JSF ANTENNAS: EDO Corp. will design and develop landing-aid antennas for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter under a $2 million, multi-year contract from Northrop Grumman, the company said. The contract covers the JSF's system development and demonstration and low-rate initial production phases. The contract includes the design and manufacture of antennas for aircraft-carrier and runway landings and the development of a network to transfer information from external sensors to on-board communications systems.
The U.S. Department of Defense needs a full-time top-level manager to oversee the agency's massive financial system to meet a 2007 deadline for streamlining and restructuring its accounting practices, according to the administration's top auditor. U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker and DOD Comptroller Dov S. Zakheim told the Senate Armed Services Committee's readiness subcommittee that aggressive changes would have to be made to meet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's 2007 goal of transforming the agency's financial management systems.
ACQUIRED: Intelsat Ltd. has completed its acquisition of the North American satellites and related customer contracts of Loral Space & Communications Corporation. The acquisition included five Telstar satellites, four already in orbit and one scheduled for launch later this year. The spacecraft have been renamed Intelsat Americas (IA) 5, 6, 7, 13, and 8. The $961.1 million purchase adds full coverage of North America to the Intelsat fleet and expands its customer base in the broadcasting, cable television and corporate networking segments, according to Intelsat.
The Air Force's F/A-22 Raptor tentatively has received the go-ahead from top Pentagon acquisition officials to enter a key testing phase, though the start of that effort likely will be delayed a month or so, the Defense Department announced March 23.
RECOVERY: United Defense Industries will build three additional M88A2 Hercules tank-recovery vehicles for the U.S. Marine Corps under a $7.1 million contract from the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. Deliveries are scheduled through January 2005 for the vehicles.
SURVEILLANCE: DRS Technologies will provide major electro-optical subsystems for the U.S. Army's Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System (LRAS3) under a $24.3 million subcontract from Raytheon's Network Centric Systems, the company said March 22. LRAS3 enables Army troops and Stryker Brigade Combat Teams to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions from safe distances, the company said. The work will be done by DRS Technologies' DRS Optronics unit, of Palm Bay, Fla.
A joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon announced March 22 that it has been awarded a $1.1 billion contract to develop the Non-Line-of-Sight-Launch Space system (NLOS-LS) for the U.S. Army. The sole-source contract, whose award had been expected (DAILY, Oct. 13, 2003), is for a six-year system development and demonstration (SDD) phase. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are expected to split the contract funding evenly.
Enigma Inc., which provides equipment maintenance software for U.S. defense systems, such as the Marine Corps' Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) and the Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), will announce a "significant" Army contract as early as this week, John Snow, the company's vice president of marketing and business development, told The DAILY. Enigma's 3C Platform software allows the warfighter in the field and mechanics and engineers back at bases to quickly assess what is wrong with military equipment and fix it, Snow said.
A problem with some space shuttle components probably won't hurt the return-to-flight schedule as much as agency officials feared last week, program manager William Parsons said March 22.
The Air Force successfully launched the 50th Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite, GPS IIR-11, aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., March 20. The three-stage rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 17B at 12:53 p.m. EST, according to Boeing. The spacecraft was deployed to a transfer orbit 68 minutes later. Lockheed Martin built GPS IIR-11, which features a number of upgrades including an advanced antenna panel that will provide greater power and performance for GPS receivers, according to the company.
A Boeing/Sikorsky industry team has received instructions from the U.S. Army on what components to continue manufacturing from the canceled Army RAH-66 Comanche program, an Army official said. "The Army issued a partial termination for convenience March 18 to stop all work, make no further shipments, and place no further orders relating to the contract, except for the following efforts through September 30," Bob Hunt, a spokesman at the Army Aviation and Missile Command, told The DAILY March 22. Work is to continue on:
Senate appropriators are being asked to restore funding to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) after an attempt to do that was defeated last week by the House Budget Committee. The White House cut funding for MEP, which assists defense contractors and others with technical and business support, in an effort to eventually eliminate the program. The Administration wants to avoid subsidizing competition, according to budget documents.
TRAINING SYSTEMS: Bombardier Aerospace's Military Aviation Training business has been awarded the CF-18 Distributed Combat Training System contract by the government of Canada. The $202.5 million, eight-year contract is to provide Canadian CF-18 pilots with simulator training, the company said.
The U.S. Navy plans to begin deploying an Aegis destroyer in the Sea of Japan in September to provide a forward-based sensor for the Army-operated Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, officials said March 22.
An active protection system for ground vehicles that is a leading candidate for inclusion in the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) will resume testing in the third quarter of this year, according to Mark Middione, program manager at United Defense.
Northrop Grumman announced March 22 that it has added BAE Systems to its team competing to be the prime contractor for the U.S. Army-led Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) intelligence-gathering aircraft.
DYNCORP TECHNICAL SERVICES of Fort Worth, Texas, will provide maintenance and modification services for part of NASA's aircraft fleet under a contract that could be worth up to $200 million. The Aircraft Maintenance and Modification Program Services contract includes support for Johnson Space Center operations at Ellington Field and other facilities, NASA said. The award is a follow-on to an existing services contract. Major subcontractors include Qualified Technical Services Inc., Muniz Engineering Inc., Avpol International and Lockheed Martin Space Operations.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is satisfied with the results of its Grand Challenge unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) competition, despite the lack of a winner, according to spokeswoman Jan Walker. None of the 15 UGVs managed to complete the 142-mile course from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev., with the most successful vehicle traveling about seven miles (DAILY, March 16). DARPA had planned to award $1 million to the team that completed the course in the least time, provided it took them less than 10 hours.
JSF NON-SHUFFLE: The Defense Department, which had been considering changing the order in which the three variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are designed, now plans to keep things the same: conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) first, followed by short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) and then carrier variant (CV). "The plan now is that we will keep the STOVL as the second one in the queue," Navy Secretary Gordon England says in recent congressional testimony. "And it's that way because there's commonality between STOVL and the CTOL.
