ROBERT B. PIRIE JR. will be nominated by President Clinton as under secretary of the Navy. Pirie would replace Jerry Hultin, who has left. Pirie is currently the assistant secretary of the Navy for installations and environment, and has served in this position since March 1994.
Mexico's Solidaridad I communications satellite has stopped working entirely and is "irretrievably lost," Satelites Mexicanos., S.A. (Satmex) has declared. Loral Space&Communications, a partner in Satmex with Mexican telecom company Principia, said the battery power supply on the Hughes-built satellite was totally exhausted by Tuesday night, after engineers had spent 48 hours trying to restart the backup on-board control processor that failed over the weekend (DAILY, Aug. 29).
An Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) Block II missile dispensed 13 Brilliant Anti-Armor (BAT) submunitions against an array of 21 targets during a flight test yesterday at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Lockheed Martin said. Seven of the BATs hit the remotely controlled targets, with six of those hits being in vulnerable areas, according to the company's Missiles and Fire Control unit, Dallas, the ATACMS Block II prime contractor.
A new target for testing of theater missile defense systems will be ready for demonstration testing in fiscal 2005 under a program planned by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. The Theater Missile Defense Liquid Booster System will be "low-cost, highly flexible, threat representative liquid booster" that will "meet the requirements for a new TMD target system," the command said in an Aug. 29 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Pilot error caused a U.S. Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter to make a hard landing in Kuwait last Dec. 15, an Air Force accident investigation board report concludes.
ENVIRONMENT CANADA, the Canadian Space Agency and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada have conducted their second balloon flight through the ozone layer, successfully testing a new pointing system at the same time, allowing scientists to measure the composition of the atmosphere continuously. The 20-story Middle Atmosphere Nitrogen Trend Assessment (MANTRA) balloon was launched from Vanscoy, Saskatchewan, on Aug. 29 and reached an altitude of 35 kilometers before descending for recovery about 280 kilometers away from the launch site.
The State Dept. today is instituting seven new measures that it believes show its commitment to defense export reform. The measures, part of the Defense Trade Security Initiative (DTSI), come as State begins to ease export rules and expand licensing agreements between U.S. industry and NATO allies, as well as Japan and Australia. They were welcomed by industry. The reforms are part of the 17 DTSI reform measures announced by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Florence, Italy.
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES yesterday took delivery of the first of 26 767-400ER airliners it has ordered from Boeing. The extended-range 767 derivative is part of a fleet modernization plan currently under way at Continental. Three more will be delivered this year, with the rest slated for delivery between 2001 and 2005.
A New Jersey Air National Guard pilot ejected safely from an F-16C yesterday afternoon and the aircraft crashed in the ocean about a mile and a half off Atlantic City, N.J., following engine problems. The pilot was picked up by a New Jersey State Police boat and taken to a medical facility for evaluation.
Rep. Curt Weldon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Research and Development Subcommittee, has joined a member of the Russian Duma in urging Presidents Clinton and Putin to develop a protocol to promote cooperative responses to naval emergencies like last month's sinking of Russia's Kursk submarine.
The U.S. Army could significantly reduce the number of helicopter crashes caused by Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT) by equipping its fleet with relatively inexpensive crash-warning systems, according to a report to be released later this month by the Frontiers of Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank headed by former Sen. Malcom Wallop (R-Wyo.).
NASA'S MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER has honored 18 TRW employees for their contributions to the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The NASA center's director, Art Stephenson, awarded the agency's second-highest award for non-civil service employees - the Public Service Medal - to the 18 current and former Space&Electronics Group employees for their work on the telescope, which was launched in August 1999.
As part of a "comprehensive and continuing" business revamp to restore profitability, FLIR Systems Inc. of Portland, Ore., is slimming down again, this time cutting 50 of its 775-person workforce. "While our revenues continue to grow and the markets for our products remain strong, our operational cost structure is unacceptably high," said John Hart, acting president and CEO. Hart characterized the reductions as "difficult but necessary steps" to bolster FLIR's financial health.
