Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. will decide by mid-fall whether to cut 400 pounds out of the F-22 next-generation strike fighter, an industry official told The DAILY. The decision will depend in part on how much it would cost to make the necessary modifications to the aircraft, the source said. Program officials maintain that the aircraft has no weight objective, only performance and operational effectiveness specifications that so far the plane is meeting 100%.
The Pentagon's top acquisition reform priority is reducing the number of bid protests, Colleen Preston, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition reform, tells a Senate panel. Currently, protests are reviewed with "virtually no limits," she says, often creating costly delays. Reform legislation proposed by the Clinton Administration would authorize the General Accounting Office to recommend an award of costs to the government when a contractor files a frivolous protest (DAILY, March 2, page 323).
International sales of the Joint STARS are likely to exceed those of AWACS, Kresa says. The Northrop Grumman plane enjoys the same kind of support in Europe as Boeing's AWACS, and there's more backing for it there than there was for the Boeing product at a comparable point in its development.
A LOCKHEED LAUNCH VEHICLE-1 (LLV-1) has been selected to launch NASA's Clark remote sensing satellite in 1996 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Clark will be the second spacecraft built by CTA Inc., Rockville, Md., that is planned for launch on the LLV. The other is the GEMStar communications satellite, planned for LLV's debut launch, expected this summer.
WORLDSPACE CORP., the Washington-based global digital audio broadcasting consortium, has reached a consensus on the use of a new technical standard known as "Layer 3" for satellite-to-portable radio digital broadcasting. The new standard will allow a range of audio signals with up to CD-quality to be received via satellite by a new generation of WorldSpace portable radios called StarMan. WorldSpace has been licensed by the Federal Communications Commission to operate the world's first direct satellite-to-radio broadcasting system and plans to begin service in 1998.
The U.S. Air Force is "very hopeful" that it's on the verge of releasing the C-17 Globemaster III to Army testers to finish evaluating paratrooper drops from the airlifter, Richards says. "We think we are on track to a solution...and we're very hopeful it's not going to be a solution that requires any modifications to the airplane," he says. The likely fix will be to alter flap settings and deck angles, he explains.
Although Northrop Grumman has debt from the Grumman acquisition last year, it's not out of the acquisition game and will keep its eye out for possibilities as the industry consolidates, Kresa says. "I would not say we are aggressively out there looking for an acquisition," but the outstanding debt alone wouldn't inhibit a buy if the opportunity presented itself.
SCIENTIFIC ATLANTA has delivered Italy's first digital video compression system. It's being used by Fiat to send marketing and sales training information via satellite to its 1,200 Italian Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia dealers. The system compresses signals to allow several times more information to be sent than standard analog transmissions.
The Dutch cabinet on Friday selected McDonnell Douglas' AH-64D Longbow Apache as the Royal Netherlands Air Force's new attack helicopter following months of debate, clearing the way for a parliamentary vote on the choice in a few weeks. Parliament will take up the decision after the Easter recess, and diplomatic sources in Washington told The DAILY that the buy would probably be approved easily.
Sources say senators will likely seek to extract a pledge from Deutch to report all covert actions and failures "in accordance with the law." That's because members of Congress believe they were misled about CIA payments to Guatemalan military officers who were allegedly involved in the death of American citizens.
C-17 users, although "extremely happy" with the plane, are starting to make notes of things they'd like to see changed, Richards says. For example, the mission computer probably will be upgraded at some point, he offers, saying, "That technology moves very rapidly....A new mission computer would not only give us better capability but would probably provide R&M [reliability and maintainability] improvements, saving us some money."
The U.K. has moved up its schedule for replacing nuclear bombs carried by Tornado aircraft with submarine-launched Trident missiles. The plan was for Trident warheads to take the place of the WE 177 free-fall bombs beginning around 2007, but the move is now slated for 1998, Parliament has been told. Armed Forces Minister Nicholas Soames told Commons Tuesday that Trident submarines will give the U.K. a continuously available "sub- strategic," or tactical, capability that would allow the transition.
