Growing regional instability and larger weapons buys by neighboring countries are putting the Australian government under pressure to increase defense spending. Defense Secretary Allan Hawke notes that the Australian defense budget accounts for only 1.8% of the country's gross domestic product, and estimates that spending should increase to 5% of GDP to get the right balance. Singapore and China are spending more than 4% of GDP on defense.
Japan has "frozen for the time being" development of an unmanned space shuttle while it tries to choose a launch platform, according to a top Japanese space official. Mitsuyuki Ueda of the Aeronautics and Space Development Div. of the Science and Technology Agency said yesterday the H-2 Orbiting Plane Experiment (HOPE X) was shelved after questions arose about the best way to launch it.
The first full-time crew to board the International Space Station will face four months of unpacking, activating and outfitting in a mission Station managers in the U.S. and Russia see as a test flight for what they hope will become a permanent human presence off the planet.
The strength of civil aerospace emerged as a major surprise at last week's Farnborough Air Show, Merrill Lynch's top aerospace analyst, Byron Callan, tells clients, as the airframers have hiked expectations for 2001 and 2002.
The 155mm lightweight howitzer being developed for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is experiencing significant schedule delays and rising costs, the General Accounting Office said in a new report. Delays in developing the howitzer mean the Dept. of Defense may not have "sufficient information by March 2002 to make an informed decision to begin full-rate production," the GAO said in the report, "Defense Acquisitions: Howitzer Program Experiencing Cost Increases and Schedule Delays" (GAO/NSIAD-00-182).
LOCKHEED MARTIN said it has renamed its Electronic Platform Integration and Federal Systems business units based in Owego, N.Y., as Lockheed Martin Systems Integration-Owego. It includes the business units of Aerospace Systems, Distribution Technologies, Helo Systems, Systems Solutions, Lockheed Martin Canada, and Lockheed Martin UK Integrated Systems.
Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems Div. has awarded a contract expected to be worth more than $3 million to LaBarge Inc. for printed circuit board assemblies that will go into the AN/TPS-59(V)3E Theater Missile Defense radar. The U.S. Marine Corps uses the radar system to provide long-range surveillance and ground control intercept capability in the field. LaBarge's Manufacturing Services Group will produce the electronic assemblies at its Tulsa, Okla., factory, with work beginning this month.
Hansel E. Tookes has been named chairman of Raytheon Aircraft Co., parent Raytheon Co. said yesterday. Tookes, who was elected a Raytheon executive vice president in June, has served as president and chief executive officer of Raytheon Aircraft Co. since January. He joined Raytheon last September as president and chief operating officer of RAC. He had been president of Pratt&Whitney's Large Military Engines Group since 1996.
The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) radar will be tested as part of the U.S. Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) for the first time during an exercise off the Atlantic coast beginning this Friday and running through Aug. 19. The test, conducted by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), is part of an effort to increase the range of the radar. A BMDO spokesman said it marks the first time the PAC-3 system will be used "in that position with that radar."
The new Republican Party platform envisions a more aggressive approach to ballistic missile defense and other high-tech national security programs if the GOP wins the White House and keeps control of Congress this fall. The platform, released late Monday, says the Clinton Administration has devoted "inadequate resources" to the military, has "persistently dismissed" the ballistic missile threat to the United States, and has done little to slow the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
RAYTHEON SYSTEMS CO., Sensors&Electronic Systems, El Segundo, Calif., has been awarded a $27 million contract for technical engineering services for F/A-18 radar and AN/APG-65 and AN/APG-73 radar for the U.S. Navy and the governments of Australia, Finland and Switzerland, the Pentagon reported. The contract, expected to be completed by July 2005, combines purchases for the USN (98%) and the governments of Australia (1%), Finland (.5%) and Switzerland (.5%) under the Foreign Military Sales program.
GENERAL DYNAMICS won a $91 million U.S. Navy engineering and manufacturing development contract for the Area Air Defense Commander (AADC) Capability Program.
Crew members on the upcoming STS-106 mission will spend 11 or 12 days in orbit cramming in as much work as they can to get the International Space Station ready for its first full-time inhabitants, setting the pace for a relentless Station assembly process that is scheduled to see a record-setting 15 launches in the coming year alone - eight of them U.S. Space Shuttles.
