PRAGUE - Struggling Czech aircraft manufacturer Aero Vodochody will lay off 200 employees before the end of the year, the company has announced. Aero, which laid off 180 workers last spring, said most of the dismissals would involve white-collar workers. Further job losses may follow next year under proposals being considered by Aero's management.
Boeing Co. has been awarded a $188.3 million contract to proceed with work on the Small Diameter Bomb. The company was chosen over Lockheed Martin Aug. 28 for the system development and demonstration phase of the 250-pound weapon, but the contract wasn't awarded until Oct. 20. The U.S. Air Force said earlier that the award couldn't be made until "all actions required for initiation of the SDD phase" were completed, and until this had been confirmed by the Defense Acquisition Board (DAILY, Aug. 29).
LAUNCH PLANNED: The Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) has tapped International Launch Services to launch its next two satellites, Arabsat 4-A and 4-B, on Proton/Breeze M launch vehicles, ILS said Oct. 21. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Target launch dates are late 2005 and early 2006, ILS said.
VISION: Lockheed Martin plans to establish a $30 million Global Vision Integration Center (GVIC) in Suffolk, Va., to collaborate with customers and industry partners on network-centric systems to enhance national security. The GVIC should be completed next summer to work on operations analysis, modeling and simulation, computers and visualization systems, the company said Oct. 21.
Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has signed an agreement with the Russian company Saratov Aviation to begin developing an experimental unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) derived from Saratov's "EKIP" flying disc technology. A former supplier for the Russian military, Saratov Aviation has produced the Yakolev (Yak) series of military aircraft as well as various components for MiG fighters. The company also builds the Yak-42 series passenger jetliner.
ALCATEL SPACE, a subsidiary of Alcatel, will provide payloads for the fourth-generation Arabsat 4-A and 4-B satellites for EADS Astrium, the prime contractor for the Arabsat program. The satellites are scheduled to enter service in 2006. The satellites will be used by the Arab League's telecommunication organization for direct TV broadcasting, telemetry and data transmissions in North Africa, the Middle East and part of Western Europe, the company said.
More Blue Force tracking units will have to be deployed with ground forces for the system to be completely effective, a panel of military leaders told members of Congress Oct. 20. Vehicles equipped with Blue Force tracking systems also need to have a complementary identification friend or foe (IFF) system to guard against friendly fire, the officials said.
Intelsat Ltd. won the right to purchase nearly half the satellite fleet of Loral Space and Communications in an auction, Loral officials announced Oct. 20 after the close of trading. Intelsat, which bid $1.1 billion to purchase the five satellites, was one of only two bidders, Loral officials said in a statement. EchoStar Communications Corp. was the other bidder.
OPTIONS: In a report released last week, the General Accounting Office reviewed several options the U.S. Air Force could use to acquire 100 Boeing 767 tanker aircraft. The following charts provide an "approximate illustration" of how the options affect the funding requirements for future refueling aircraft purchases beyond the first 100.
NEW DELHI - Saudi Arabia has agreed to buy an unspecified number of Super Mashak attack and training aircraft from Pakistan. The decision was announced by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, the deputy premier and commander of the Saudi Arabia's national guard, during his visit to Pakistan this week to meet with President Pervez Musharaff in Islamabad. A special defense exhibition was organized for Abdullah, a Pakistani diplomat here said Oct.21.
The Marine Corps has developed a plan for replacing aircraft it lost during the Iraq war, a service official said Oct. 21. Some aircraft will be replaced in the near term, while others will be succeeded by systems still under development, said Gen. William Nyland, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, who testified before the House Armed Services Committee's readiness panel during a hearing on reconstituting U.S. military forces.
Lockheed Martin Corp. received a $560 million Air Force contract for seven space launch missions using its version of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). Boeing Co. was to have carried out the missions, but it lost the job because of unethical conduct by some employees when it was developing its variant of the EELV. The Air Force suspended Boeing Launch Services, Boeing Launch Systems and the Delta Program on July 21 (DAILY, July 25).
Because of a congressional budget cut, the U.S. Air Force has told contractors not to perform any work on the Advanced Polar System (APS) satellites in the next phase of the Transformational Communications MILSATCOM (TCM) space segment program, according to Lockheed Martin.
RISK REDUCTION: Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter team launched the first phase of the JSF's data fusion risk reduction flight-test program with recent successful flights over the Naval Air Warfare Center Patuxent River, Md., the company said Oct. 21. The JSF's fusion capability is to combine and prioritize information gathered on onboard and off-board sources. The tests used a Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems BAC 1-11 flying test bed and targets including a Sabreliner aircraft.
Northrop Grumman has publicly unveiled part of its proposed design for the Missile Defense Agency's boost-phase Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program. At an Oct. 21 press briefing, company officials revealed that Northrop Grumman's proposal includes a prototype launcher consisting of an aircraft-transportable Oshkosh M983A2 tractor equipped to carry two interceptor missiles.
Lockheed Martin's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) has been certified for operational use by the JASSM Joint Program Office and the B-52 Systems Program Office, the company said Oct. 21. JASSM, a 2,000-pound cruise missile with a dual-mode penetrator and blast-fragmentation warhead. In addition to the B-52, JASSM is planned for deployment on the B-1, B-2, F-16 and F/A-18, Lockheed Martin said.
General Dynamics is creating a new combat vehicle business unit in Vienna, Austria, called General Dynamics European Land Combat Systems, company officials announced Oct. 20. The unit, which will be part of General Dynamics' Combat Systems business group, will consist of Mowag AG, in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland; General Dynamics Santa Barbara Sistemas, in Madrid, Spain; and Steyr Spezialfahrzeug, based in Vienna, Austria.
NASA advocates in Congress plan to press President Bush to support bigger budgets for the space and aeronautics agency, according to documents obtained by The DAILY. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority leader, and Reps. Bud Cramer (D-Ala.) and Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), both members of the House Appropriations Committee, have asked their House colleagues to sign a letter urging Bush to support a "robust future" for NASA. The agency experienced a 13 percent decline in funding in inflation-adjusted terms from fiscal 1993 to FY '02.
By adopting Internet Protocols (IP) for its worldwide communications, the Department of Defense (DOD) finally will be able to achieve the "holy grail" of having multiple layers of security at the same location or even the same data terminal, according to John Stenbit, assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration.
NEW DELHI - India's defense ministry has approved a $150 million mid-life upgrade program for 10 of its aging Sea King helicopter fleet, used for anti-submarine warfare in the Indian Ocean. The Indian navy has 32 Sea Kings, which are unable to carry out their missions effectively because they cannot fly long distances at sea, navy officials said.
