agreement.
Britain's Monopolies and Mergers Commission, or MMC, is due to say today whether either or both GEC's or British Aerospace's bids to buy shipbuilder VSEL can go forward. London financiers aren't offering guesses on how the commission will rule, but most industry executives believe that if the MMC fails to rule against either company, both GEC and BAe will resume a bitter fight to control VSEL.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich's proposal to freeze defense outlays at $270 billion over the next five years may appear attractive in the near term, but it would ultimately create serious funding shortfalls for all the services, a senior U.S. Navy officer said yesterday.
Lockheed won't need to change its F-22 airframe to build derivatives for the U.S. Air Force, but instead will ready the plane for new missions by using various precision-guided munitions of the Joint Direct Attack Munition class, according to an industry source. For instance, prepping the aircraft for a lethal suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) mission would call for JDAM derivatives, probably submunitions, the official told The DAILY. This kind of change wouldn't require any modifications to the aircraft or its software capability.
GTE Government Systems beat out competitors a second time for phase two of the U.S. Army's Command Hardware/Software (CHS-2) program. The Army's Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) on Monday awarded the contract to GTE after a protest from Loral Federal Systems Co. prompted cancellation of the first agreement. The new contract has an initial value of $21 million but could ultimately be worth more than $200 million, a GTE spokesman said yesterday.
SPACEPORT FLORIDA AUTHORITY is planning a busy week. Today, ground will be broken for a new Titan IV solid rocket motor warehouse facility at Camp Blanding, a Florida National Guard facility 40 miles west of St. Augustine. Spaceport Florida will build the $20 million warehouse and lease it to Lockheed Martin.
The U.S. Navy will need a dramatic increase in the resources it devotes to investment accounts to remain a viable force, the service's top budget official warned yesterday. Investment accounts have declined from 35% of the Navy budget a decade ago to 18% in President Clinton's proposed fiscal 1996 budget, Rear Adm. William J. Hancock said at the Navy League's annual show in Washington.
The weak U.S. dollar could erode the value of offset commitments McDonnell Douglas made to the Dutch government to seal a sale of 30 AH-64D Apache helicopters, the Defense Ministry told parliament. MDC began placing offset orders worth 895 million guilders-about $570 million at Monday's exchange rate-immediately after the Dutch cabinet voted in favor of the proposal to buy 30 Apache Longbow helicopters to equip a new rapid-response force, and to lease A-model Apaches to fill the gap until the new helos were available (DAILY, April 10, page 43).
The cost of buying weapons grew $33.34 billion between September and December to $727.2 billion, primarily because of the decision to reinstate V-22 Osprey production, according to the latest Defense Dept. Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs). Building 523 of the tilt-rotor V-22s-473 for the Navy and 50 for the Air Force-will cost about $35.2 billion and associated support will cost about $10.5 billion, DOD estimated in its December 1995 SAR, released Friday (DAILY, April 11, page 52).
Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House National Security Committee, says he expects the committee to boost the B-2 bomber program beyond the present 20 when it marks up its fiscal 1996 defense authorization next month. "As I assess this committee," Dellums told The DAILY, "the support appears to be there to increase the B-2 buy," both for parochial and strategic reasons.
