The U.S. relies too much on weapons of "immaculate destruction" that echo Cold War thinking, a top U.S. Marine Corps officer said at a conference here. Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Wilkerson, assistant deputy chief of staff for plans, policy and operations at Marine Corps headquarters, said the U.S. in the future is more likely to face complex crises that can't be quickly resolved by overpowering force alone.
Stumped seers are re-thinking their assumptions These days, the aerospace industry seems to be getting a lesson in Zeno's Paradoxes. Zeno, an ancient philosopher, contended that finishing a foot race was impossible because the remaining distance could always be divided in half. Obviously absurd, but nonetheless it was only last year that mathematicians were able to resolve it by inventing a new class of number to occupy the space.
ORION ATLANTIC has accepted delivery of the Orion 1 communications satellite on orbit at 37.5 degrees West longitude. Matra Space Systems turned over the Ku-band relay, first of a planned three-satellite network, on Jan. 20. The new satellites will replace leased transponders operated by the Washington-based international partnership.
Continuing cost growth, the Pentagon's cost and operational effectiveness analysis (COEA) and the Air Force's admission that it won't use C-17s in many of their originally intended roles means Congress should back buying only the minimum number needed for military-unique missions, the General Accounting Office concluded.
The U.S. Army has awarded a joint venture of Martin Marietta and Westinghouse a two-year, $30.5 million contract to prepare for production of the Longbow missile, Martin Marietta reported yesterday. Combined with a $31 million initial production funding contract for the Longbow fire control radar, the missile production funding contract advances the AH-64 Longbow Apache attack helicopter program. The Longbow Apache will combine a radar-guided fire-and-forget Hellfire missile with a millimeter-wave fire control radar.
A House National Security Committee hearing on a provision in the Republican Contract With America that would accelerate deployment of U.S. ballistic missile defense systems quickly degenerated into a partisan debate yesterday. Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Calif.), the panel's ranking Democrat, led charges that Republicans were trying to speed the ballistic missile defense measure through the House with little examination into its cost or how it will affect other pressing defense needs, such as modernization.
Officials are reviewing Britain's Phoenix unmanned aerial vehicle program, and could kill it to help satisfy the Treasury's demands for more defense savings. "The choice is whether to continue pumping money into Phoenix and trying to make it work, or to scrap it and buy something off-the-shelf," said a senior defense source in London, and Israeli equipment is mentioned as one possibility.
RAH-66 Comanche program managers have already started delaying certain elements of the Army scout helicopter's development until the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) restores $120 million withheld from the program's fiscal 1995 budget, according to an industry official. Nick Blaskowski, chief of the Allison/Allied Signal engine consortium LHTEC, told The DAILY that managers are considering making "fairly significant" program changes in light of the withheld dollars.
A routine NASA-sponsored sounding rocket experiment in the Norwegian Arctic yesterday triggered a widespread flap when a Moscow news agency erroneously reported Russian forces had shot down a missile. The four-stage Black Brant XII lofted a scientific payload to an altitude of 900 miles above the Andoya rocket range in Andenes, Norway, early yesterday, according to a NASA spokesman, who said the payload landed in the "polar region of the Arctic Ocean as planned."
The Bell-Boeing V-22 team completed loading of the first fuselage final assembly jig (FAJ) on schedule yesterday at Boeing's plant outside Philadelphia. The component, the roof of the main fuselage section that supports the wing attachment fittings, is for aircraft No. 7, the first of four production representative Ospreys being built under Bell-Boeing's engineering, manufacturing and development contract. Wing-fuselage mating will occur at Bell Helicopter Textron in Fort Worth in December. First flight of the aircraft scheduled for December 1996.
Rep. Bob Stump (R-Ariz.) will be vice chairman of the House National Security Committee, Rep. Floyd Spence, the panel's chairman, announced. Spence also announced the appointment of vice chairman to the panel's subcommittees. Names of subcommittee chairman and members have already been released (DAILY, Jan. 24, page 111).
The U.S. agreement with North Korea provides a "relative guarantee" but not an "absolute guarantee" that there will be no new nuclear weapons in North Korea, Defense Secretary William J. Perry told Congress Tuesday. Perry and Secretary of State Warren Christopher defended the agreement the U.S. negotiated with North Korea last October in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Perry said the agreement has achieved "a critical initial stage of compliance...a verified halt to the North Korean nuclear program."
