Orbital Sciences Corp., Germantown, Md., is being awarded a $13,598,506 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for the following components applicable to the Digital Terrain Equipment on the F-16 and A-10 aircraft: 827 Mega Data Transfer Cartridges, 732 Battery Assemblies, 61 Upgraded Data Transfer Units, 216 Miniature Small Computer System Interface Devices, and one Small Computer System Interface Device. Expected contract completion date is March 31, 2002. Solicitation issue date was March 22, 2000. Negotiation completion date was July 19, 2000.
SATELLITE REVIEW: The U.S. government plans to review whether American companies can sell sharper satellite images of Israel. By law, U.S. companies can't sell images of Israel that are sharper than those sold by non-U.S. companies. About two years ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration set the bar at a resolution of two meters. But NOAA plans to conduct a periodic review in October or November to determine whether more precise images are now available from foreign companies, says Charles Wooldridge, NOAA's remote sensing licensing coordinator.
AIMING HIGHER: As the roaring U.S. economy and rising operational tempo of military life combine to intensify the always-thorny problem of retaining expensively trained pilots, the Pentagon's top recruiting and retention official thinks it may be time to think out of the box. "Our analyses would indicate that the airlines need lots more people, even, than we produce," says Vice Adm. Patricia A.
LIGHTS OUT: Astronomers have mounted a push to counter a problem they say threatens to sever humankind's connection with the cosmos - light pollution. Sprawling cities that beam their light toward the stars are cutting the night-sky visibility available even from remote sites in Hawaii, Chile and the Canary Islands, where city lights still can be seen. Meeting in Manchester, U.K., the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union calls for better lighting design.
The U.S. Air Force launched a $1 billion imaging radar satellite aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Titan IVB heavy-lift rocket Thursday, less than a half-hour after an Ariane 44LP took two big commercial communications satellites to orbit.
HYPERVELOCITY MISSILE: Industry proposals for the Compact Kinetic Energy Missile (CKEM) are being sought by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command. AMCOM says in a broad agency announcement that it envisions a four-foot-long, 50-pound, Mach 6.5-plus weapon with a range of up to eight kilometers. Carried by helicopters and vehicles, it would be "smaller, lighter and faster than the current generation kinetic energy missile, but still capable of providing overmatching lethality against advanced armor," AMCOM says.
Engineers at Johnson Space Center are evaluating a potential problem with the control moment gyros for the International Space Station that could impact the planned Oct. 5 launch date for the mission that will deliver the gyros to the orbiting outpost. A JSC spokesman said Friday the issue grew out of a component failure during thermal acceptance testing on a spare gyro. At temperatures on the order of minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, a Hall effect sensor designed to measure the speed of the gyro suffered a failure attributed to contracting epoxy.
Boeing is shedding about 1.5 million square feet of its manufacturing base in Puget Sound and Kansas, as well as outsourcing some work, as it looks to use its capacity more efficiently. The company said Friday that 3,500 employees will either be retrained or transferred as a result of the moves, but normal attrition and increased business should prevent layoffs. Company officials said the actions had been decided on without direct consultation with suppliers. The officials also declined to say how much Boeing expects to save from the moves.
DEAL RECOMMENDED? Although there are indications that the Pentagon will recommend that the Federal Trade Commission approve Boeing Co.'s $3.75 billion acquisition of Hughes Electronics space and communications business, a Defense Dept. spokesman says the proposed deal remains under review by DOD. "We have nothing to say yet," DOD spokesman Glenn Flood tells The DAILY.
The Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter team and Dutch partners have demonstrated technology intended to allow pilots of the American company's JSF to conduct complex training simulations while flying their own aircraft, Lockheed Martin said. The technique, called Embedded Training, promises more realism than ground-based simulations and eliminates the cost of supplying extra aircraft for training missions, Lockheed Martin said.
The U.S. Air Force said it is now storing Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles, or CALCMs, at Andersen AFB, Guam, making it the first installation outside the continental U.S. to store the weapon, which has a range of 600 miles.
DEFENSE TRADE: Of the 81 initiatives that the Defense Dept. listed last year as designed to facilitate cross-border industrial relationships and address possible security risks, 43 are ongoing, 21 are completed and 17 were terminated, placed on hold, found to be duplicative or deemed to be of uncertain status, the General Accounting Office says in a new report. Ongoing initiatives include: identifying barriers to foreign competition in U.S.
