Honeywell International, Inc., Teterboro, NJ, is being awarded a $21,822,000 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for test and repair support for the APG-68 radar system on the F-16 aircraft. This effort supports foreign military sales to Turkey. Expected contract completion date is May 2002. Solicitation issue date was May 17, 1999. Negotiation completion date was April 13, 2000. Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill AFB, Utah, is the contracting activity (F42620-00-C-0054).
Aerospan.com, the e-market owned by aviation logistics giants AAR and SITA and slated to launch mid-year, tapped Hal Chrisman to be VP Marketing and Business Development. Chrisman previously worked at Oracle Corp. as senior industry director for aerospace and defense business development. SPACE.com promoted Mark Cutsforth, who joined the company last fall as VP of technology to Chief Technology Officer.
Data Link Solutions, L.L.C., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is being awarded a $7,389,290 firm-fixed-price contract for 19 digital data power groups. These are components of the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) utilized on various aircraft. Work will be performed in Wayne, N.J., and is expected to be completed by April 2003. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Inventory Control Point, Philadelphia, Pa., is the contracting activity (N00383-00-C-G036).
Transatlantic relations may get a little dicey this week when allied defense ministers meeting in Florence, Italy, discuss the U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) system. While European leaders, such as German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, think the European Union countries should speak with one voice on NMD, U.S. allies just aren't there yet. Could the issue unglue the NATO alliance? In a study of European NMD fears by the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), co-authors Theresa Hitchens and Stuart Samuels argue that even a partial U.S.
Since Kosovo, all of the U.S. service chiefs have been stressing the requirement for precision guidance and low collateral damage in modern weaponry. Research continues in laser guidance, increasingly accurate sensors and decreasing the CEP of missiles. Officials also say that precision engagement is the Joint Forces Command's "number one unfunded request" for the current fiscal year budget. The current budget is reported as $5.7 million for precision engagement, with a current unfunded request to raise that to $8.8 million.
BALL AEROSPACE and the University of Colorado have completed automation of the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) Mission Operations Center, handing monitoring of systems on the NASA spacecraft over to software on all but two of the average 15 contacts a day. Human controllers manage the systems only during QuikSCAT's two daily command passes, and the rest of the passes are left to the computers, Ball said.
ISAO UCHIDA, head of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), resigned yesterday as a gesture of responsibility for a pair of launch failures that has plagued the Japanese space program. Japan's Cabinet is expected to accept the resignation today, according to press reports from Tokyo. Japan scrapped its all-domestic H-2 rocket program last year after two of the big NASDA vehicles in a row failed, and devoted its efforts to the H-2A variant that incorporates foreign components (DAILY, Dec. 10, 1999).
The House Thursday night passed its fiscal year 2001 defense authorization bill by a 353-63 vote. Concluding two straight days of floor debate, 208 Republicans joined 144 Democrats and an independent in voting for the bill, while six Republicans, 56 Democrats and an independent voted against the measure.
ANTEON CORP. of Fairfax, Va., won a contract worth as much as $27 million from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego to provide life-cycle support engineering services for surveillance systems and satellite terminal systems. Anteon and its subcontractors will provide support for the Tactical Data Information Exchange System B (TADIXS B) series, including the Multi-Mission Advanced Tactical Terminal (MATT).
AN ARIANE 5 solid rocket motor upgrade checked out in a hot-fire test at Europe's Guiana Space Center near Kourou last week. The booster upgrade was designed to add about 200 kilograms to the big new rocket's lift capability to geostationary transfer orbit, while reducing production costs. For the added lift, booster manufacturer Europropulsion added 2.4 metric tons of propellant to the forward motor segment (DAILY, MAY 16). The new booster also featured electrical ducts bonded directly to the booster skin, and a European-produced binder in the middle motor segment.
Aerojet, a unit of GenCorp, won a three-year, $5 million contract to develop controllable thrust propulsion for the U.S. Army's tactical missiles, including the Modernized Hellfire, Common Missile and Compact Kinetic Energy Missile. Aerojet said it will begin concept designs starting in May and build flight hardware by 2003.