"DOD is directed to (1) develop for deployment at the earliest possible date a cost-effective, operational anti-ballistic missile defense system to protect the U.S. against ballistic missile threats (e.g., accidental or unauthorized launches or Third World attacks); (2) implement as quickly as possible advanced theater missile defense systems; and (3) report to Congress within 60 days of enactment with a plan for both missile defense systems."
Right-sizing the defense infrastructure is one of the next steps to be taken by the Dept. of Defense, said Paul Kaminsky, the Pentagon's acquisition chief. Speaking Tuesday at a conference in Arlington, Va., Kaminsky said that the size of DOD infrastructure has only been reduced 18%, lagging far behind reductions in force structure and procurement.
President Clinton repeated his pledge Tuesday night to increase defense spending by $25 billion over the next six years, but that didn't impress Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and other leading Republicans.
Defense Secretary William J. Perry said yesterday that if Congress approves a balanced budget constitutional amendment, he would reduce force structure before he would cut procurement-but he may have a hard time doing so. Pentagon Comptroller John Hamre, who accompanied Perry before the House Appropriations national security subcommittee, testified that the Defense Dept. has estimated that the range of cuts it will have to absorb between fiscal 1996 and 2002, when the budget is supposed to be in balance, would be between $110 billion and $520 billion.
Sluggish jetliner deliveries, heavier debts and more spending on research and development pushed Boeing's 1994 net income down nearly a third to $856 million-the first dip below $1 billion since 1989. Tax breaks and stronger defense and space earnings helped, but only a little. At $4.74 billion for the year, defense and space sales were 8% ahead of 1993's pace, thanks mostly to Boeing's expanded Space Station responsibilities. Operating profits for that segment soared 38% to $303 million.
Air France chief Christian Blanc says the carrier will have to cancel all its outstanding equipment orders, but could return to a buying mode in two years. "Not only are we going to sell planes but we have decided some days ago that we will not exercise our options with Airbus and Boeing," Blanc told the Le Monde newspaper in Paris. "We have even cancelled orders taken by the Air France company" as part of a plan to cut purchases by another one billion francs this year after spending most of 1994 tightening the belts.
The first Russian space launch of 1995 featured the first U.S. spacecraft to ride atop a Russian launch vehicle. A Cosmos-3M booster, launched from the Russian Space Force's Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 10:54 p.m. EST Jan. 23, orbited a triple payload which included a Russian Tsikada satellite as a primary payload, with the Swedish ASTRID and American FAIsat spacecraft as piggybacks.
TRW Space&Electronics Group has leased one of the C-band transponders it controls aboard the NASA-owned Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) over the Atlantic to a Denver firm, Western Tele- Communications Inc. (WTCI). WTCI will use the satellite link to relay CD-quality musical programming to Europe for rebroadcast by International Cablecasting Technologies, TRW said. The new service will allow International Cablecasting to increase its Digital Music Express service from 30 to as many as 120 channels, TRW said.
Torrential rains in California and warm winter temperatures in the eastern U.S. have been traced to a strong "El Nino" event spotted in the Pacific by the U.S./French Topex/Poseidon ocean elevation satellite, NASA reported. Data gathered from the radar altimeter aboard the satellite from October through December 1994 indicate a large "Kelvin wave" moving eastward across the equatorial Pacific toward the west coast of South America. The Kelvin wave is associated with the El Nino phenomenon.
The U.K. Defense Ministry insisted yesterday that no decision on an army support helicopter buy is likely for several months, denying a report in a London newspaper that MOD had already decided to buy only Boeing Chinook helicopters and to shun the Anglo-Italian EH101.
Switching from nuclear to conventional carriers would keep Newport News Shipbuilding's employment levels steady while meeting the Bottom-Up Review's 12-carrier force goal, but would be 25% cheaper than the plan now outlined in the BUR and the Navy's Recapitalization Plan, the General Accounting Office said.
British Aerospace and France's Giat Industries are studying the idea of combining development and production of weapon systems and ammunition. A BAe spokesperson said there is overlap "in what we produce." The talks so far have looked only at broad areas for potential cooperation and haven't narrowed to specific production areas, the spokesperson said. The outcome of negotiations depends on whether both sides anticipate cost reductions and increases in market share from joint ventures.
Peacekeeping mistakes in Bosnia and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's approach to his role as Desert Storm commander have "significantly" altered NATO's approach to intelligence-gathering, giving the focus of intelligence to the warfighting CINC, a senior official of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) told reporters here yesterday. These two experiences have "forced this place to come of age," the official said, noting resulting organizational changes and equipment upgrades at SHAPE headquarters.
