The Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va., is being awarded a $25,600,000 increment as part of a $223,390,200 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for research of mathematics, computing sciences, and communications theory. Work will be performed in Bowie, Md. (43%); LaJolla, Calif. (19%), and Princeton, N.J. (38%), and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2005. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on Sept. 7, 2000. The U.S. Army Maryland Procurement Office, Fort George G.
Hexcel Corp. turned in adjusted net income of $2.2 million, or $0.06 per share, versus a loss of $1.1 million, or $0.03 a share for the third quarter of 2000. Including consolidation expenses, the company earned $0.1 million in the third quarter, compared to a $30.1 million loss in same period a year ago.
Technical Products Group Inc. (Intellitec), Deland, Fla., is being awarded a $13,267,553 firm-fixed-price contract for nine Joint Biological Point Detection Systems, with training, technical manuals, systems support packages, and Biological Agent Warning Sensors. Work will be performed in Deland, Fla., and is expected to be completed by Aug. 1, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 16, 2000. The U.S.
Boeing Co., St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $148,109,020 cost-plus-fixed-fee/cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to procure enhancements of organizational, intermediate and depot level support equipment for the Integrated Logistics Program supporting the F/A-18E/F aircraft as well as sustaining engineering and logistics support. Work will be performed in St. Louis, Mo. (73%) and El Segundo, Calif. (27%), and is expected to be completed by December 2005. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured.
Raytheon Co. been awarded a contract from Lockheed Martin to equip the United Arab Emirates' new F-16 Block 60 fighters with fiber optic towed decoys. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, Raytheon said yesterday. The UAE recently agreed to purchase 80 F-16 Block 60s from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.
Two companies have won $6 million contracts from the U.S. Navy to support a variety of cryptologic, intelligence, and communications warfare programs. Scientific Research Corp., Atlanta, and TDS Inc., Marlton, N.J., won the contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Charleston, S.C.
An International Launch Services team sent a big Lockheed Martin satellite into its geostationary transfer orbit Sunday atop a Russian Proton rocket flying from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the 13th Proton launch so far this year.
SHIFT CHANGE: Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques Gansler, although leaving his post in January, has some ideas for moving money around that may help with long-term readiness issues. "Out of my $180 billion budget, about $80 billion of it goes to the very near-term operating and support costs; procurement is about $60 billion - that's the near-term new stuff - and then about $40 billion is for R&D," he explains. "I would like to see us be able to do the readiness and improve our readiness for a lot less than $80 billion...," he says.
V-22 FIXES UNDERWAY: A report by the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation is awaiting fixes to the MV-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor aircraft was declared operationally effective and suitable for land-based operations, but not for sea-based operations, due in part to a problem with the blade fold wing stow (BFWS) system (DAILY, Oct. 16). "The status of my report is that it is in work," says Philip Coyle.
Litton Industries, in a move that surprised observers, said Friday it is thinking about selling its Advanced Electronics Group. Litton's board of directions gave management the green light to "explore" a possible divestiture. On the chopping block are 12 divisions which produce navigation and electronic warfare products, and which contributed about $1.6 billion to Litton's fiscal 2000 and employ 9,500 people.
IRAN SALES STUDIED: Two Republican senators plan to hold a hearing Wednesday to examine allegations that Vice President Al Gore reached a "secret" 1995 agreement with Moscow that allowed Russia to avoid U.S. sanctions for transferring a Kilo class submarine, long-range torpedoes, T-72 tanks and other weapons to Iran. "Without an explicit act of Congress, the vice president did not have the power or authority to commit the U.S. to ignore U.S.
ALL QUIET: National Missile Defense program officials are "reassessing ... options and schedules and cost and what they can achieve in the way of performance," says Philip Coyle, director of Pentagon operational test and evaluation. "If it seems that things are quieter right now [following President Clinton's decision to defer a decision to his successor], it's only because they are going through this period of assessing their options," Coyle says.
Loral Space&Communications tried to draw Wall Street's attention away from Globalstar's struggles to build a toehold in the satellite communications industry, using a conference call Thursday with analysts and investors to highlight its success in spearheading the satellite "industry charge." While Loral is blocked by SEC rules from delving too deeply into quarterly numbers, Chairman and CEO Bernard Schwartz confirmed that earnings for the year were on track to hit previous guidance, or a loss of about $1.75 a share.