Aerospace and defense companies are eager to ride the e-commerce wave, and Alliant Techsystems President and CEO Paul David Miller is no exception. Miller is angling to provide a more "artful way" to deliver ammunition, and "instinctively" believes it can be done online. Now that ATK is a "total ammunition supplier," Miller hopes to find an e-commerce approach to streamline the distribution process.
Thomson-CSF Vice Chairman Bernard Retat thinks big mergers and acquisitions are over for the next four to five years. Alliances, yes, says Retat, but no mega-deals. James McAleese of McAleese&Associates in McLean, Va., says transatlantic M&A isn't dead, except maybe through the end of the current Administration. Defense industrial base consolidations should be the focus, rather than alliances, McAleese says. Only by "co-mingling" technology pools will interoperability truly be achieved, he says, adding that it's more expensive to cooperate on programs.
Hinging a decision to deploy a National Missile Defense system on whether the upcoming third test achieves interception places a lot of weight on the success of that test. To help ensure a hit, the Pentagon announced last week that additional time is needed to fix faulty wiring in the interceptor. The test had been slated for June 26, but now has been rescheduled to early July. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T.
As the Marine Corps moves into a phased program of test flying the Osprey after the fatal April 8 crash in Arizona, it issues a safety bulletin calling for removal and replacement of prop rotor slip ring assemblies on all low rate initial production aircraft. It also stresses that the assembly is neither a cause nor a factor contributing to the accident. "The MV-22 is such a high visibility program, particularly since the mishap, we wanted to be out front with any kind of safety bulletin," a spokesman says.
The U.S. Army is getting a new No. 2 civilian. The Senate Thursday confirmed Gregory Dahlberg to be the under secretary of the Army. Dahlberg has headed the Democratic staff on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee since 1995.
TRW has won a three-month contract to study how best to accommodate the science payload in NASA's planned Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission, a follow-on to the TRW-built Compton Gamma Ray Observatory that is scheduled for a controlled deorbit that will begin Friday. Scheduled for launch in 2005, GLAST will carry a 3,000-kilogram science payload consisting of a Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor and the GLAST Large Area Telescope Flight Investigation, mounted in a spacecraft from the Rapid II spacecraft catalog maintained by Goddard Space Flight Center.
Scientists who don't want to see the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory deliberately destroyed have until Friday to make their case. That's when the first in a series of four burns designed to bring the 33,000-pound spacecraft down in the southeastern Pacific is set to occur. The agency's Office of Space Science has been the target of heavy lobbying to save the spacecraft, which is being deep-sixed because it is down to two functioning gyros and top NASA officials are worried it can't be brought down safely if another one goes (DAILY, March 27).
The Senate Appropriations Committee is concerned that "many" of the military's active and reserve fighter aircraft have "inadequate" radar warning receivers, and it wants the Defense Dept. to conduct a review of the matter. In a report accompanying the fiscal year 2001 defense appropriations bill, which the committee approved Thursday, the panel said the situation is worrisome because U.S. adversaries increasingly have access to anti-aircraft missile systems with advanced seeker technology.
SPACEHAB posted its 14th space mission Friday with the launch of NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis on a maintenance and repair mission to the International Space Station. Mounted in the Shuttle's cargo bay is a Logistics Double Module, an Integrated Cargo Carrier and an unpressurized toolbox all supplied by Spacehab or its Oceaneering Space Systems partner. The privately financed hardware will support NASA throughout Space Station assembly and utilization under present plans.
Britain's $7.5 billion program decisions for new defense and support equipment announced last week have been greeted with general satisfaction by European aerospace industry leaders.
The House fiscal year 2001 intelligence authorization bill would increase spending on national intelligence programs by 6.7% above the FY 2000 appropriated level and 0.1% above President Clinton's request, the office of Minority Whip David Bonior (D-Mich.) said in a bill summary Friday.
VEGA GROUP PLC, a London-based information technology company, has entered final negotiations with the European Space Agency to provide the GalileoSat System Simulation Facility, which will be used to support validation of the proposed Galileo satellite navigation system and its ground segment. Once the system is up and running, the center will support its operational control throughout the expected 15-year service life. VEGA's Informations-Technology GmbH subsidiary in Germany will handle the work.
