BOEING has been awarded a $23.3 million long lead contract for five F-15E aircraft. Expected contract completion date is Aug. 31, 2004. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, issued the contract.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Linthicum Heights, Md., is being awarded a $12,100,000 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for two missile tracking modification kits applicable to the AN/TPS-75 ground-based tactical radar. This effort supports engineering and manufacturing development and pre-production testing of the modification kits, which will incorporate missile tracking capability into the AN/TPS-75 radar. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 12, 2002. Solicitation issue date was May 15, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Oct. 18, 2000.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Fort Worth, Tex., is being awarded an $11,660,000 modification to a undefinitized-contract-action contract to provide for long lead items in support of production of 69 Common Configuration Implementation Program kits for the Modular Mission Computer (MMC) and the Color Multi-Function Display Set (CMFDS) on the F-16 aircraft. Expected contract completion date is Dec. 21, 2000. Negotiation completion date was Nov. 17, 2000. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity.
DRS Technologies won a $3.9 million, 30-month contract from the U.S. Army to develop demonstration infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs) for the RAH-66A Comanche armed reconnaissance and AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters. If the company's Standard Advanced Dewar Assemblies Type I (SADA I) technology developed under the award meets performance requirements, DRS said, it will qualify as the sole domestic supplier of advanced SADA I focal plane array for the Army's aircraft modernization programs.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Bethpage, N.Y., is being awarded a $30,518,914 modification to a previously awarded firm fixed price contract (N00019-00-C-0242) for the fabrication of ten EA-6B Wing Center Section Kits. Work will be performed in St. Augustine, Fla. (60%) and Bethpage, N.Y. (40%), and is expected to be completed by February 2004. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.
The Pentagon yesterday announced a change in the way it develops and procures new weapon and information systems, replacing techniques that were geared to cycles of 15-20 years with processes that stress flexibility.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Fort Worth, Tex., was awarded on Oct. 31, 2000, a $10,958,398 option to a firm-fixed-price contract to provide for Combined Life-Time Support through September 2001 for select avionics systems, including the Modular Mission Computer, on the F-16 aircraft. Approximately 21% of this effort supports foreign military sales to Taiwan and approximately 46% supports foreign military sales to the European Participating Air Forces (Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway). Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2001.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Melbourne, Fla., is being awarded a $6,668,883 option to a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract which will extend by two months the pre-Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase of the Radar Technology Insertion Program supporting the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft. Expected contract completion date is Dec. 31, 2000. Negotiation completion date was June 22, 2000. Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., is the contracting activity. Cynthia Burrows, (781) 377-6679 is the POC.
ORBOTECH, a manufacturer of optical inspection systems based in Israel, won a $6.9 million order from Honeywell International. The company will produce its Vision Blaser-AP automated optical inspection system for Honeywell's Advanced Circuit Group.
Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, Colorado Springs, Colo., was awarded on Oct. 31, 2000 a $34,566,820 option to a cost-plus-award-fee contract to provide for fiscal year 2001 hardware and software maintenance for the Command and Control Segment of the Air Force Satellite Control Network. This effort also includes systems and site level engineering and integration support. Expected contract completion date is Oct. 31, 2001. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles AFB, Calif., is the contracting activity. Dennis Dill, (310) 363-1681 is the POC.
AIRPORT SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL INC. won $7 million in navigation aid contracts in the U.S., Asia and Africa. The Overland Park, Kans., company said the largest deal was a subcontract from Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) for instrument landing system localizer antennas for installation at domestic and international U.S. AIR FORCE bases.
The Senate's bipartisan National Security Working Group has gotten a new lease on life, as senators agreed late last month to keep the two-year-old group going for another two years. Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) said the group is intended to be the Senate's "non-partisan eyes and ears on defense and national security issues."
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., Stratford, Conn., has been awarded a $39.5 contract modification a multi-year contract for six Black Hawk UH-60L helicopters, the Pentagon said yesterday. Work is slated for completion by Dec. 30, 2003, It said. The U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., awarded the contract.
Lockheed Martin's X-35A Joint Strike Fighter demonstrator made its ninth flight yesterday, using the afterburner for the first time and flying at altitudes up to 25,000 feet and speeds up to .85 Mach. Boeing officials, meanwhile, are looking to the end of this week or early next week to resume flying their X-32A following a hiatus to resolve a braking issue.
The Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD) has become operational on the F-16 and the B-52, having received a declaration of Required Assets Available (RAA) for both aircraft from the U.S. Air Force. WCMD, a kit that adds a guidance unit and movable tail fins to correct for the effects of weather and wind, turns existing cluster munitions into all-weather precision-guided weapons. The program, one of the AF's first streamlined Acquisition Category 2 (ACAT-2) programs, completed a successful operational test and evaluation this summer.
Boeing may not have complied with U.S. export control laws in some technology shipments to Russia and Japan in connection with the International Space Station, NASA's Inspector General found in an audit. In a Sept. 19 report recently posted on the Internet, the NASA IG found export record-keeping at Boeing's Huntington Beach, Calif., facility - originally a McDonnell Douglas plant - was inadequate, and once records were located under subpoena found instances where the items shipped did not match the export control documentation.
Team SBL IFX Joint Venture, Canoga Park, Calif., is being awarded a $97,350,213 modification to a cost-plus-award-fee contract to provide for the second increment (through November 2001) of the Space Based Laser Program's Integrated Flight Experiment project. The project will mature and integrate the component technologies and will include a component and system-level test program leading to a proof-of-concept-on-orbit demonstration.
SYS, of San Diego, established a new Command, Control, Communications, Computer and Intelligence (C4I) division. The company said the move is consistent with its "aggressive growth objectives," and anticipates that the new unit will offer a "dynamic platform" to build new contracts and acquisitions. Kenneth D. Regan, formerly corporate VP for mergers and acquisitions at Advanced Communication System Inc., said C4I's initial customer base includes SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego and Program Executive Office Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation.
STARTING EARLY: Alexei Leonov, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man to leave the safety of a spaceship for an extravehicular activity and later flew as a member of the Soyuz crew that docked with an Apollo capsule in 1975, says the time to start training the next crew to Mars is now. "I believe when this Space Station is in the middle of its service life we'll go back to the moon as an intermediate step to the Mars program," Leonov, now a Moscow businessman, said through an interpreter last week.
The MD-11 will be the next long-range widebody jet freighter for UPS Airline, which will acquire 13 pre-owned aircraft from Boeing over the next four years, according to UPS Chairman and CEO Jim Kelly. The deal also includes options for another 22, which Kelly said could bring the value of the agreement to more than $2 billion. The optional aircraft would be delivered between 2005 and 22010. Boeing will convert the aircraft to freighters which UPS plans on use on flights to Europe and Asia.
NO-FLY ZONE: Boeing hasn't flown its X-32A Joint Strike Fighter demonstrator since Oct. 24 when a test pilot diverted to one of the dry lake beds around Edwards AFB, Calif., because of concern about a potential braking problem. Flight-testing, however, is expected to resume this week. "We've got a fix," a spokesman said, but he was unable to elaborate. The company was slated to continue ground testing during the weekend, and the activity will likely continue through the first of the week.
TAX BREAK STALLS: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) continues to show little interest in having a separate House vote on a tax measure that could save defense exporters big bucks. The measure would revise Foreign Sales Corporation laws to conform them with a World Trade Organization ruling and avoid trade sanctions. It also would eliminate a "discriminator" that limits arms exporters to half the tax reduction benefits enjoyed by other U.S. exporters that use FSCs.
Improvements in integrated logistic support for military engines is anticipated from a strategic partnering arrangement reached on Oct. 31 by the Ministry of Defense's Defense Aviation Repair Agency (DARA) and Rolls-Royce. Owned by the MOD, DARA has provided depot-level repair and overhaul facilities for fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft of the Royal Navy, Army and the RAF, from four sites in the U.K. since its formation on April 1 last year.
CRUNCH TIME: Russia's RSC Energia should be able to keep Space Station Alpha supplied with the Progress capsules it needs for reboost and hazard avoidance for about another year, but after that it's going to be a problem for the cash-strapped aerospace giant, Russian space sources say. The Khrunichev factory can fill the gap by fitting out its FGB-2 space tug as a gap-filler for two or three Progress vehicles (DAILY, Oct. 31), but Khrunichev is working with Boeing to rig the tug as a habitable commercial Station module.