American allies in Europe shouldn't fear that the U.S. deployment of a National Missile Defense will leave them exposed to a missile attack because the U.S. will almost certainly share the technology with them, a former Bush administration official said.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO scientists hope to get a better handle on the mass, speed and trajectory of dust particles in low-Earth orbit with an experiment aboard the U.S. Air Force's Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS) set for launch on Jan. 15, 2001. The university's Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research has supplied a space dust experiment (SPADUS) for the satellite, which will spend three years in polar orbit at an altitude of 516 miles.
French aviation safety authorities yesterday confirmed the hypothesis that a burst tire triggered the fire that brought down an Air France Corcorde taking off from Roissy - Charles de Gaulle airport July 25. A preliminary report by the French Bureau Enquetes Accidents (BEA) said there were no guarantees the same type of mishap would not happen again. The report suggested that a metal strip on the runway, possibly from another aircraft, may have contributed to the accident, but did not reach any firm conclusions.
PIONEER ASTRONAUTICS, a Lakewood, Colo., firm that includes Mars exploration advocate Robert Zubrin, has demonstrated a sun-driven inflation technique that may one day enable aerial reconnaissance of the Red Planet by balloons floating in its thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere. In the test, funded by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Small Business Innovative Research project, the 25 cubic foot balloon inflated in less than a minute at an altitude of about 100,000 feet over Byers, Colo., using nothing more than the heat of the sun acting on methanol sealed inside.
SIRIUS-4, a backup satellite for Sirius Satellite Radio under construction by Loral, was "significantly damaged" in a production mishap and won't be ready in December as originally planned. A Sirius spokesperson said Loral would bear the cost of repairs, with details of the mishap to be released next month after an investigation. Sirius expects to begin offering as many as 100 channels of digital satellite radio in the fourth quarter, following launch of its second and third satellites aboard Russian Proton rockets in September and October.
BVR Systems and Elisra Electronic Systems Ltd., both based in Israel, closed a share purchase agreement announced last June. BVR issued Elisra, a subsidiary of Koor Industries Ltd., one million shares at $5.00 a share and a warrant to buy up to 1.5 million shares more at $6.00 per share. The warrant is valid for three years from issuance and may be exercised in whole or in part. Elisra and Koor hold 44.6% of the company's outstanding capital, and Elisra gained control of BVR's board of directors.
Northrop Grumman's Logicon unit is working under a $16 million contract from Raytheon Co. to provide inventory management support services to the U.S. Navy's Mk. 48 Heavyweight Torpedo Intermediate Maintenance Activity. "This contract continues our long association with the Navy's heavyweight torpedo program and provides us with a stronger presence in the Pacific Rim to pursue additional services contracts in areas such as underwater weapons, underwater ranges and manned and unmanned vehicles," said Manuel Macedo, program manager, Logicon.
Honeywell International tapped Pacific Aerospace&Electronics to provide navigational electronic packaging modules with initial orders for 8,800 devices. The Wenatchee, Wash., company will make precision electronic ring laser gyro modules for systems using the GPS satellite constellation.
The U.S. Air Force wants a target to replace Northrop Grumman and Raytheon targets as they are depleted in tests and training at Tyndall AFB, Fla. The Air Force Subscale Target (AFSAT) would support tests of weapon systems and support live air-to-air missile training, the service's Air Armament Center, Eglin AFB, Fla., says in an Aug. 31 Commerce Business Daily notice. Offerors with candidates are being invited to a Sept. 27 meeting at Eglin.
F-22 STATIC TEST TEAM has completed 13 or the 19 planned air vehicle ultimate load static tests on the aircraft, the Air Force said. The latest event, it said, was designed to test the F-22's mid-fuselage structure and engine inlet ducts. Loads were based on maneuver loads and engine inlet duct pressures that the jet could experience during operational use.
First automatic landings with Raytheon Co.'s Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (JPALS) were accomplished last month in Naval Air Systems Command tests with an F/A-18A Hornet at NAS Patuxent River, Md., the company said. JPALS, which combines GPS, datalink and computer technology, showed its ability to automatically bring planes aboard an aircraft carrier with an accuracy of less than one meter, Raytheon said.
While the U.S. Marine Corps considers its near-term readiness high, it comes at the price of sacrificing long-term readiness by continuing to postpone aviation modernization needs, the service's second in command said yesterday.
