TUAV BRIEFINGS: The final contractor briefing on the U.S. Army's Tactical UAV competition is slated for this Tuesday. Downselect for the fly-off phase should come within three weeks. Up to five of the six contractors bidding may be invited to the fly-off. An acquisition award is slated for late this year.
A-12 SETTLEMENT: As the lawsuit over the canceled A-12 aircraft program heads back to federal claims court, General Dynamics Chief Financial Officer Michael J. Mancuso tells financial analysts he is "optimistic that a settlement could occur in the near future." Boeing and General Dynamics are suing the Pentagon for canceling the program in 1991.
EYES WIDE OPEN: NASA is watching developments in the standoff between Russia and Kazakhstan over Proton launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome with keen interest, since the lynchpin of the International Space Station must ride a Proton to orbit from Baikonur. "We have been kept aware of what's going on," says a Station program spokesman at Johnson Space Center of NASA's Russian partners.
Air Command Systems International, a joint company formed by Raytheon and Thomson-CSF, won a $500 million contract to develop and test core software for NATO's Air Command and Control System (ACCS), NATO announced. The open architecture, commercial software program will automate air operations, combining plans, tasks and execution for tactical systems. ACCS implementation was delayed seven years by intense debate over several difficult issues including industrial benefit sharing, according to a written statement from NATO.
NORDAM Group has acquired the thrust reversers operation of Dee Howard Co., a subsidiary of Finmeccanica's Alenia Aeronautica. The purchase price was not disclosed. NORDAM will ultimately move the Dee Howard operation from its current site in San Antonio, Tex., to its Tulsa, Okla., base, NORDAM President Charles Ryan said in a company announcement Friday.
Raytheon's upgraded Patriot for anti-cruise missile capability intercepted a target in its first flight test at the White Sands Missile Range, N.M., the company reported Friday. The missile intercepted an MQM-107 subscale target flying at low altitude to simulate a cruise missile threat. The fire unit used the most current version of Patriot ground equipment and software to support the test, Raytheon said.
TAIWAN'S MILITARY has resumed flying its F-16 fighters following a suspension of 50 days during which the fleet was grounded for inspection following the crash of a two-seat F-16 near Green Island. The June 2 crash was the third of an F-16 since Taiwan began deploying the aircraft in 1998. In addition to grounding the F-16s for inspection, the military announced that the training period for pilots will be extended to eight months from the original six.
JOINT UAV EXPERIMENTS: The U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) are teaming up to push the operational requirements for unmanned aerial vehicles, according the DARPA Director Frank Fernandez. He and USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan are planning joint experiments at Nellis AFB, Nev., to refine some of the tactics used by UAVs over Kosovo, including laser target designation.
DISASTER RESPONSE: France and its European space partners will work closely in the future to bring their national and multinational space assets to bear on natural disasters. Under a new "Space System Operators' Charter" signed by the European Space Agency and France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) at the UN space conference in Vienna, data from ESA's ERS-1 and ERS-2 Earth observation satellites and the Spot 1, 2 and 4 remote sensing platforms CNES operates will be made available to civil authorities in signatory nations when disaster strikes.
Brazil's Embraer delivered the first ERJ-135 production aircraft to Continental Express, where the aircraft is slated to start commercial operation on Sept. 9, the company reported Friday. "The smaller jet will allow us to better match capacity to demand offering a jet product in our core turboprop markets," said David Siegel, Continental Express president. "Continental Express is the first regional airline to have a cost-justified, capacity-optimized fleet in the industry."
The Australian Defense Force has selected CFM56-7 engines to power its seven new Boeing 737 Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft. The CFM56-7 is built by CFM International, a 50/50 joint company of France's Snecma and General Electric. Delivery of the engines is slated to start in 2004. The engine is rated at 27,300 pounds takeoff thrust for this application, CFM said.