MARS EXPRESS: Europe remains on track to launch its Mars Express spacecraft on June 1, 2003, with the activation of the test bench that will be used to simulate the electrical environment on board the spacecraft. Crews at the old Matra Marconi Space facility in Toulouse, France, that is now known as Astrium SAS completed the bench right on time, marking a one-year milestone for the project. The bench consists of some 8,000 connections through about eight miles of wire, laid out on four tables to represent the four sides of the spacecraft.
PEER REVIEW: Space science funding for 16 missions peer reviewed this year has not been cut, but managers of some low-priority missions may be unhappy that there aren't enough funds to keep their missions going, says the head of the NASA headquarters office that oversees research funding. Guenter Riegler says there has been no change in the amount of money available for the 16 missions since he outlined it for them early in March, despite arguments by space scientists to the contrary (DAILY, Aug. 18).
ITT Industries' Night Vision Div. has won a U.S. Navy competition to produce and deliver 2,252 AN/AVS-9 Night Vision Intensifier Sets over the next year. Total value of the multi-year contract from Naval Air Systems Command is $43 million, with the first-year base contract valued at $13.1 million. Deliveries of the sets, with fourth-generation image intensifier technology, are set to begin early next year.
INTERGRAPH GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS won the five-year Central Design Activity technical services blanket purchase agreement from the U.S. Air Force for information technology support to the Material Systems Group and the Standard Systems Group.
The hydraulic door of the F-22 fighter's internally mounted M61A2 six-barreled 20mm gun was successfully tested during a recent flight of Raptor 4002 over the Mojave Desert in California, the U.S. Air Force said. The test was intended to see how the door would react when opened at high speeds. The door is located on the aircraft's upper right wing. The gun, built by General Dynamics in Burlington, Vt., can fire 6,000 rounds per minute. The F-22 usually carries 480 rounds.
GKN Westland Aerospace opened a new 140-job assembly facility in Montgomery, Ala. "GKN decided to close its Avonmouth facility near Bristol, United Kingdom," and about "two-thirds of the work done there will be transferred to Alabama, representing about $20 million in annual revenue," said Jana Smith, vice president of programs. "We decided to rely on the Montgomery facility to help us with this new work."
Boeing is moving machining and chemical processing work now done at its Kent, Wash., Military Aircraft and Missiles shop during the next two years as part of a company-wide cost-saving plan that also includes moving the follow-on work on various military and space programs out of the Puget Sound area.
Boeing Australia has won $A500 million in contracts to maintain and upgrade the Royal Australian Air Force's F-111 aircraft over a ten-year period. The Boeing unit was selected over a unit of Lockheed Martin. The contracts will involve deep upgrade maintenance and associated integrated logistics support, as well as the design, test and incorporation of future upgrades, the government said.
HERBERT J. COLEMAN, who retired from Aviation Week&Space Technology in 1986 as managing editor-bureaus, died in Northern Virginia on Aug. 13 from complications of diabetes. He was 79. He joined Aviation Week in 1958. After leaving the magazine, Coleman was in charge of the "Early Bird," the Pentagon's daily roundup of news.
CONCORDE COMMITTEE: Britain and France have agreed to set up a committee to find a way to get the Concorde back in the air. French and British aviation authorities grounded the aircraft on Thursday following the fatal crash of an Air France Concorde near Paris on July 25. "The two parties share the same determination to find a solution to put the Concorde back into service in sure conditions," said French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN'S Integrated Systems Sector said Georgetta A. Wolff has been named vice president, assistant general counsel and sector counsel. Wolff, 52, joined the company in 1983. Most recently, she served as the associate sector counsel responsible for the Air Combat Systems business area and corporate real estate. Wolff succeeds W. Burks Terry, who was promoted to corporate vice president and general counsel.
WEATHER READY: Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will have a fallback in orbit if one of the big Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) should fail. With hurricane season already underway, NOAA and NASA, its satellite procurement agent, have finished testing the new GOES-11 satellite and stored it in orbit. Launched on May 3, the satellite is ready to replace GOES-8, which monitors the Atlantic approaches a hurricane would take, or GOES-10, which watches over the West Coast and Hawaii.
DEMOCRATS DEFENDED: Former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who was active on aerospace issues when she was in Congress from 1992 to 1998, says the newly adopted Democratic platform shows the party is committed to having a modern military. "This year's convention platform solidly supports a strong defense," Harman says in a speech to the Democratic National Convention. "It embraces a more modern military doctrine.