A Russian delegation arrived in the U.S. last week to perform an independent review of the second Shuttle-Mir docking mission for the Russian Space Agency. The docking is expected to take place in June. The delegation visited Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., went on to Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday and was expected to take a final swing through NASA headquarters in Washington during the weekend.
Boeing's first-quarter jetliner deliveries fell 28% from the like period a year ago, the steepest first-quarter decline since Boeing's deliveries peaked in 1992. In the quarter ended March 31, Boeing delivered 59 commercial jet transports, compared with 82 in 1994's first quarter. In 1992, Boeing's most recent peak delivery year, the first quarter accounted for 124 aircraft. Full financial data for the quarter will be reported later this month.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Joe Ralston, deputy chief of staff for plans and operations, has been picked to get his fourth star and succeed Gen. John Michael Loh as the Air Combat Command chief at Langley AFB, Va., the Defense Dept. said yesterday. AF Maj. Gen. Ralph Eberhart, director of force structure, resources and assessment for the Pentagon's joint staff, will be promoted to replace Ralston.
THE HOUSE yesterday approved the compromise $3.07 billion fiscal 1995 defense supplemental, which included $2.26 billion in national security rescissions. Approval came on a 343-80 vote, and the measure was sent to the Senate for final congressional approval. House-Senate conferees restored a House cut of $400 million from two NASA wind tunnels and rescinded $20 million for the Single Channel Ground-Air Radio System, or SINCGARS, because of a lower than projected unit cost in a recent contract award.
The exterior structure for the first U.S. pressurized module being built for the International Space Station has been completed, NASA announced yesterday. The module is one of two connecting "nodes" being built for the Station by Boeing Defense and Space Group, Huntsville, Ala. They will be used to dock the Space Shuttle and to connect the Space Station's laboratory and habitation modules.
LITTON SYSTEMS CANADA, Toronto, has won a contract from United Defense LP to upgrade the combat capability of the U.S. Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Litton said it will provide multifunction flat panel color displays that generate bright, high resolution images with very low power consumption. It said the 6 x 8-inch Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Displays (AMLCD) units will be installed at both the commander and squad leader stations in the vehicles.
McDonnell Douglas publicly reiterated its commitment to the 100-seat MD-95 jetliner program yesterday, even though the program's most recent loss to rival Boeing's next-generation 737 leaves the MD-95 without serious customers in sight. Douglas executives have, however, backed away from earlier forecasts of a launch in the first half of 1995, and now believe a launch could come in the second part of the year.
A few days after Thanksgiving, if all goes according to plan, the European Space Agency will conduct the first test flight of its new Ariane 5 rocket. After a second test launch in April or May 1996, the rocket will be turned over to Europe's Arianespace consortium, which has already grabbed about 60% of the commercial launch market away from U.S. firms. Arianespace hopes to begin commercial flights of the new launch vehicle in October 1996. The impending arrival of the Ariane 5 raises some questions:
LOCKHEED Aeronautical Systems Co. said Richard G. Kirkland has been named director of U.S. government requirements. He joins LASC from the U.S. Navy, where he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs.
The EuroFLAG group developing the Future Large Airlifter proposed the FLA to Japan's Air Self-Defense Force to replace Kawasaki C-1s and Lockheed C-130Hs, making Japan's C-X contest a three-way race against Lockheed's C-130J and McDonnell Douglas' C-17.
Gen. John M. (Mike) Loh, head of the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command, said yesterday he liked neither low-end cost estimates for additional B-2 bombers advanced by Northrop Grumman Corp. or high-end figures from the Air Force.
A group of Fairfax, Va.-based investors are none too happy with Boeing's use of the name "Sea Launch" for a new international launch venture it is heading up. Sea Launch Investors, a venture that includes former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Thomas Moorer (USN-ret.), says it had the name first.
The House Science Committee is planning to draw up a separate bill for the International Space Station that would authorize funding for the project all the way through its completion in 2002. The long-term authorization bill should be introduced "very early in May" and will continue to cap Station spending at $2.1 billion a year, Science Committee Chairman Robert Walker (R-Pa.) said at a briefing for reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday.