LOOSE LIPS: Pentagon bigwigs are getting worried that, in the rush to sell Congress and the public on the effectiveness of a National Missile Defense, the military services have let out too much technical information that could help potential enemies find ways to overcome U.S. defenses. Of particular concern is data on the targets and decoys used in tests of NMD systems. Watch for a crackdown of public information, warns Army Lt. Gen. John Costello, head of the Space and Missile Defense Command.
BFGOODRICH AEROSPACE won a $2 million contract from Boeing Satellite Systems - formerly Hughes Space and Communications Co. - to produce an infrared Earth Sensor Assembly (ESA) for the U.S. Navy's Ultra High Frequency Follow-On F-11 satellite. The ESA will be made by the company's Space Flight Systems Div. in Shelton, Conn., and integrated by Boeing on the 601 Spacecraft platform. The company said it is working to build its space systems business into a "significant contributor" to the aerospace revenues.
LAUNCH PROTECTION: Congress has voted to indemnify commercial space launches against third-party liability for another four years, through December 2004, but it wants to know if the government guarantees are the best way to boost the space launch industry.
Former U.S. Central Command Chief Anthony Zinni testified to Congress Thursday that he was never denied any military force he asked for during his three-year tenure, but the equipment he used was getting more expensive to deploy.
United Technologies Corp. and Honeywell walked away from a plan to merge Friday, after catching Wall Street off guard Thursday with a leak about an imminent marriage. UTC said it was terminating the discussions of a $40 billion deal after another bidder for Honeywell stepped up to the plate on Friday morning. The other bidder wasn't identified.
The F-22 program has a lot to complete before it faces a Milestone II decision in December, putting pressure not only on program officials but also on the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, who must determine if the program met all of its Defense Acquisition Board criteria.
NASA's new Office of Biological and Physical Research (BPR) is heading into the International Space Station era with the view that biology will be the physics of the 21st century, the field where the sort of fundamental advances that shaped science in the past century will be made and applied.
JITTER TEST: Engineers at the European Space Agency's facility in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, plan to test the new Hubble Space Telescope solar arrays for jitter before they are launched, something that has never been done on the ground before. The Large Space Simulator, a thermal vacuum chamber, will simulate the light and temperature extremes the Hubble arrays will experience as the telescope orbits the earth with an eye to gauging thermal jitter, or vibration, that might throw off the instrument's highly accurate aim.
'DEATH SPIRAL' CASUALTY: The latest victim of the defense "death spiral" - a term coined by undersecretary of defense, acquisition, technology and logistics Jacques Gansler - is research and development funding. A new study from the Institute of Land Warfare claims U.S. "technological superiority" and "global military dominance" are at risk because R&D accounts have been "siphoned" to pay for revamping and replacing old systems and pushing new systems through the final development phases.
While Textron Inc. hit Wall Street's bottom-line targets on the nose, posting $1.08 a share, the company said it's "immediately accelerating" cost-cutting efforts and restructuring operations - which means it will take about $200 million in one-time charges over the next four or five quarters. "These actions will allow us to continue to post double-digit operating earnings per share growth and position us for even stronger growth beyond 2001," said Textron Chairman and CEO Lewis B. Campbell.
House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Ga.) blocked the House Thursday night from considering a resolution that some lawmakers feared could have sunk a major sale of U.S.-made military helicopters to Turkey. Hastert, who previously supported the resolution, said he was responding to a request by President Clinton, who warned Thursday in letter to the speaker that the resolution could have "far-reaching negative consequences" for U.S. interests, including Turkey's help in containing Iraq's military.
APPLIED TECHNOLOGY: NASA will fork out some $120 million over the next three years to researchers an opportunity to study such potential "high-payoff" technologies as deep space communications using lasers, composites based on carbon nanotubes and "self-directed" rovers for planetary exploration. The agency's Cross-Enterprise Technology Development Program picked 111 proposals from about 1,200 received from universities, industry, private labs and government research facilities.
