United Technologies Corp., Hartford, Conn., is being awarded a $10,792,912 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for repair and overhaul of ten stators applicable to the F100-PW-100/220 engines on the F-15 and F-16 aircraft. The stator, located in the core of the engine, is part of the compressor assembly. It facilitates the movement of air through the engine, from the intake, through the exhaust. Funds will be obligated as individual delivery orders are issued. There was one firm solicited and one proposal received.
Germany's defense industry has been plagued with budget cuts and layoffs which could threaten the viability of the nation's armed forces and stymie technological advances, according to the president of the German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI).
Russia's big Proton rocket returned to flight Friday, safely launching an Indonesian telecommunications satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in a commercial mission organized by International Launch Services (ILS).
Raytheon Aerospace Co., Madison, Miss., is being awarded a $45,973,040 requirements contract for the total aircraft maintenance and logistical life cycle support for all Navy and Marine Corps C-12 aircraft. Work will be performed at various Navy and Marine Corps Air Stations within the United States as well as in Japan, Bahrain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain and England, and is expected to be completed by October 2001. Contract funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Complaints last year by Bell Helicopter Textron at being excluded from the short-list for Australian Army Aviation's $A1.25 billion ($790 million) requirement for about 24 armed reconnaissance helicopters have led to a re-opening of the competition to the original six contenders. Michael Roche, under secretary of defense acquisition, said the project was under review, and that changes in the procurement specifications, resulting from evaluations of the company proposals, had justified the re-opening.
NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous probe achieved orbit yesterday around a 21-mile-long chunk of space debris known as 433 Eros, the first time a spacecraft has gone into orbit around an asteroid. Built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft slowed into the asteroid's weak gravity with a 57-second firing of its small hydrazine thrusters. The maneuver occurred at 10:33 a.m. EST, when NEAR and the asteroid were about 160 million miles from Earth.
British Airways is "interested" in Airbus Industrie's would-be A3XX super jumbo jetliner and might even buy the plane in "double-digit numbers," but not as a launch customer, a top BA executive said Monday. "Although we have [announced] a strategy of reducing aircraft size in markets where frequency counts," there are a few markets in which there would be an advantage in having the very large aircraft available, said Carl Michel, British Airways' commercial director. "If the price is right, and the economics make sense, count us in."
The national missile defense deployment readiness review should take place only when "thorough" analysis from the next flight test is available, according to a new report from the Pentagon's Department of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) released yesterday. The NMD review is currently scheduled for a specific time, June, rather than when the analysis of the next flight test is completed, the report said. At the time of the review, the Pentagon will recommend to the president whether an NMD site should be deployed in the next three years.
Hellfire Systems Limited Liability Co., Orlando, Fla., is being awarded an $11,998,772 modification to firm-fixed-price contract DAAH01-90-C-0323, to exercise the option for 200 Hellfire II Missiles, for Greece. Work will be performed in Orlando, Fla., and is expected to be completed by Nov. 30, 2001. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 21, 1999. The U.S. Army Aviation&Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity.
AeroInfo Systems of Canada announced a partnership with Embraer of Brazil to implement an advanced Collaborative Reliability Management System. Embraer will use AeroInfo's CRMS to create fully digital aircraft maintenance programs by enabling is 15 international partners to participate online in the company's next-generation regional jets. Fully digital maintenance programs will enable Embraer to bring new aircraft designs to market faster by reducing the amount of time for regulatory approvals.
KILLER UAVs: While pleased with the Pentagon's moves to accelerate its Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle program, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) says more could be done with UAVs. "It's time to move to unmanned remotely controlled systems with combat capabilities," Warner says. He would like to see a greater push with UAV capabilities and a shift toward inclusion of unmanned deep strike aircraft. At least one-third of the military's deep strike aircraft should be remotely piloted in the future, he says.