'RUSSIAN ROULETTE': Yuri Koptiev, head of the Russian Space Agency, says it's time for the 13-year-old Mir orbital station to pass the torch to its international successor. Interfax reports Koptiev conceding spending on Mir has kept Russia from meeting its commitments to the International Station partnership, and calling for a controlled Mir deorbit before it's too late to decide where the huge spacecraft will come down. "Russian roulette in outer space is inadmissible," Koptiev tells Interfax.
NEXT WAR: Because "NATO airplanes stayed at altitude" during operations against Yugoslavia, says on U.S. Army officer, "a lot of [potential enemies] around the world are going to school on that." Col. Michael W. Hackerson, deputy director of planning for the Army deputy chief of staff for operations and plans, suggests that the low-flying Apache helicopter may offer the surprise needed next time to attack armored targets.
SUMMER RUSH: Defense authorizers are pressing hard to wrap up their conference deliberations on the fiscal year 2000 defense bill before Congress leaves for its month-long August recess. They hope to have a vote on final passage of the bill by Aug. 6, when the recess is slated to begin. The date, however, depends on how much work the Senate and House can plow through between now and then.
British Aerospace Defense Systems had developed a new Cell Hardening Unit (CHU) that reduces transmission error rates by a factor of 10,000, BAe reported. The new system uses civil-derived asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technologies. CHU has been designed as a stand-alone plug-and-play interface between ATM-based circuit switches and the networks they service to provide users with flexibility in their choice of switches. The unit protects information cells within the data stream and reduces transmission error rates.
U.S. Air Force Space Command will use lessons learned from the air strikes against Yugoslavia in the two-week Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment, slated to begin Aug. 18 at various locations. JEFX 99 includes live and simulated flight operations and related military activities. All live flying will occur at Nellis AFB, Nev., USAF Space Command said.
Delays launching the Space Shuttle Columbia on the STS-93 mission to orbit the Chandra Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) have forced Boeing to delay its planned launch of four more Globalstar low-Earth orbit communications satellites until Sunday.
Some 200 U.S. Earth science researchers travel to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands this month to gather ground-truth data that will supplement measurements from the U.S./Japanese Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft, part of a worldwide effort to gain better understanding of how solar energy is transferred to the atmosphere.
Recently merged BFGoodrich and Coltec Industries reported record results for the second quarter, with double-digit earnings growth in both companies. Net income at BFGoodrich grew 22% to $68 million, excluding special items. That amounted to 90 cents a share, compared to 74 cents a share or net earnings of $55.9 million for the same period in 1998. At Coltec net income for the quarter was $31.8 million, or 48 cents a share, compared to $30.3 million, or 44 cents a share, last year, excluding non-recurring charges and extraordinary items.
After three years and the efforts of 1,100 technical experts, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday that all its computers, including those that help operate the nation's air traffic control system, are ready for the year 2000 rollover. Data verifying Y2K compliance was validated by Science Applications International Corp., and the Dept. of Transportation's Inspector General approved FAA's effort after examining a sample set of systems.
GERMAN NAVY'S first Mk88A Super Sea Lynx helicopter was rolled out July 14 at GKN Westland Helicopters factory in Yeovil, U.K. It is one of seven ordered in 1996. The Super Sea Lynx Mk88A, latest member of the Lynx naval family, features the Marconi Sea Spray 3000 radar and multi-role turret FLIR, Rolls-Royce GEM 42 engines and BAe Matra Sea Skua air-to-surface missiles. It will operate from the German Navy's Type 122 and 123 frigates.
VERIDIAN, Washington, D.C., has won a $38.1 million contract to support information warfare systems development. The contract calls for the company to provide information technology and engineering services to the Information Warfare Div. of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Div.
Realizing they simply did not have the votes to pull it off, House members who want to restore a $1.8 billion cut to the F-22 program didn't even try yesterday during debate on the fiscal year 2000 defense appropriations bill. The House passed the bill in a 379-45 vote. Appropriations Committee member Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) for the second time withdrew an amendment to restore the funds and provide the U.S. Air Force with its full $3 billion request for the Lockheed Martin fighter. Lockheed Martin builds the plane at its Marietta, Ga., facility.
