COMSAT LABORATORIES has signed a licensing agreement with Wegener Communications to manufacture new products aimed at bringing the economies of digital compression to satellite news gathering (SNG). Under the agreement, Atlanta-based Wegener will produce broadcast quality digital video encoders and decoders specifically for use in SNG applications. The electronics package, coupled with smaller uplink transmitters and antennas, will greatly expand SNG applications by reducing the cost of satellite time and SNG vehicles.
Boeing Commercial Space Co. yesterday announced the formation of a new company that will launch satellites from a sea-based pad operating in international waters in the Pacific Ocean. Boeing is teaming with three international partners to form Sea Launch, a U.S.-based venture that hopes to conduct its first launch in two years.
TRW PROTESTS the Air Force's $38.6 million contract award to Unisys Corp. to develop a global command and control system for U.S. Transportation Command, called the Global Transportation Network (GTN). Unisys won the contract, to expire in March 2000, in late March (DAILY, March 28, page 468).
Orbital Sciences' Corp. said yesterday that an air-launched Pegasus rocket orbited the first two satellites in its new Orbcomm personal communications system. The Pegasus was dropped at 9:49 a.m. EDT from an L-1011 aircraft flying 40,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean about 50 miles off the California coast and successfully placed three satellites-the two Orbcomms and the MicroLab-1 scientific spacecraft-in their targeted polar orbits at 455 miles.
NASA and two prestigious Russian medical institutions are negotiating to establish a joint space medicine institute that will train physicians in remote regions of the former Soviet Union and try to generate cash for Russian medicine by matching medical hardware developed for the Russian space program with U.S. investors.
SANDERS, Nashua, N.H., an operating company of Lockheed Martin Corp., said it has received two U.S. Navy Foreign Military Sales contracts totaling $11.7 million for electronic countermeasures systems for Italy and Malaysia. Under a $4.6 million contract, the company will produce four AN/ALQ-126B systems for Malaysian F/A-18 aircraft. For $7.1 million, it will produce four AN/ALQ-164 systems for Italian AV-8B Harriers.
Japan Defense Agency has ordered the first of two UP-3D electronic warfare training support planes. Delivery is slated before the end of March, 1997. Kawasaki Heavy Industries will produce the plane for about $172 million. It will be assigned to the 81st Air Unit of the 31st Air Group, at the Iwakuni air base. The second UP-3D would be purchased under the fiscal year 1995 budget. The UP-3Ds, derivatives of the P-3C anti-submarine warfare -plane, will be used by the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Russia's Design Bureau of Transport Machinery (KBTM) will sign a contract with Lockheed Martin this month to continue studying possible upgrades to the Atlas commercial launch pad at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., Gennadiy P. Biryukov, director and chief designer of KBTM, said in the first press conference held in his firm's almost 50-year history.
March 31, 1995 Lockheed Corporation, Fort Worth Company, Fort Worth , Texas, is being awarded a $341,473,000 face value increase to a fixed-price-incentive contract for 18 F-16 aircraft and associated support equipment. Contract is expected to be completed November 1998. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract is in support of Foreign Military Sales for Singapore. The Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright- Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-95-C- 2022).
The U.S. Air Force has worked out a three-year program with McDonnell Douglas to buy 18 F-15E long-range interdiction aircraft at a flyaway cost of $55 million per plane, according to an AF official. The hitch? Congress would have to agree to pay because the Defense Dept. doesn't have the money. "We don't have the money to take it out of hide," the official, who requested anonymity, told The DAILY yesterday. "...This is a blessed price everyone will sign up to."
U.S. AIR FORCE'S Wright Laboratory wants technical and cost proposals from industry by May 3 on a research and development effort titled "Laser Wavelength Identification Techniques." The lab's Avionics Laboratory said in a March 17 Commerce Business Daily notice that the program's objective "is to develop and demonstrate techniques for the discrimination of laser wavelengths for laser warning receivers (LWR).
Tracor Aerospace said yesterday that it has acquired the only other company in the chaff production business, TransTechnology Corp., a unit of Lundy Technical Center, Pompano Beach Fla. The price wasn't disclosed. "While this is a small acquisition, it is an important strategic one," said George R. Melton, president of the Austin, Tex.-based Tracor Aerospace. "The demand for chaff products for U.S. military applications does not support two manufacturers; therefore, we pursued this strategic acquisition of the other manufacturer."
KUWAIT has approached the Defense Dept. for the acquisition of 1,015 TOW-2B anti-tank missiles. The U.S. Army would be in charge of the $32 million sale of the Hughes missiles for Kuwait's AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, DOD said March 24.
A Black Hawk helicopter modified to provide firepower for U.S. Army Special Forces was unveiled here. The heavily armed MH-60 DAP (Defensive Armed Penetration) helicopter is designed for combat assault, aerial escort and aerial support of ground forces, according C4I David Sweeney, an MH-60 DAP pilot.
McDonnell Douglas, the only U.S. bidder for NASA's "Medlite" launch services contract, will begin negotiating with NASA this week for a fixed-price agreement that, with options, may total 14 launches. Intended as a relatively low-cost way to get small scientific spacecraft on Earth orbital and planetary missions, Medlite will be built by a team that includes Orbital Sciences Corp. as principal subcontractor.
SOUTH KOREA has accepted four Russian-built Ka-32T helicopters as partial payment of an outstanding $1.47 billion debt owed by Russia, according to wire service reports from Seoul. Four additional Russian helicopters are anticipated to arrive before July as further payment. The price of each helicopter is about $2 million, leaving a large portion of the debt still outstanding.
TURKEY has seen its arms deliveries from Germany suspended as of a result of Turkish military action against Kurds in northern Iraq. Wire service reports from Bonn said that more than $84 million are affected by the Bonn government's move, including assets promised to Turkey to support the buy of two frigates, as well as bridge-laying and engineering equipment.
Defense Secretary William Perry and Pentagon Comptroller John Hamre believe at least one more Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round will be needed after this year's effort, Hamre tells an Electronic Industries Association conference in Washington. But the fifth round isn't likely to occur in 1997. "We need a breather," he says. "We need to bring some closure to previous closings and get smarter on how to do it."
Maj. Gen. Dewitt "T" Irby, the Army's aviation program executive officer, predicts a bleak future for Army aviation, saying he doesn't see the next chief of staff being as supportive of aviation as Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan has been. "From what I could see of the potential incoming people that could be chosen, I [don't] see anybody that is as strong a supporter out there of aviation or Comanche [as Sullivan]," Irby told reporters here Friday during the Army Aviation Association of America's annual conference.
A program to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction has focused too much on the nuclear threat and not enough on chemical and biological weapons, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said Thursday in Washington. Trying to reduce biological weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia, is complicated by the fact that Russia has not acknowledged all its biological weapons developments, Nunn said during a panel discussion at the National Academy of Sciences.
AlliedSignal Aerospace, among the most aggressive aerospace companies when it comes to beefing up its overhaul and repair businesses, has set an ambitious goal for this year-engine repairs that typically take between 20 and 40 days should be done in 20 days. Next year, the goal is 12 days' turnaround. A big part of the improvement should come from consolidation-the repair business went from 25 standalone business units in 1991 to a planned four this year.
The House National Security Committee has insisted that the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization show off its stuff Tuesday before an afternoon hearing with BMDO's top officials, including director Lt. Gen. Malcolm O'Neill. BMDO program managers and contractors will host a members- of-Congress only hardware walk-through from 9 to 10 a.m. The displays will be open to the public for the rest of the day.