Aerospatiale Matra said its sales climbed 4.9% to 12.898 billion euros ($12.814 billion) in fiscal 1999, the company's first full year of operations. A 25.4% increase in Airbus Industrie sales was a big boost. Orders booked in 1999 by Aerospatiale Matra were up 8.8% for the year to 13.907 billion euros, excluding Dassault Aviation, equal to three years of sales.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense's planned introduction this summer of a new Defense Electronic Commerce Service (DECS) will revolutionize the department's procedures for purchasing goods and services. Armed Forces Minister John Spellar, announcing the initiative last week, said that new electronic messaging systems, on-line product catalogues and automatic logistics transactions involving billions of pounds will transform a mainly paper-based system.
END OF AN ERA? Although his tenure as NASA chief has spanned two Administrations and crossed party lines, Goldin hints he won't try to "serve at the pleasure" of a third U.S. president. "I don't know what the right thing to do is," he says, joking that the question might better be posed to his wife. "This is a time of unbelievable prosperity.
PUBLIC WORKS: Vietnam is paving the Ho Chi Minh trail, the legendary backwoods route the communist north used to supply its forces in the south for years despite relentless air bombardment by U.S. forces. The Southeast Asian nation's prime minister, Phan Van Khai, tells reporters the 1,048-mile hard-surface road will cost some $378 million to build, using Vietnamese funds and international development aid. When completed in three years the trail -- once a shifting collection of camouflaged tracks, bunkers and dugouts -- will run the length of the country.
NASA preempted the most serious warning from its Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) by requesting funds in fiscal 2001 to add about 500 new staffers at its human spaceflight centers, but the independent panel cautioned the agency Thursday that it must carefully manage its spaceflight personnel to meet the demands of building the International Space Station.
Engineers at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi have tested the Rocketdyne XRS-2200 linear aerospike engine built for the X-33 prototype for 125 seconds, including the first test of the full plus-or-minus 15% thrust vectoring across the exhaust "ramp" of the innovative engine.
REBOUND: Buried in a Senate Governmental Affairs report on $220 billion in government waste, fraud and abuse is the disclosure that between fiscal 1994 and 1998 defense contractors voluntarily returned $984 million that the Defense Dept. erroneously paid them.
NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour lifted off almost on time Friday to spend nine days mapping the earth's surface with a sophisticated synthetic aperture radar designed to generate terrain elevation data for civilian scientists and military planners. The STS-99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) got underway at 12:43 p.m. EST, after a 13-minute hold to clear up a few last-minute technical glitches including a low pressure reading in the crew compartment.
CONSERVATIVE APPROACH: As BAE Systems digests its acquisition of GEC-Marconi operations, implementing ambitious plans to achieve cost synergies and repay debt, it has barely had time to catch its breath since the deal closed in late November. It therefore seems unlikely that it would jump back into the ring to bid on assets being spun off by Lockheed Martin, as some news reports have said. A BAE Systems spokesman says the company is aware of Lockheed Martin's offer, and that it makes sense to look at for-sale signs.
VALENTINE'S DAY:The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft will do its thing today, tucking into orbit around a 21-mile-long chunk of space rock called Eros like a lover looking for a kiss. It has been almost four years to the day since NEAR was launched on a billion-mile chase set to end at about 10:33 a.m. EST today with an engine burn designed to allow Eros' weak gravity to capture the probe.
SUPPORT FOR SUPPLEMENTAL: U.S. Army Secretary Louis Caldera says Congress needs to swiftly approve DOD's $2.3 billion FY '00 supplemental so that fourth quarter training is not set back. Caldera also warns that the Army needs more funds for modernization. "Army modernization accounts for only $9.4 billion of the Dept. of Defense's $60 billion modernization budget...We will spend about $5,000 less per soldier for modernization this year than we did only a decade ago," he says.
EXPORT CONTROLS: Stiff new U.S. export control regulations on space technology have complicated NASA's role in the International Space Station project, according to Administrator Daniel S. Goldin. "We very carefully watched what happened over the last year to other people in the industry," Goldin tells reporters. "We have been extremely cautious in our interchange with the Russians on the problems with Proton.