The U.S. Air Force said it took delivery of its eighth Northrop Grumman E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft at its 93rd Air Control Wing, Robin AFB, Ga., on July 27. It was the fourth such delivery this fiscal year. Delivered four and a half weeks early, the plane's arrival at Robins effectively doubled the size of the fleet available to commanders in one year's time, the service said. Aircraft 5, 6 and 7 were all delivered ahead of schedule this fiscal year.
Joint Program Office for the Boeing Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche officially opened yesterday in Huntsville, Ala., Boeing said Charles Allen, Boeing Sikorsky joint program director, said the new location will provide a closer working relationship with the U.S. Army. The office, which manages RAH-66 development for Boeing and Sikorsky, previously alternated between sites near Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Conn., and Boeing in Philadelphia, Boeing said.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORP. yesterday extended its offer for the common stock of Comptek Research Inc. to Aug. 23 at midnight EDT. "The extension is necessary in part because the Securities and Exchange Commission has not yet declared effective the registration statement for the shares to be issued by Northrop Grumman in exchange for shares in Comptek Research," Northrop Grumman said. It said the offer was slated to expire on Aug. 2 at midnight. As of the close of business July 31, it said, 1,540,796 shares of Comptek Research common stock had been tendered.
The Defense Dept. should follow a series of "best practices" to avoid the kind of "late-cycle churn" that has plagued the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system and the DarkStar unmanned aerial vehicle, the General Accounting Office said in a new report.
Harris Corp. said it will submit a formal bid in response to an FAA request for approaches to a $1.9 billion program to integrate and modernize its telecommunications infrastructure. The aim of the program is to help the agency cut operating costs while improving telecommunications service and reliability. Harris has formed a team of telecommunications companies consisting of BellSouth, Qwest, SBC, Sprint, and Verizon. In addition, Raytheon Systems Co., which has expertise in on-site IT/technical services and support, is a member of the team.
The U.S. Army is making organizational decisions for its battlefield digitization initiative on the assumption that certain systems will be ready by 2004, even though many of them won't be ready, the General Accounting Office said in a report released last week. The Army's digitization initiative is intended to integrate information technologies to acquire, exchange and use battlefield information. The Army plans to equip its first "digitized" corps by 2004 with "Category 1" systems and all available "Category 2" systems.
Last week's Concorde crash near Paris won't affect long-term efforts to perfect commercial supersonic flight, but the goal of economical operations still seems remote, according to Phil Condit, chairman and CEO of Boeing Co.
A long-range reprogramming job has rescued NASA's Deep Space 1 technology testbed for an extended mission to inspect a comet in September 2001. The Deep Space 1 spacecraft operations team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed to rig the probe's camera to work as a star tracker after the real star tracker failed in November 1999.
Boeing and Russia's Khrunichev space production center are working toward a mid-2002 launch for their Commercial Space Module (CSM), a modified Russian Functional Cargo Block (FGB) that is already about 70% complete. But to meet that schedule the U.S./Russian partnership must settle on a final configuration for the module within 90 days, and that will mean getting a better idea of just who the customers for the orbiting facility will be, according to the Boeing executive leading the effort.
Two companies received a total of $21.1 million in contracts to provide the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland AFB, N.M., with laser research support for five years, the Air Force announced. Logicon Technology Solutions, Herndon, Va., was awarded $18.6 million to continue work previously begun in systems analysis, imaging and laser support. Schafer Corp., Chelmsford, Mass., was awarded $2.5 million for continued support in laser devices.
BAE Systems Aerospace Electronics, Inc., Lansdale, Pa., is being awarded a $36,570,000 ceiling priced fixed price incentive fee contract for the design, test, and production of 12 modified band 9/10 transmitters (Band 7/8) for the EA-6B aircraft. Work will be performed in Lansdale, Pa., and is expected to be completed by June 2005. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity (N00019-00-C-0195).
Sea Launch put a Hughes satellite in orbit for PanAmSat Friday evening, returning to commercial space launch operations after a launch failure in March cost ICO Global its first satellite. A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket orbited the PAS-9 satellite following launch at 6:42 p.m. EDT Friday from the Sea Launch Odyssey oceangoing platform, which was positioned on the Equator at 154 degrees West longitude. PanAmSat said it acquired the spacecraft about an hour and 45 minutes later, "confirming a flawless launch."
