SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT CORP. subsidiary Sikorsky Support Services Inc. has signed a on-year contract -- worth about $41 million over eight years with seven one-year options -- to provide maintenance for 20 helicopters for the U.S. Air Force's Air Education and Training Command. SSSI will service 10 HH-60G Pave Hawk and six UH-1N helicopters at Kirtland AFB, N.M., as well as four UH-1N aircraft at Fairchild AFB, Wash., Sikorsky said.
ERNEST SCHWEIZER, co-founder of Schweizer Aircraft Corp., died Sunday. He was 88. Schweizer had Parkinson's disease and cancer. He and two brothers, Paul and Bill, founded Schweizer Aircraft of Elmira, N.Y., in 1939.
A Montana company has joined forces with NASA's Johnson Space Center to develop a plasma rocket engine that could trim the travel time on a human mission to Mars by about six months, cutting the physical trauma to crew members of prolonged weightlessness and exposure to radiation.
Paravant Inc.'s Engineering Development Labs (EDL) has secured a $6.5 million contract from Israel's Ministry of Defense to supply hover control systems for CH-53 helicopters. "We have negotiated this award with the Israeli Air Force for more than a year," said Krishan Joshi, chairman and CEO Paravant, headquartered in Morristown, N.J. "EDL was able to evidence their advanced technical expertise, experience, and cost efficiency. This contract validates our unique technological edge."
A new bipropellant engine built by Kaiser Marquardt for Hughes HS601 and HS702 series satellites has lifted its first spacecraft to geosynchonous orbit, Hughes announced yesterday. The Kaiser Marquardt High Performance Thruster, a 445-Newton (100 lbst) monomethyl hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide engine, lifted the PanAmSat Galaxy XR spacecraft to its final orbit following a Jan. 24 Ariane 4 launch (DAILY, Jan. 26). The maneuver raised the satellite's perigee from 124 miles, Hughes said.
TRW reported the second successful flight of a test missile powered by a gel propulsion system that promises greater range and handling safety than current systems. The flight, conducted recently at Eglin AFB, Fla., by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, "demonstrated the reliability and capability that make our gel systems superior for ground-to-ground and air-to-ground missions," said Gary Joseph, manager of TRW's Propulsion Systems Center at Redondo Beach, Calif.
TRW Inc. and Saytam Computer Services Ltd. of Hyderabad, India, plan to form a technology joint venture to develop information systems and provide faster, cheaper information services. The two companies, according to the recently signed letter of intent, plan to establish a U.S.-based sales and marketing company to serve TRW and other multi-national customers. Saytam will hold the majority stake with 76% interest.
Customers signing on to PartsBase.com will have a new window on historical government procurement trends, thanks to a deal with USA Information Services Inc. that links USA's database of government logistics and procurement information to PartsBase.com's e-market. "Providing this type of content is imperative to entering the B2G [business-to-government] sector," Andy Plyler, PartsBase.com chief operating officer, said at a conference here.
Customers looking to unload an airplane coming off lease may soon have another option -- and another arena to sell in -- if FreeMarkets Inc. has anything to say about it.
Raytheon Company, Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded, a $9,000,000 modification to previously awarded contract N00024-00-C-5401 for the overhaul and refurbishment of Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) equipment for the governments of Egypt (61%) and the United Kingdom (7%) under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program. In addition, CIWS ORDALT hardware kits are being procured for the U.S. Navy (16%) and the government of Japan (16%) under the FMS Program. The work will be performed in Louisville, Ky., and is expected to be completed by December 2001.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., Long Beach, Calif., is being awarded a $19,386,633 modification to a time-and-materials contract to provide for fifteen kits to upgrade the F117 engine supporting the C-17 aircraft from the DO1 to the DO3 configuration. Expected contract completion date is Dec. 31, 2000. Solicitation issue date was July 12, 1999. Negotiation completion date was May 12, 2000. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-97-C-0008-P00105).
Boeing Defense and Space Group, Seattle, Wash., is being awarded a $45,000,000 (not-to-exceed) firm-fixed-price contract to provide for the following in support of the Radar System Improvement Program (RSIP) for the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft: a partial APY-2 Group B radar kit and special test equipment for the Avionics Integration Support Facility at Tinker AFB, Okla; and modification of two Transmit Angle Controls and ten thermal assemblies to the RSIP configuration. Expected contract completion date is March 2003.
THE TITAN CORP. has entered an agreement to buy a majority interest in Ivoire Telecom, which provides voice and data services to the corporate VSAT market in West Africa through subsidiaries in eight countries there. The purchase is expected to close by the end of the month.
Saab Nyge Aero of Nykoping, Sweden, won a $20.9 million order from Bombardier Aerospace to revamp two Canadair CL-415 amphibious aircraft for a customer in the Mediterranean region. "Apart from the contract itself, the order means that we are now established as a modification center for future orders from Bombardier Aerospace," said Bjorn Sunden, president of Saab Nyge Aero. The deal includes an option on a third aircraft and should also create export opportunities for Sweden's high technology industry.
NASA's X-34 technology demonstrator program is undergoing a major restructuring to incorporate lessons learned from the space agency's Mars mission failures, a move that includes a rethinking of the avionics systems used for the powered flights, says Mark Fisher, Marshall Space Flight Center's new X-34 program manager. NASA officials say the restructuring will look at different mission profiles for the three vehicles, safety aspects of the program and measures for mission success.
Bell Helicopter workers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new contract Sunday, heading off a strike at the Textron unit's Fort Worth, Tex., plant that would have begun at midnight. "We think we satisfied our members, and the work force will calm down," said J.J. Birchard, president of United Aerospace Workers Local 218. "We have a lot of projects we need to work on and keep, and I think this will do it."
Raytheon Co., Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $21,347,750 modification to firm-fixed-price contract DAAH01-97-C-0097, for 511 Stinger Reprogrammable Microprocessor Missile Rounds, 14 Captive Flight Trainers and 4 Telemeters. Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz. (79%), and Farmington, N.M. (21%), and is expected to be completed by Oct. 31, 2002. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on May 19, 2000.
The commandant of the Marine Corps is slated to fly in an MV-22 Osprey June 17, but scheduling conflicts may not permit the chief of staff of the Air Force to make a similar flight. Last month, following the April 8 crash of an MV-22 in Tucson, Ariz., which killed all 19 Marines aboard, both men said they wanted to go on the first flight of the aircraft with passengers as it moved through a phased return to normal flight operations.
Lockheed Martin Corp., Littleton, Colo., was awarded on June 5, 2000, a $23,200,000 (not-to-exceed) modification to a fixed-price-incentive-firm contract to provide for nine spare upgraded solid rocket motor cases and solid rocket motor case qualification efforts in support of the Titan launch system. Expected contract completion date is Sept. 30, 2002. Negotiation completion date was Feb. 10, 2001. Space and Missile Center, Los Angeles AFB, Calif., is the contracting activity (F04701-96-C-0001-P00193).
Teledyne Controls, a subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies, won separate contracts worth a total of $5.6 million from Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. and Canada's Bombardier Inc. to provide Mini-Flight Data Acquisition (MFDAU) systems for Gulfstream's GIV-SP and GV aircraft and Bombardier's de Havilland Dash 8 aircraft.
Lockheed Martin Corp. Sanders, Nashua, N.H., is being awarded a $10,424,000 increment of a $17,592,272 other transaction to develop advanced technologies for Phase II of the Airborne Communications Node. Work will be performed in Nashua, N.H., and is expected to be completed by October 2001. Funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were three bids solicited on February 4, 2000, and three bids received. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the contracting activity (MDA972-00-9-0009).
SURMET CORP. of Burlington, Mass., has teamed with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope program to demonstrate a new carbon coating that "virtually eliminates wear and tear on moving parts." The "diamond-hard" carbon coating -- dubbed "UltraC Diamond" -- will be applied to the circulator shaft and bearings on a new cryogenic cooler designed to restore the orbiting Hubble telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instrument to operation by recooling its detectors to 70 degrees Kelvin.
ASTROVISION INTERNATIONAL INC., an Alexandria, Va.-based startup that grew out of space commercialization efforts at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, has received $5 million in venture capital funding to begin developing a live, continuous, true color, high definition video stream of Earth from Earth orbit. The U.S.
TRW has bought a 10% stake in SpaceBridge Networks Corp., a Quebec-based specialist in broadband wireless connections, to push the Canadian company's proprietary technology for extremely fast digital switching aboard spacecraft. TRW hopes to use the technology in extremely high frequency (EHF) broadband relay satellites, including its own planned Global EHF Satellite Network. With the agreement TRW gains an exclusive license for the SpaceBridge technology, seeing EHF as complementing Ka-band satellites by boosting their capacity to "ultra-high rates," the U.S.
